Communicating The Message Around The Numbers

As the year draws to a close, much of my time this month has been absorbed with helping clients to create and communicate the right message around the numbers which reflect business performance in 2018. This past month I have been working with leadership teams creating the message that represents an overview of their ‘wins’ and ‘learns’ for 2018, and all too often there is an incomplete, sometimes underwhelming, sometimes inaccurate, sometimes unclear tale of woe being told.

Now - just to be explicit - I’m not talking about making it up. Many businesses I work with have an eye watering amount of data at their disposal from which to tell some great stories – but all too easily this gets lost.

There is an art and a skill to making ’the number’ have meaning and the intent is never to mislead or confuse. Our numbers are our numbers. However, it’s the message around the numbers that we need to get right if we want to reflect the past year accurately and kick off 2019 in a way that engages, enthuses and delights our people.

And it’s not easy.

As leaders, our role is to be phenomenal communicators, so here are my top 10 tips for communicating the message around the number with impact:

1. Be clear on the goal for the message: do I want a decision, an action or a commitment as a result of sharing these numbers? 
2. Beware of information overload – detail can be shared in pre/post meeting reading. 
3. Manage key stakeholders in advance and after the meeting so that there are no ’nasty surprises’ in a group setting. 
4. Always craft concise, clean decks – if we use visuals they need to be easy to read with a ’so what’ for any data shown. 
5. Avoid the ’showing all the workings in the margin’ mentality. Less is always more. 
6. Beware over explaining when scrutinised – answer the question and nothing else. 
7. Grab the audience’s attention at the start – we have a tiny amount of time before people stop listening, so make it count. 
8. Don’t sugar coat bad performance; admit mistakes; highlight learning and be honest about commitments to change. 
9. Always have a narrative structure in 3 parts to the message (just like the ‘beginning, middle and end’ of a story). 
10. End on a high.