Latest posts
5 Good reasons to use your corporate PowerPoint template; Issue #448 September 17 2019
How do most business professionals start creating their PowerPoint slides? They open a previous presentation and copy a few slides into a new file, making sure to click the Keep Source Formatting option so the template from the previous file gets applied. This is a...
Free training videos; Issue #447 September 3 2019
In our neighborhood the kids are heading back to school today. This often makes the rest of us think about upgrading our skills so today I want to highlight some free playlist s of videos I have on my YouTube channel that can help you make your presentations more...
3 Steps you can take to spend less time updating Excel charts each month (Hint: use a strategic approach to your Excel chart worksheet)
With organizations measuring more metrics than ever before, the time it takes to update all the charts you create for senior managers seems to increase each month. You’ve streamlined the analysis using tools in Excel like Power...
Zooming in on a column graph; Issue #446 August 20 2019
In a previous article I talked about giving context first for complex diagrams by showing the overall view before zooming in to look at the details. The same approach can apply to a column graph where the values don’t differ by much. Too often I see column graphs...
Big Data Tools and Executive Reporting; Issue #445 August 6 2019
In the opinion of some commentators, presentations of results and analysis to executives will soon be replaced by dashboards created with big data tools such as Power BI or Tableau. They claim that by giving executives access to these tools, the executives will be...
Comparing actual to budget with explanations; Issue #444 July 23 2019
Comparing actual spending to budgeted spending is an important topic in many presentations. Too often the actual and budget amounts are shown in a table and the audience is expected to subtract large numbers in order to understand the difference. My latest makeover...
Visualizing Net Income from Inflows and Outflows; Issue #443 July 9 2019
Via Twitter I came across an interesting visual created by Nadieh Bremer to show the inflows and outflows that resulted in the Net income for an organization in their annual report. Here is the visual, used with Nadieh’s permission from her article. Here are some of...
Speed slide creation and enjoy the summer; Issue #442 June 25 2019
It is officially summer here in North America and the promise of warmer weather makes us want to get our work done quickly so we can go outside and enjoy the sun. In this article I want to share some tips and resources for speeding up the creation of PowerPoint slides...
Selecting Dataviz based on message; Issue #441 June 11 2019
In my recent sessions at regional AFP conferences I spoke about the issue of spreadsheets on slides in presentations of financial results and analysis. Business professionals copy these large tables of numbers on to slides because they think you need to have design...
Reflections on 20 years in business; Issue #440 May 28 2019
Twenty years ago today I worked my last day at Trimark Investments. That was my last day in the corporate world as a full-time employee. In the twenty years since then I have run my own business. Today I’d like to reflect on some of the lessons and joys of the last...