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Everything’s relative. A million dollars sounds like a lot of money to someone who makes an average salary, but it’s a drop in the bucket to a Warren Buffett or a Bill Gates. Running a hundred metres in a few seconds seems like a miracle to ordinary mortals, but a track and field athlete will work hard to shave even more off that time. Yet presenters often quote statistics without benchmarks, so the audience doesn’t know how to evaluate them. Is $10,000 a lot of money? Well it is for a bicycle. It’s not much for a house, unless that house is in a small village in a third world country, where it might be exorbitant. If you quote numbers this way, you will lose the audience while they try to decide whether $125,000 is good, bad or indifferent in this context. Your statistics lose their power. In a presentation skills workshop for a group of lawyers, one participant was practicing his delivery of an address to the jury in an upcoming trial. He was asking for damages in the amount of $750,000, and hoped the jury would consider it reasonable. It’s quite a large sum, and most ordinary folks think of that kind of cash as a lottery win. He needed to put it in context for them. He might, for example, ask the jury to suppose they were thirty-five years old and earning a salary of $40,000 a year. By the time they reached the age of sixty-five, allowing for reasonable increases, they could expect to have earned a certain amount. (He would do the arithmetic and insert the actual sum.) That amount would be what is called their “expected lifetime income”. However, if they were involved in an accident and suddenly unable to work any more, that amount now represents their “forfeited lifetime income”. That is what happened to this claimant, and the amount he would have lost was $750,000. So in fact, counsel was asking no more than the amount the man would have earned, had he not met with this unfortunate accident. Don’t you think the jury is more likely to agree when given this background explanation? Here are three ways to put figures in context for your audience. 1. Compare them to something to which they can personally relate, as in the courtroom example. 2. Compare them to a similar situation. If a new manufacturing process takes fifteen minutes, mention that the old one took two hours, so we save 1-3/4 hours. For even more effect, tell them how much time this will save in an average shift or on a certain number of product units. Go further and translate that time into money and the statistic will now be a strong argument for change. 3. Create vivid word pictures to illustrate size: That’s the equivalent of five football fields. That’s enough to fill ten Olympic-size swimming pools. If laid end-to-end they would stretch from New York to L.A. and back again. Statistics can be great persuaders, but only when the audience has the means to evaluate them.
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More Articles:1. The Leadership Imperative: Making Your Leadership Your Life By Brent Filson Nearly all leaders I've encountered are underachievers. They're getting a fraction of the results they are capable of. And in most cases, it's their fault. Their failures are the result of the choices they make. For the opportunities to consistently get more results are all around them all the time, theirs for the taking.For instance, to start getting more results than you are accustomed to getting, you simply have to change your mind-set. You should aim to make your leadership your life … 2. Eight Ways to Motivate Part Time Employees By Ed Sykes In most cases, part-time employees present a special challenge when it comes to motivation. They do the "grunt" work, have little career choices, are often focused on other goals outside of your organization (college, hobbies, etc.), and are treated as outsiders by full-time employees. So what’s a manager to do? How do we turn our part-time employees into outstanding employees?The following are eight proven techniques to motivate your part-time employees:1. Orient them properly.Take time to… 3. Time Management and Team Development - The Yes and No of It By Martin Haworth Sometimes.In fact making some small changes to the circumstances when we use these two little words, can make all the difference. And it takes practice.Saying 'Yes' More......brings help when we are offered it. How often have you turned down support, because it felt easier to say 'No thanks. I'm fine'? How often have you rejected assistance in all sorts of places and circumstances? Sometimes it seems like the thing to do - a force of habit. But saying 'Yes', truly can be a help for you. But th… 4. Managing Rebellious Employees By Michael Mercer Surveys of executives reveal that many companies fall short of their profit objectives due to “people problems.” Research for my Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change book found these “people problems” fall into two “r” categories: rebellion and resistance.Rebellion is akin to teenagers defying authority figures, fir instance, rebelling against leaders who institute change. Resistance includes employees flinging roadblocks in the way of the organizational change. Examples include employ… |
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