Present Beyond Measure

7Suit Up Your Recommendations for Action

"A little less conversation, a little more action, please."

—Elvis Presley

Action should be the primary reason that data presentation exists. The actions we bring to our stakeholders come in the form of recommendations, and they are the key to moving the business forward based on the area you're charged with measuring.

This, if you remember, is what your stakeholder is silently asking for.

In the aforementioned DataStory, Nancy Duarte explains the imperative of mastering the art of recommendation: “When you use your data to provide timely and critical guidance to decision-makers, you change organizational outcomes. You become the mentor, and your data is the magical tool that gets them unstuck on their journey. Giving others data in the nick of time brings greater success in reaching a desired goal.”

I find that presentation recommendations are often vague, uninspiring, unrelated, and, at times, crammed into the back of the deck as an afterthought. In making and reviewing countless recommendations over my years as an analyst and consultant, I've identified five criteria that ensure a recommendation's survival past the end of the workday and completion with even the toughest stakeholders.

These criteria were inspired by a popular framework for professional and career goal setting. Hint: they can make you and your recommendations sound a whole lot SMART-er.

That's right, they are an adaptation of the SMART criteria, first discussed by ...