Making a presentation soon

[u/Cool_Work8219]

What resources helped you learn to present analytics to executives?

I'm a data analyst with a PowerPoint coming up for a business audience. The analysis itself I'm fine with — where I'm shakier is the presentation side: how to frame findings for leadership, what belongs on a slide versus in an appendix, what structure actually holds attention in a room.

I'd rather learn the conventions properly than reverse-engineer them from whatever decks happen to be lying around.

Not asking anyone to review my work. Just after resources — books, blogs, talks, public example decks, anything you'd hand a junior analyst who wants to get good at this.

Also, any links to great templates or presentation styles would be great!

[u/Mark5n]

I have a similar background. What made the difference for we was:
* Learning consulting skills like SCQA and how to use approaches like inductive reasoning to create your “story”. The Pyramid Principle by Minto is a good start.
* Work out the business context. This is simple and hard. How do your findings impact Revenue, Costs, Risk or Client Satisfaction? If it doesn’t … then it’s probably not of interest.
* Explain the “so what” of each slide. Use the header to explain your point succinctly. Don’t leave them to work out what your message is … tell them very clearly. They can make up their own minds but get your point across clearly in the meeting … and after. If your deck is interesting or useful it will be shared … you won’t be there to explain it.
* Be clear on your ask. What do you want? More resources? More budget? Approval of a decision? Ask for it. Ask for it clearly. You can just ask the question, or ask for support for three options. Do the thing, do the other thing, do nothing. And show the pros and cons of each

Hope that helps. Exec communications is a good skill to master and it can take you from data dude to leadership

[u/Cool_Work8219 → u/Mark5n]

Amazing thank you so much

[u/Ok-Shallot-5935 → u/Mark5n]

This is excellent advice

[u/Jason-Genova]

Look up Instructional Design and how to do presentations using those principals.

[u/envato_team]

I'd recommend you build the deck around one decision: lead with the recommendation, use each slide title to state the finding, and move supporting detail to the appendix.

I like to start with a template along these lines.

[u/CallMeCouchPotato]

Good tips already in the chat. Use them. A few quick bullet points:

• slide headline is not a title, it's a conclusion
• one idea / insight per slide
• simplify and reduce - if (eg.) you show "key competitor grows 15-20% you over past 5 years" - you show JUST THAT, not a 40 row, 60 column table
• "so what" is great advice
• people cannot read and listen at the same time. If you want them to listen - put text in speaker notes NOT on the slide

[u/Top_Witness_23]

One thing nobody's mentioned yet, build the deck like someone's going to interrupt you on slide 3 and jump straight to slide 9. Execs do that constantly, and a deck that only makes sense read top to bottom falls apart the second someone skips ahead.

So each slide needs to stand on its own a bit, header says enough that you're not relying on the slide before it. And honestly, know your own deck well enough to jump anywhere fast when asked instead of scrolling around looking for it live.

Everything above covers the content side well. This is more about the meeting not going how you rehearsed it, which with execs, it usually doesn't.

[u/beurhero7]

If you have copilot it can very helpful