Simplify Your Numbers Tools and Resources
...solve thorny business challenges in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea
Are you putting the persuasive power of numbers to work in the right way?
Numbers don’t come naturally to most people (unless you are an accountant!!!) and to ensure that people are engaged with the numbers of your business you must make them easy to understand. This sounds obvious and yet, in so many businesses, the numbers are complicated, surrounded by jargon and impossible to translate in a meaningful way.
In business, data is a selling tool and can be used to explain most things – expansion, recruitment, additional service lines, acquisitions and mergers, benefits, pay rises… and much more. Most daily business transactions and conversations involve numbers in some form.
So, if this is the case, why do we have a tendency, when nearly everything comes down to numbers, to overcomplicate them?
Take a look at the numbers of your business and ask yourself this one question:
What am I doing in my business to ensure my numbers are as simple to understand as possible, for my team, customers and stakeholders?
STOP taking numbers at face value; stop taking numbers for granted
START working out how to make numbers small or simple, or turn them into a relevant story for your audience
The one ‘BREAKTHROUGH QUESTION’ you must ask to help yourself…
What am I doing in my business to ensure my numbers are as simple to understand as possible, for my team, customers and stakeholders?
This question is important – because getting the numbers right is crucial. Too many numbers can bore the listener or the reader, too few numbers and you don’t make your point. The secret is to find the sweet spot where your numbers are engaging your target audience and the message remains clear and concise.
In their book Making Numbers Count. Chip Heath and Karla Starr call this sweet spot the ‘Goldilocks Principle’.
Some things are too vast to comprehend, such as the distance to the moon, the volume of water in the oceans, the height of Mount Everest.
And some things are too small, like bacteria, molecules or the chance of getting tickets to the Final of The Eurovision Song contest.
You need to find some middle ground, where the explanation is ‘just right’, like a nice comfy bed or a warm bowl of porridge. Here is an example:
Mount Everest is 29,000 ft high. | If we were the height of 6 playing cards stacked flat, Everest in comparison would be about the size of a 2-story house. | If we were the height of a pencil eraser, Mount Everest would be a 7 ½ story building |
The explanation in the middle puts things in perspective, as we can all imagine the 2-story house and the playing cards – we can imagine the small stack of cards being dwarfed by the enormous building.
Image from: https://afabrega.com/ - aka Mrs Fab
The numbers you need to improve...
Think about the numbers in your business, the numbers you look at, talk about, analyse, scrutinise and obsess over every day, the numbers that matter – what are they?
Sales targets and revenue | Number of customers | ||
Profit and loss | Website page visits | ||
Net income | Total stock/inventory stock turns | ||
Cash flow or cash at bank | Customer loyalty | ||
Production volumes | Appraisal KPIs | ||
Return on Investment | Outsourcing/contractor costs | ||
Quality standards -number of rejects | Waste costs | ||
Sales lead conversions | Storage costs/other costs | ||
Fill in | Fill in | ||
Fill in | Fill in | ||
Fill in | Fill in |
Fill in the above table with the help of your team, perhaps at your next team meeting or at a brainstorming session. Add/remove any that don’t apply to you and tick the ones you measure.
Now write these numbers down and consider how complicated some are. Use the measuring sticks below to see how you can simplify them and put them into a format your audience will understand.
The ‘Curse of Knowledge’ – tappers and listeners
Images from Common Craft and Container Solutions
There is a natural tendency within all of us as we become experts to experience the ‘curse of knowledge’.
What is the curse of knowledge?
Chip Heath describes it as this: Once you’ve learned something, you can’t unlearn it. More importantly, however, you automatically forget what it’s like to NOT know it.
You lose the ability to relate to the person who doesn’t get it. “Come on!!” you say to yourself. “It’s so EASY!!” You can’t empathise.
When you are an expert, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not to know anything about your area of expertise. We have all had appointments with doctors or solicitors, for example, when they use numbers and language that we simply don’t understand. They often don’t realise that we don’t know what they are talking about. They assume that we do.
But it isn’t just doctors or solicitors, it can apply in any field. For example, ask a foo