What Are You Afraid Of?

I can tell within seconds when a deck was created in fear.

 

And sadly, it’s incredibly common.

 

Decks Created in Fear have three characteristics:

1. Data Dumps
2. Answers to Questions Nobody Asked
3. No Recommendations

 

The Evidence

1 and 2 look “busy”, like decks with way too many slides, like slides with way too many data points, like walls of text, like parentheticals (which either indicate an unclear, poorly-written sentence, or, that they should be their own, standalone idea, or they’re flat-out unnecessary), and like long, exhaustive, comma-delimited lists of examples that always, for some reason, end in “etc.”. Etc.[1]

 

3 is more of a lack thereof kind of thing.

 

All three are rooted in fear: fear of imperfection, fear of criticism, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of saying something “stupid”, fear of saying “no”, fear of looking like you don’t know everything, fear of losing a client, fear of getting a bad performance review, fear of losing one’s job, fear of having one’s secretly-held Imposter Syndrome discovered. [2]

 

All of which, at different points in ones life, are valid fears. I’ve been there too. I see you!

 

And if this is something you’d like help with, let’s talk.

 

We are all finite and perspective-bound.

 

If you weren’t there already, I promise—I’m not trying to induce any existential angst. That heading was supposed to be comforting. 🤔

Because this goes for everyone. Everyone.

 

 

 

Even your boss, even your client. And their boss.

 

Even The Critic, who you can count on to try to find the holes in your presentation.

 

No one has certainty. About anything. They can’t.

 

Because we’re all finite (we exist in limited time), and we’re all perspective-bound (we briefly perceive the world from our own unique, extremely limited point-of-view).

 

So no one can accumulate all the data, all the facts, all the information, everything there is to know. About anything.

 

Even collectively, we can’t know everything there is to know. Across time, knowledge is lost, and even destroyed. And can be rediscovered. Or not.

 

The river Tigris ran black with the ink of the House of Wisdom.

 

Even given infinite time, which, I’m going to guess you don’t have—time doesn’t stop, so the data, the facts, the information, the situation on the ground, the context is in a constant stage of change.

 

Cup your hands in the stream. water flows out through your fingers.

 

So. Absolute knowledge isn’t possible, therefore absolute certainty isn’t possible. You will have to use your gut, your intuition, you will have to take a step, even a leap, and have faith that the ground will meet your feet.

 

So take some of the pressure off of yourself! We’re all just guessing.

 

 

Alright, that’s enough Epistemology Lite for now. Speaking of time, though, if you’re acting in fear, tight deadlines are kind of a Godsend.

 

I keep reading posts and articles on LinkedIn about how wE hAvE tO gEt FaStEr aT InSiGhTs, and if my use of camelcase didn’t make it evident that I disagree, I disagree.

 

“Faster” means, no time for deep thinking. The fearful might say—Good. Now they’re off the hook from having to have a point of view, making an argument, supporting it, making some recommendations, making decisions, and taking responsibility for them.

 

“Faster” means—the faster the thing can get passed off to someone else so they’re responsible for the decision, the better.

 

Not my problem, the client says there’s no time. The deck is due a whole 5 seconds after fielding ends.

 

Fast, cheap—good?

 

Is the value you deliver speed? Or Insights?

 

(If you said “both”, you’re a unicorn, and I really hope you’re charging accordingly.)

 

Anyhoo, I’ll explain why I disagree with the whole “faster” thing more deeply in the next article. It’s drafted. I was working on it earlier.

 

But I was afraid it wasn’t perfect, so I decided to work on this one instead. 😂

 

Let’s get into it.

 

 

1| Data Dumps

“I hope they show me every single answer to all 50+ questions in the discussion guide”.

🗨️ No One, Ever

Clients send over the Long List of Objectives, so it seems like what they want to receive back is a Long List of Answers.

 

So everything goes in the presentation: answers to every punch of every survey question, answers to every discussion guide question, every quote, leaving nothing out.

 

That might sound good, but then good luck sitting through it—because functionally, what that is is everyone’s PowerPoint nightmare: slide after slide after slide of bullets n’ bar charts.

 

It should be obvious why this leads to poorly-designed slides. And why just “making them pretty” will not magically cause story to emerge.

 

The best musicians, screenwriters and comedians will tell you—stories are created by exclusion, by knowing what not to say, what to minimize, what to edit, what to synthesize, what to leave on the cutting room floor.

 

[After telling a story about playing a busy, complex, data dump of a bass solo in Dizzy Gillespie’s band] “He looked at me and said, ‘Next time, leave some holes. Maybe music will fall out!’”

🗨️ Steve Bailey

 

Even at the risk of getting it wrong, choices, decisions will have to be made.

