These reports often look something like this:

In a world where you need to constantly demonstrate the value you bring to the business, reports like this earn you negative points. An improved version of the same slide might look something like this:

Making individual slides more readable and information (rather than data) packed is a big improvement. But don’t stop there.

I suggest you use the following approach when developing your next research report:

• Find the story in the data. What is the one huge overarching result of the research.
• Identify three to five key findings that add up to the huge overarching result
• Organize the flow of the report around the three to five key findings

Using this approach, the basic outline of your report would look like this:

• Introduction: Tell them the huge result and the 3 to 5 supporting findings.
• Finding #1: Explain the finding and provide supporting evidence from the data. Then explain why that finding is important for the business.
• Finding #2: Same as #1
• Finding #3: Same as #1
• Wrap up: Re-iterate the huge overall result and the key findings and explain what that means for the business.

That’s quite a bit better than: Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, Question 4, and on (and on and on and on) until you reach the end of the survey. Telling a story keeps the readers (or listeners) engaged and positions you as a valuable member of the team instead of a talking spreadsheet.