Persuading with Data: A Guide to Designing, Delivering, and Defending Your Data

by Miro Kazakoff

Overview

An integrated introduction to data visualization, strategic communication, and delivery best practices.

Persuading with Data provides an integrated instructional guide to data visualization, strategic communication, and delivery best practices. Most books on data visualization focus on creating good graphs. This is the first book that combines both explanatory visualization and communication strategy, showing how to use visuals to create effective communications that convince an audience to accept and act on the data. In four parts that proceed from micro to macro, the book explains how our brains make sense of graphs; how to design effective graphs and slides that support your ideas; how to organize those ideas into a compelling presentation; and how to deliver and defend data to an audience.

Persuading with Data is for anyone who has to explain analytical results to others. It synthesizes a wide range of skills needed by modern data professionals, providing a complete toolkit for creating effective business communications. Readers will learn how to simplify in order to amplify, how to communicate data analysis, how to prepare for audience resistance, and much more. The book integrates practitioner and academic perspectives with real-world examples from a variety of industries, organizations, and disciplines. It is accessible to a wide range of readers—from undergraduates to mid-career and executive-level professionals—and has been tested in settings that include academic classes and workplace training sessions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262543279
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	611,558
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Miro Kazakoff is Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Who this book is for 1

What makes this book different 1

How this book is organized 3

Part I Understanding Perception

How and why graphs work 7

Chapter 1 Know Your Own Mind (in order to change others') 8

Understand the challenges of communicating data 10

Shift your mindset to explain data to others 16

Chapter 2 See How Graphs Work (inside your brain) 20

How we decode graphs 22

How graphs encode data 28

Exercise: Break down the graphs 41

Part II Designing Your Data

How to design effective graphs and slides 45

Chapter 3 Choose the Right Graph (for your data) 46

Pick the graph based on the relationship 48

Use taxonomies to expand your library of graph types 71

Exercise: Categorize the relationships 73

Chapter 4 Simplify to Amplify (your message) 78

Maximize the data-ink ratio 80

Make the most important information the most salient 86

Exercise: Redraw the graph 98

Chapter 5 Build Effective Slides (with the point in mind) 100

Identify a single point for each slide 102

Write your point as a headline 102

Use headlines to clarify your graphs 106

Test your slides to maximize clarity and impact 109

Exercise: Sketch the right slide for this headline 121

Part III Organizing Your Data

How to arrange data into compelling communications 125

Chapter 6 Structure Your Data (so others can follow it) 126

Begin with your ending in mind 128

Structure your communication with a Minto pyramid 129

Maximize the impact of all your points 143

Support your points with sound reasoning 151

Convert your Minto pyramid into a complete communication 156

Exercise: Making the case at Craigstone-Part I 164

Chapter 7 Frame the Data to Persuade (so the audience acts) 168

Audiences evaluate more than just the data 170

Understand how audiences evaluate your ideas 170

Maximize the likelihood of central processing with the Wiift 174

Take advantage of peripheral processing signals 183

Exercise: Making the case at Craigstone-Part II 191

Part IV Delivering and Defending Your Data

How to prepare for and respond to your audience 195

Chapter 8 Present Your Data (with less preparation) 196

Give your data a voice 198

Master each component of the Top-T framework 199

Practice some advanced techniques 208

Exercise: Practice presenting 211

Chapter 9 Prepare for Resistance (because resistance shows they care) 216

Resistance can be productive 218

Resistance can be predicted 219

Resistance can be anticipated with the Audience Confusion Matrix 222

Resistance can be defused 232

Exercise: What type of scenario is it? 236

Acknowledgments 242

Bibliography 247

Index 249

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Turning data into charts and graphs—and clearly stating their insights—is a bit of an art form. It demands not just analytical skill but also a sense of drama in presenting the insights. Miro Kazakoff has put together a very fine guide to keep you from boring your audience to death.”
—Barbara Minto, author of The Minto Pyramid Principle
 
“This book is two books in one! Kazakoff provides all the best practices of data visualization and marries these with the best practices of business communication to provide truly timely, relevant, and valuable content for anyone who wants to get the most impact out of their data.”
—Kerrie Aman Carfagno, Associate Professor of Management Communication, McIntire School of Commerce/Darden School of Business Master of Science in Data Analytics Program, University of Virginia