 

When I was on the corporate side, I had to spend many hours converting our Supplier’s data-dump decks into slides I could show Division Directors and Execs. Why not save your clients that time and effort, and show them how much value you can deliver?

 

 

 

2| Answers to Questions Nobody Asked

 

Akin to the data dump, the fear is that the client audience doesn’t believe you’re credible, doesn’t think your research was conducted correctly, won’t believe what you say, that they will ask a seriously tough question you won’t have an answer to, or that you will get something wrong.

 

So, the strategy is to do an end run and pack every answer to every possible question about the methodology and the recruit and the exercises and the everything into the deck…

 

…and then wonder why the audience has checked out.

 

This one often takes place during the first 7-10 slides of apologia about the objectives, research questions, methodology, sample size, the recruit, the screener….

 

On and on and on, and if they don’t end up having all of those questions, then what you’ve presented is a lot of irrelevant (and therefore boring, frustrating, mind-wandering-inducing) facts— answers to questions no one came to this meeting to find out.

 

Oh really? Respondent criteria included not working in the market research industry? Fascinating. Do tell.

 

A consumer insights deck is a very context-specific deliverable. It typically starts with one business problem, happening to one company, occurring in a specific timeframe, relevant to some group of people within said company, involving particular groups of customers. Which raises a question.

 

“This question/answer dialogue cannot be counted on to engage his interest unless the statement that starts it off is relevant to him. The only way you can be confident of its relevance is to make sure that it directly answers a question you have identified as already existing in his mind.

I said earlier that you write primarily to tell people what they don't know. But a reader wants to find out what he doesn't know only if he needs to do so. If he has no need, he will have no question, and vice versa.

Thus, you make sure your document is of interest by directing it toward answering a question that already exists in the reader's mind, or that would exist if he thought for a minute about what is going on around him.”

🗨️ Barbara Minto

 

So in answering their business question, you can lead your clients through your thinking in a logical way that raises the next natural question, and then the next.

 

This is how your favorite stories work, and this is how you get to clear, convincing, gorgeous, easy-to-grok slides.

 

"I kind of just like [The Death Star] when it's done and it's blowing up planets and stuff. I don't really care how they put the air conditioning and the toilets in, you know?”

🗨️ Patton Oswalt

 

All that stuff can go in the Appendix.

 

Having trouble figuring out what should be in the deck, and what should be in the Appendix? Just reach out, it’s one of my favorite things to help people with.

 

 

3| No Recommendations

 

A Senior Director of Insights at One of The Largest Retailers on the Planet once told me that he was frustrated by his employees’ lack of confidence. Even after spending thousands on storytelling workshops, they still presented him with data-dumped slides. Data-dumped slides with no recommendations. And when he’d ask them what it said, they’d ask him, “what do you think it should say”?

 

They lacked the confidence to risk anything resembling a consultative point of view.

 

Researchers, analysts, insights folks of all kinds have a tough job. We have over ten jobs we have to do if we want to succeed—sales, account management, research design, logistics & event planning, research fielding, data analysis, synthesizing, business communication, copywriting, information design, data visualization, and graphic design. I’m sorry, what? That’s a lot for one person to handle! [3]

 

Oh and by the way, do all of those things with very little room for error, and everything is high priority, aaaand I need all of it done by tomorrow. Insert laugh/cry react emoji.

 

So having the confidence to stand out, say something, have a consultative point of view, belong in the room, and take a seat at the table, is risky.

 

Risk to one’s reputation, personal brand, and professional standing. Risk to one’s ability to get ahead, make money, put food on the table. Risk to one’s health and general well-being.

 

“All profit is derived from risk.”

🗨️ Peter Drucker

 

So all that risk should sometimes mean high reward. Right?

 

At some companies…it doesn’t. At some companies, communication is poor, expectations are opaque, project management is like playing Calvinball, wins aren’t properly rewarded, and failure means FAILURE with a capital FAIL, so…

 

…people stop taking any risks at all. Stress and burnout are, unfortunately, common.

 

It doesn’t have to be this way.

 

Imagine how it would feel to be told, “Not only are you allowed to take risks, I want you to take risks.”

 

 

 

And as a result, imagine having a team that can operate largely without your constant input, without you having to redo things at the 11th hour, that makes good decisions, and that executes great work that you can share internally upwards within the company and with external clients.

 

Imagine what we could accomplish as an industry with fearless insights teams.

 

 

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🦶 🗒️

1. etc. means, effectively, “and I could go on”. Not to get all Larry David, but, if you list more than like five things, you DID go on, at length, so what could possibly be left to add?
2. By no means an exhaustive list. There’s also fear of a bad manager doing Bad Manager Things, as they are wont to do. Valid. Been there too, unfortunately.
3. I’m sure I left something out. What’d I miss?