Running Legal Like A Business - Ch. 8 - Visualizing Data

Author Adam Stock offers strong practical advice with respect to business presentations in Chapter 8 of Running Legal Like A Business by Connie Brenton and Susan Lambreth, PLI Press, 2021. Following a brief overview on current science of how humans process information, Stock dives into actions you can take.  In particular, I like his analogy of best practices with respect to children's books* and business presentations.

His 4 core guidelines are akin to adages.  One example is "Remove unnecessary marks from the page." Thankfully, Stock takes the time to unpack each guideline with successive illustrations, each one a step forward to the goal of simplicity and clarity. Stock also includes a useful reference table matching chart type to comparison type.

My work immediately benefited from the reminder that each slide title should be the main idea or "headline" for that page. Updating decks on regular basis it is easy to fall back on topic headers instead of taking the time to update the slide to communicate the principle point, which should evolve as a project moves forward or moved to an appendix.

Also helpful is Stock's distinctive suggestion to think of yourself as a slide DJ for interactive business presentations. He makes sound recommendations that allow you to adapt on the fly to changes in allocated time, last minute changes in focus, or out-of-left-field questions.

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*And am illustrating this post w/a cover from my favorite children's book author, Ashley Bryan, who long ago was the first published African American children's book author and illustrator. Sadly, he passed away on February 4th at age 98.