Helping finance professionals to have more impact by improving their writing and presentation skills
George Orwell wrote an essay (Politics and the English Language) in 1946 where he explained his six rules for clear writing. I’m sure he did not have accountants I’m sure he did not have accountants and auditors in mind when he wrote his rules but they are as relevant to writing about money as any other subject. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Today I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. I thought it was important to find the time to go. I think the news coverage of the genocide in April 1994 was the first time I was aware of Rwanda as a country. A million people died in 100 days. It was shocking at the time, and today, the toughest part of the memorial, is the children’s room, with photographs of infants who never reached school age.
The last Saturday of each month is Umuganda Day in Rwanda. This is the day that everyone — including tourists and expatriates — is encouraged to spend a few hours doing community work. The taxi driver, Dieudonne, told me that the roads were quiet of traffic this morning as a result. There were some cars and cycles and mopeds but not many for a capital city. And no trucks. As my taxi brought me into the city I saw lots of people sweeping paths and picking litter.
The most important thing about giving a finance presentation is having something interesting to say. If you don’t have some insight about your data then you might as well send the data in an email.
As a newly-qualified accountant I took a time management course. It still helps me today.
When you’ve got a lot of data to include in a document it often makes sense to put it into a table. The default table style in Microsoft Word puts a fairly thick black border around every cell in the table. This is both ugly and a hindrance to your reader’s ability to read the table. To deliver your message you need to declutter your tables. In this video I show you, in under 60 seconds, how you can format a table to remove the clutter and allow your reader to focus on the data.
Part of the pre-production process for a movie or TV show is to draw a storyboard. This converts the script (i.e. words) into images that will guide the actual making of the movie. It helps with set design, lighting, camera positions, etc. I strongly recommend that you begin the process of developing a presentation by writing a script. Work out what it is you need to say to your audience to get the result you are looking for, whether that’s a decision, a sale, whatever.
It’s one reason I quit being a finance director at the age of 40. I worked in public finance jobs for 19 years and writing was my favourite part of the work. In my 20s I had jobs in accounting, internal and external auditing and I wrote quite a lot of reports. As I was prompted to more senior roles I would write less and less. Management jobs are more about reviewing and approving other people’s writing than writing anything yourself.
Reading your text, whether as prose or bullet points, is bad enough. You can make things worse if you turn your back on the audience at the same time. Always remember, you are the presentation, not the slide deck. The slides are there to support what you are saying. If someone can get your whole message by reading your slides then why should they bother listening to you? You could have just sent them an email.
Recently I read an article by Adam Bryant, a former editor at the New York Times, entitled Leaders Need To Be Good Writers, Too. In the article he explained that an effective manager requires strong written communication skills. Two of the biggest traps to avoid are: ❌ Treating writing as different from speaking. Don’t use words and sentences in your written communication that you would not use in speech. ❌ Writing as if your audience is as much of an expert in the subject as you are.