⏳ This is a 9 minute read 📚
Hey Gang!
In this edition…
1️⃣ Expert Insights: 💡 Do you know THE 4 QUESTIONS you must ask whenever you're thinking about using a graph or table? This week, I worked with the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) recording a video for the Data Visualization chapter of their FPAC certification exam review course and I'm sharing the 4 questions here.
2️⃣ Brain Snacks Book Bites:🧠 If you want to be on a career fast track, you need to understand people and how to work effectively with them. Laszlo Bock was formerly the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google and he wrote a book where he shared some of the rules that Google follows to be one of the best places to work. We dive into the key points from that book here.
3️⃣ FP&A Pulse: 🩺 We're keeping our finger on the pulse of the heartbeat of FP&A today and bringing you a summary of the most important current events and developments.
📚 Leveraged Learning: Learn in minutes, Use for a Lifetime. This week’s book bite is "Work Rules" by Laszlo Bock. He was the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google and before that was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and an executive at General Electric. He is well-known for his exceptional knowledge of what makes teams work well. You can read/listen to the full book summary here, or just consume the following book bites if you're really in a hurry and want just the bullet points.
Here are they key takeaways from the book:
1. Give Your Work Meaning
- Connect work to a bigger purpose beyond just daily tasks.
- Example: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it useful.
- Meeting those you serve gives work more meaning and boosts happiness and productivity.
2. Trust Your People
- Hire people you can trust so you don’t have to micromanage.
- Be transparent and share information; it makes everyone feel trusted.
- Grant authority to your team and let them grow into it.
3. Hire People Better than You
- Take your time to find people smarter and better than you.
- Use referrals, make recruiting everyone’s job, and think like a marketer to attract top talent.
4. Separate Development from Performance
- Discuss how employees can improve separately from reviewing their performance.
- Use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to manage performance. (Watch my interview with OKRs expert Ben lamorte here)
- In development talks, focus on how to help your team succeed.
5. Focus on the Extremes
- Look closely at the top 10% and bottom 10% of your team.
- Learn from the best and have them teach other.
- Be compassionate with the bottom performers but help them move on if they can’t keep up.
6. Be Frugal and Generous
- Most perks don’t cost much but mean a lot, like Google’s on-site services.
- Save big spends for important times, like during family emergencies.
- Employees remember generosity in times of need.
7. Pay Unfairly (Fairly)
- Pay your stars well because they add more value.
- Explain why some get paid more and how others can improve to earn more.
8. Nudge Them Right
- Shape the environment to encourage desired behaviors.
- Simple changes, like placing healthy snacks at eye level, can make a big difference.
9. Manage Expectations
- Let people know you’re trying new things and they might not always work.
- This way, they’ll be more patient and understand when changes don’t go perfectly.
10. Enjoy the Journey
- Create a workplace you love and enjoy the ride.
- By doing so, you attract amazing people and look forward to work every day.
That’s it! These rules help Google stay amazing, and you can use them to make your workplace great too. Enjoy putting them into practice! 🌟
If these bullet points made you want to read/listen to the full book summary, you can do that here in less than 12 minutes.
Expert Insights: Data Visualization and THE Four Questions: FP&A professional communicate a lot of information using visuals. Let's talk about some of the key best practices for creating effective visuals.
This week, one of the things I worked on was a video for AFP (Association for Financial Professionals) that will be a part of their FPAC certification exam review course. Specifically, it is for the Data Visualization chapter of the program.
This chapter of the course covers four topics and I want to share with you some of the key points from the most important part of the chapter. It is a framework for using graphs and tables. Let’s first talk about the purpose of both, and then we’ll cover some key questions to ask whenever you’re using either.
The Purpose of Graphs
Graphs should communicate insights about the data in your presentations. If they don’t, they will likely get lost in a sea of useless information. To make sure every visual presentation is useful, always make sure they pass the four questions test.
1️⃣ Question 1: Graph or Table?
Before creating a graph, decide whether a graph or a table is more suitable. Here are some guiding principles:
When deciding between a graph and a table, consider that tables are excellent for telling a complete story with precision and organization. They use space efficiently and, although they can seem boring, they’re quicker and easier to create. Choose a table when you need to present a large amount of detailed data clearly and systematically.
Graphs, on the other hand, are better for making one or two key points quickly and they’re more visually engaging. They can lack the precision of tables and they take more effort to create, so be thoughtful before you create a graph. Graphs are great for highlighting trends, patterns, or relationships in your data, making complex information more digestible at a glance.
2️⃣ Question 2: Which Type of Graph?
So, you’ve decided you want to use a graph and now you must decide what kind. Choosing the right type of graph can make or break your presentation.
Here’s a brief guide:
- Column Graphs: Show trends or compare sizes. Great for time series data.
- Line Graphs: Perfect for continuous data trends over time.
- Pie Graphs: Best for showing parts of a whole.
- Bar Graphs: Ideal when you have long category labels (like survey responses).
- Area Graphs: Good for showing how components add up over time but can be hard to read. Human beings are inherently bad judges of area.
3️⃣ Question 3: What Will Make Your Graph Clear and Effective?
