Learn to see the invisibles

Here’s the first of what I expect will be very many posts with tips on using Microsoft Word (and many of them will be directly useful in other word-processing apps like Google Docs and Apple’s Pages).

Once you have got all the right words and numbers in the right order you still need to make them look neat and tidy on the page/screen. The default option in Word is not to show the formatting marks that would not be printed or displayed if the document were converted to a PDF. These marks show the space and tab characters, page and section breaks and where paragraphs end.

I recommend you toggle the setting to show the formatting marks so that you can fix places where the words, numbers or tables are not displaying in the way you want.

It’s easy to do. On the Home toolbar there is a button with what looks like a backward P on it (the symbol is called a pilcrow). Click that to toggle the formatting marks on and off. If you use Apple Pages the Show/Hide Invisibles is in the View menu (or use the shortcut Shift+Cmd+I).

Toggle the formatting marks on and you will see where there are multiple spaces instead of single spaces and where multiple carriage returns have been used to force a line onto a new page instead of using the page break command and so on.

If you find the formatting marks to be obtrusive when you are actually writing you can turn them off and then turn back on when you want to check the document’s format and layout.

PS. Google Docs does not do this natively. You can install an add-on to do it which is, I think, not great-looking and does not update as you type. If you want to know how to install this send me a message and I’ll explain.

Writing about writing about finance

I’m going to pivot. I’ve been a public finance accountant for 30 years and up to now I’ve written posts relating to public financial management. Actually, what I am really interested in is writing. So from now on…

I am going to post tips, stories and resources about writing with an emphasis on how they can be used by accountants and finance professionals to improve their work outputs.

One assumes that all accountants are numerate but how many of them have ever received training in writing? And yet, accountants are nothing without words. Their role is to summarise and analyse financial transactions in ways that generate meaningful information that they then have to communicate to an audience, whether that be internally to managers or externally to investors, auditors and the general public.

I think there is scope for many accountants to improve their written output: not just long-form reports but also emails, letters and slide decks. Some of the improvement is literally about the words they use and the order they assemble them but they can also improve the way they set out data in tables and charts and the layout of all that on the page or screen.

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Rethinking Public Financial Management

I have been working on a major report for ACCA for several months and it was published on 1st December 2021 at the Virtual Public Sector Conference.

The report answers two research questions:

• How well have governments responded to the pandemic?

• What are the future challenges for PFM arrangements?

It captures and discusses answers to these questions and has 21 actionable recommendations. The key recommendation is governments must invest in their PFM systems now so that they are flexible and resilient enough to deal with crises in the future.

You can get a copy of the report here.

Let me help you write more effectively

When I was a finance director I came to realise that I did not write very much. True, I would review reports and other documents created by the accountants and others who worked for me, but I rarely created a document. 

That grew to become more and more frustrating. Frustrating because it limited by ability to be creative and also because, often, the documents I was reviewing were not as well-written as they could be. I was caught in the place where I knew I could write the documents better but I did not have the time to do it. 

I knew the answer was for the finance staff to get some training in writing effectively. I left before I got around to organising that training. And for all these years since I have wanted to do something to help accountants to write more effectively.

You see, accounting is more about words than it is about numbers. It’s about communication, whether that is advising managers about a possible investment or telling the world about the organisation’s financial results.

I don’t think professional accounting institutions put enough emphasis on teaching their students how to write effectively. I also think there are other soft skills associated with being an accountant that are overlooked, such as presentation skills, negotiation skills and project management. I guess there is a hope that trainees and newly-qualified accountants will learn such skills “on-the-job”.

I am currently working on a set of online courses that will directly address these subjects, specifically for trainee and qualified accountants. I will announce them as soon as they are ready to launch.

Even before those courses are launched I have another product that is already available. It is one-to-one coaching, by me, about writing and presenting financial information.

You can benefit directly from my experience as an accountant, as a teacher and as a writer of textbooks and courses. Everyone’s needs are different. I can help you if you want to learn how to structure documents, or how to write succinctly, or how to format tables and charts so that their message is clear or all of these. I can also help you avoid death-by-Powerpoint and stand out from the crowd by making presentations that your audience will remember.

