Curse of Numbers

Businessman trying to figure some numbers out leaning on the table

Making sense of numbers in a presentation is one of the most difficult things to do. Did you use too many or too few? Did you notice eyes glaze over after that PPT slide with graphs? Are you concerned that no one will remember your statistics?

Luckily, Chip Heath and Karla Starr wrote Making Numbers Count. Heath wrote Made to Stick (one of our favorite books) and is a Professor at Stanford School of Business. Starr is a business journalist and behavioral scientist.

The authors state that information is lost because of the failure to translate numbers into instinctive human experience. This is critical in business. You could lose funding for your startup, fail to receive a promotion, or experience exacerbated stage fright when an audience tunes you out-- because the numbers you used didn’t connect or touch a nerve.

Heath and Starr propose that you insert prompts when presenting numbers: To put that into context… What that means is… To put this into perspective… By comparison…

For example, if your goal is to convince airline execs to improve customer service, you could focus on the consequences: “Your 4,000 cancelled flights yesterday mean that executives missed meetings, trials were postponed, schools had to hire substitute teachers and thousands of passengers have determined never to fly your airline again. In addition, you were featured on the evening news.” You have grabbed their attention and hopefully persuaded them to take an action.

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