I help accountants and auditors turn insights into impact by improving their business writing.
Last week I was teaching in person for the first time in 18 months. I have been teaching finance courses for more than 15 years using presentation software and over that time I have learned that sometimes things go wrong.
Fortunately, nothing has been catastrophic for me but I am always prepared to deal with the unexpected.
I Feel Fine by the Beatles is a fantastic pop song but it does not have an ending, it just fades out. I guess Lennon and McCartney did not have time to work out a proper ending (unlike with Help!) and the song feels unfinished.
You don’t want the finance presentation you spent hours creating to end with a fade out.
Unless: 😂 It’s a good joke 😂 and you are good at telling jokes. Therefore, for most of us: no jokes. There is another serious reason not to start with a joke. The primacy-recency effect means your audience are more likely to remember the beginning and end of your presentation than the important bit in the middle. Do you want them to remember your joke or your message? Instead of a joke, therefore, I suggest you start your presentation with a promise.
George Orwell wrote an essay (Politics and the English Language) in 1946 where he explained his six rules for clear writing. I’m sure he did not have accountants I’m sure he did not have accountants and auditors in mind when he wrote his rules but they are as relevant to writing about money as any other subject. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Today I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. I thought it was important to find the time to go. I think the news coverage of the genocide in April 1994 was the first time I was aware of Rwanda as a country. A million people died in 100 days. It was shocking at the time, and today, the toughest part of the memorial, is the children’s room, with photographs of infants who never reached school age.
The last Saturday of each month is Umuganda Day in Rwanda. This is the day that everyone — including tourists and expatriates — is encouraged to spend a few hours doing community work. The taxi driver, Dieudonne, told me that the roads were quiet of traffic this morning as a result. There were some cars and cycles and mopeds but not many for a capital city. And no trucks. As my taxi brought me into the city I saw lots of people sweeping paths and picking litter.
The most important thing about giving a finance presentation is having something interesting to say. If you don’t have some insight about your data then you might as well send the data in an email.
As a newly-qualified accountant I took a time management course. It still helps me today.
When you’ve got a lot of data to include in a document it often makes sense to put it into a table. The default table style in Microsoft Word puts a fairly thick black border around every cell in the table. This is both ugly and a hindrance to your reader’s ability to read the table. To deliver your message you need to declutter your tables. In this video I show you, in under 60 seconds, how you can format a table to remove the clutter and allow your reader to focus on the data.
Part of the pre-production process for a movie or TV show is to draw a storyboard. This converts the script (i.e. words) into images that will guide the actual making of the movie. It helps with set design, lighting, camera positions, etc. I strongly recommend that you begin the process of developing a presentation by writing a script. Work out what it is you need to say to your audience to get the result you are looking for, whether that’s a decision, a sale, whatever.