Maximize your graph’s effectiveness by focusing on:
- Data-Ink Ratio: Keep non-data elements (like axes and labels) minimal.
- Colors and Shading: Use them thoughtfully to add meaning.
- Gridlines, Axes, Legends: Make sure they support your data, not overshadow it.
- Data Labels: Highlight key points without cluttering.
- Supporting Information: Include important details and assumptions.
All the items in the bullet points are pretty self-explanatory, but I think the data-Ink ratio concept deserves a bit of explanation. The idea came from Edward Tufte, who was the first author on the topic of data visualization and he is probably still one of the best known. If you have ever heard someone quote something about pie graphs being terrible, they probably got that from Tufte…he hates the things.
Let’s address some terminology quickly, and just acknowledge that we are probably not producing a lot of graphs and charts on paper, and thus not actually using a lot of ink. So, just imagine whatever graph you’re producing being printed on paper and think about the ink on that graph and how much of it represents your data vs. everything else.
Everything else includes things like the legend, axis labels, gridlines, etc. All these things are non-data elements and they’re necessary, but be careful with your data-ink ratio. A simple rule is to keep this ratio as heavily leaning towards data as possible and use non-data elements as much as necessary to make the data comprehensible and informative to the audience, and no more.
4️⃣ Question 4: Could Your Graph Create Negative Impressions?
There are a few common mistakes people make that create graphs that end up undermining their credibility. Avoid misleading your audience with these common pitfalls:
- Manipulating the Vertical Axis: Ensure it accurately represents the data.
- Using Area Instead of Length: People misinterpret areas more easily.
- Cherry-Picking Data: Present complete data sets honestly.
- Changing or Omitting Metrics: Keep your data presentation consistent and reliable.
By asking and answering these four questions, you’ll ensure your graphs are clear, impactful, and informative. When creating graphs and tables, don’t leave home without them.
FP&A Pulse: 🩺 I'm going to keep this brief this week, but if you like this part of the newsletter, we may expand on it. So, let's dive in.
This week, I was so entrenched in my own FP&A projects, I didn't get to come up for air much, but what I was working on is worth sharing, so here goes.
AFP FPAC Certification Review Course
The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is THE association for FP&A professionals and they offer a certification called the FPAC (the full name of it is Certified Corporate FP&A Professional, but the acronym seems a bit confusing) for those of you who want to set yourself apart from the crowd with a certification that shows you have next level skills and knowledge. It's a comprehensive FP&A body of knowledge and I highly recommend looking into the certification.
If you decide to pursue the certification, among other things, there is an exam you will have to pass. AFP offers a review course to help prepare for the exam and it's that course I was working on with them this week.
I've been working with AFP since 2013 and they hired me to teach the very first review course for the FPAC exam in 2017. Fast forward to today, and the credential has exploded in popularity.
This week, I was working on a video for Chapter 18 of the review course, Data Presentation & Visualization. We recorded a video overview of the chapter which covered the following sub-topics:
Topic 1: The Importance of Presentation and Visualization
Topic 2: Making Spreadsheets and Tables Visually Effective
Topic 3: Graphs ― Their Basic Purpose and the Four Questions
Topic 4: Dashboards
I'll let you know when the video series comes out.
AFP Experimental Sessions for the Annual Conference in October
I have spoken at every one of AFP's annual conferences since 2013, and I will be speaking at this year's conference in Nashville, in October. I am delivering three sessions, one on an idea called Simplexity (making the complex simple, or at least easy to understand) and two interactive sessions on developing interpersonal and communication skills for managing virtual/hybrid teams.
The simplexity session will be a stand-alone session, but the two others will be a bit of an experiment. Each is designed to be able to stand on its own, and while they are both on the same broad topics of virtual and hybrid team communication, each will cover different sub-topics, so you will get more out of it if you go to both sessions. We wanted to create something that provides a lot of value, while also giving conference attendees flexibility since there are so many education options at the conference.
I'll share more with you as the conference, in October, approaches. I might even solicit your input to get a feel for what issues you might like help with in the realm of virtual/hybrid work.
ICTF courses
Another association I have worked with for years is the International Credit and Trade Finance Association (ICTF). ICTF is the association of choice for international credit management professionals. I'm working with them on a series tentatively called "Mastering the Soft Skills". It will include five courses including:
- Communications Rehab
- Upgrade Your Communication with Storytelling
- Improving Communication Across Cultures
- Emotional Intelligence
- Decision Making
These will be offered to the public throught ICTF. I'll let you know when we have these scheduled, as well as how you can participate if you want to. These aren't just for credit managment professionals, as you can guess from the topics/titles.
AFP Rules of Engagement Session
This is the newest initiative I'm working on, and it really just started to go from idea to planning this week. It's going to be part of a bigger training initiative for AFP in their Effective Communiation Series 6 lineup of training offerings. Not to be confused with the Series 6 investment license, the name and numbering is pure coincidence. This series is all about communication.
That's it for this edition gang. I know this one was a little long, but it was a busy week and I wanted to share some of the new developments with you all.
See you in the next edition!