The coaching will adapt to suit you. You can book a single session just to learn some tips and tricks if you want, or a package of 3 or 6 sessions where I can work with you on specific documents or presentations to develop and improve your skills. Alternatively you can subscribe to a monthly plan for as long as you like.

Three tips for better presentations

We all know that the vast majority of presentations are terrible. Transferring them to Teams or Zoom has not improved the situation. In fact, I think they are even worse when you cannot see the presenter. With this in mind, here are three tips for improving (almost overnight) your presentations.

Your presentation is you not the slide deck

Some years ago I was hired to do some training on local government finance. My client wanted my slides in advance and I resisted as long as I could. Eventually I had to send them in and she decided that things were missing and she would, heroically, spend her time adding bullet points and new slides all over the place. The things she thought were missing were not. I knew exactly what I was going to say and do in the training sessions to cover the material and I did not need a list of bullet points on the screen behind me to do. Instead, I had slides that would support me in what I was saying, to reinforce the learning.

In the end I did not do that training. 

My tip, though, is for you to watch this video (15 minutes) by Garr Reynolds. He gives you 10 ways you can improve your presentations today.

If you found the video useful, check out Garr’s three books on presentation — they all have Presentation Zen in the title.

The B and W keys are your friends

Having slides behind you, whether at an in-person or virtual presentation, is fine if the slide is supporting what you are saying. Sometimes you might be at a point in a presentation where you want to change the subject and the slide clashes with what you say. This is where the B and W keys come in. The B key will toggle the screen between your presentation and all-black; and the W key does the same with a white screen. Using those keys you can temporarily remove the slides from view, causing your audience to focus on you.

Bonus tip: if you are presenting in a light, airy room then your slides should be dark text on light backgrounds and use the W key. In a dark room, go for light text on a dark background and use the B key. This helps the audience’s eyes, just like the light and dark modes on smartphones.

Investigate mmhmm

If you make a lot of online presentations (or record videos of yourself giving a presentation) then you might find mmhmm an interesting tool to use. It integrates with Zoom and Teams and allows you and your slides to be on screen at the same time. There’s a lot of customisable options within the app. 

If you want more tips like this, or any other help with your writing projects or presentations, I offer one-to-one coaching for public sector accountants. Find out more here.

Shorter lists are more persuasive

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

My last post was about formatting tables to make your message clearer to your reader. This tip is also about clarity but this time it relates to content, and how to ensure it has the maximum impact.

I am sure you often find yourself needing to write a list within a document. It could be a list of findings from an audit, lists of the pros and cons of a proposed course of action, or something similar.

For these kinds of lists it makes sense to start with the most important item (important in the context of the document) and then have the others in descending order of importance. The problem with this is the ones at the bottom of the list may well be relatively trivial and their very inclusion undermines the rest of the list. The last item a reader reads has an impact on how they feel about the list as a whole.

Don’t believe me? Try this. Find a medicine in your cabinet and look at the document that explains all the side effects. Pharmaceutical companies have to include all the side effects and the ones at the end of the list will be trivial. If you read them all the way to the end you will likely find the last side effect is something like indigestion you are likely to think: “it’s not too bad if it just causes indigestion,” even though the most significant side effect could be very much more serious like blood clots.

The same thing can happen to your audit report or project update. As an auditor, for example, if you want management to focus on three major issues then just list those. Leave the small stuff off the list so that when the manager reads the list they have to confront three very important issues. By all means, if there are ten major issues to be addressed then include all ten — but don’t weaken your message by including another ten minor issues.

If you really, really feel that your audit report has to be a complete record of every finding and weakness, put all the minor findings and recommendations in an appendix or a chapter at the end of the report where they are less likely to undermine the big stuff. You might even put them in two different reports. The major items go in one report to the board or audit committee and the minor items go in a report to the relevant manager.

This tip about lists does not just apply to audit reports. If you are writing a business case for a project, list the most important advantages and disadvantages (which could be more than three). Including very minor advantages could undermine the business case as the reader thinks the project may not be a good idea if it needs such minor items to justify it.

If you want more tips like this, or any other help with your writing projects, I offer one-to-one coaching on all aspects of writing for public sector accountants. Find out more here.