Winning The Room

Foreword

How to deliver effective presentations—there's a topic that's frequently written about. And it should be! Effective communications, particularly in boardroom, client, conference, and other stakeholder presentations, is an essential component of success in business and in one's personal career development. What's new and urgent now is the need for data‐driven communications. How one presents and communicates raw numbers, derived results, and inferred actionable insights from data are essential leadership and career skills in the current data‐drenched digital era.

To be honest, my very first reaction when Bill asked me to write a foreword was “Oh, no, not another ‘How to deliver effective presentations’ book!” But then, the emphasis on live, in‐person data presentation, data communication, and data storytelling (with a sprinkling of fun examples within my favorite category, “how to lie with graphs and statistics”) made me quickly get drawn in and fully engaged with the book.

Bill's narratives are anchored solidly to specific tips with corresponding specific graphics. It quickly becomes clear that he has lived through the good and bad examples provided. I also loved the rationales Bill gives, answering the “why” when he recommends a way to do something. This makes every page a real learning experience for the reader. I ended up thinking to myself, “Here's a case where first impressions were wrong.” And it was a delightful experience to have my mind changed in such a positive ...