How to Communicate Using Numbers, Data & Visuals
Finance professionals create value by turning numerical information into better decisions. However, even a brilliant financial analysis accomplishes little if you cannot convey what you have learned to an audience who lacks time and context.
In this program, the instructors demonstrate how to communicate numbers, data and visuals in a way that your audience can easily understand and act upon.
This program will develop your financial-storytelling skills through three communication principles:
1. Lead with the Conclusion:
Avoid walking through your investigative journey. Instead, start at the finish line.
Prioritize your material by bringing critical points to the foreground and moving secondary points to the background.
2. Make It Easy to Understand:
Reveal complex information one step at a time.
Remove extraneous details.
3. Make Numbers Meaningful:
Use numbers to demonstrate relationships.
Decide on your message before designing your visual.
Explain why your data matters by putting it in context.
Throughout this engaging program, the instructors present before-and-after examples from realistic finance scenarios. The program also takes you behind the scenes in PowerPoint to demonstrate how the course’s own slides were built.
2 activities • 1 videos • duration: 1h 41m
Ryan Standil leads seminars about effective written communication. He is a regular speaker at accounting firms, law firms, corporations, and governmental agencies. Ryan attended Western University, in Canada, where he graduated from the Ivey Business School and the Faculty of Law. After graduating, Ryan worked at a law firm in Toronto, focusing on corporate and commercial matters. Today Ryan owns and operates a seminar company, called Write To Excite. Ryan’s mission is to help professionals grow their income by improving their writing. Ryan is a frequent contributor to the leading newspaper in Canada, The Globe and Mail. Unsurprisingly, his columns can be described as “writing about writing.” To read one of Ryan’s columns, please visit https://www.writetoexcite.com/globeandmail.
Investment Management Corporation of Ontario
Andrew Heald leads training programs for the finance teams at pension funds, financial institutions and government agencies. Andrew specializes in teaching finance professionals how to communicate numerical information clearly and efficiently. In his day job, Andrew is a Consultant, Performance & Analytics, with the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO). Before joining IMCO, Andrew spent over two decades at TD Bank in leadership roles across capital markets, market risk, and wealth management. Andrew is a CFA charterholder with degrees from Yale University and the University of Toronto, and he has a passion for using data, analysis, and clear communication to improve investment decision-making. Outside of work, Andrew is a member of the Burlington Curling Club, volunteers with the Terry Fox Run, mentors with the CFA Society Toronto, and enjoys travelling with his wife and two teenaged daughters.
