Module 1: Your brain has a mind of its own: Managing information and bias

• Provides an overview of how our brains process data and information. Introduces common thinking and decision-making errors/biases and shows how traditional ways of reviewing and presenting data actually contribute to those errors.

Module 2: Breaking up’s NOT hard to do: Simplifying your decisions and aligning your data

• Introduces our Decision-Breakdown technique. Improves efficiency by providing a structured approach to collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from. It helps leaders quickly hone-in on the data that are relevant to making a decision.

Module 3: Becoming an action hero: Simplifying your message and turning information into action

• Provides key tools for 1) breaking your message (spoken, written, presented) into clear, simple ideas, 2) turning information into action, 3) synthesizing multiple data sets into simple statements of action

Module 4: From mystery writer to prosecutor: Telling a simple, clear story

• Provides two templates for telling a simple, clear, data-driven story:

1. Business-driven story template – Make a simple recommendation or proposal in six slides (or paragraphs).
2. What, Why, But, And – Provide a simple, clear status update in 90 seconds or less.

Module 5: Your number is up: Designing reports around answers rather than numbers

• Introduces Avail Advisor’s Decision-based reporting approach. Decision-based reporting will allow you to spend more time fixing problems and less time trying to find them. This module will teach you to design reports that answer your questions within five seconds. 

Client was considering whether to move a currently out-sourced process back into the organization. The process involved about $20 million in resources. She was asked to make a recommendation to the company’s COO and two Senior Vice Presidents. She was given 30 minutes.

Solution

The manager used our Business-driven story template to develop and structure her presentation. The presentation itself took five minutes (with less than ten slides). There was a five-minute Q&A

Result

Executives made a $20 million decision in under 15 minutes (total, from the start of the presentation). The client said she never had an executive team make a decision so quickly.

One of the Senior Vice Presidents commented that it was the best presentation he had seen in years. In particular, he noted that “She provided more clarity and insight in five minutes than we normally get in 45 minutes to an hour.”