Future of Work Briefs

I recently spoke with The Post’s Jim Tankersley about what he sees as the benefits of pairing narrative and data to get your point across. An edited version of our conversation follows.

Who is responsible for the continuing escalation of US executive compensation? It is easy to identify the “guilty parties.” It is the corporate boards of corporations. They continue to create executive compensation pay programs that increase executive compensation.

Today, users have unprecedented access to data at their fingertips and powerful applications to process them in real time. This new need is driving the development of communication and presentation tools, posing a fundamental challenge to the hegemony of PowerPoint.

A great infographic is an instant revelation. It can compress time and space. These intriguing revelations come from a short trip around The Best American Infographics, 2013.

Businesspeople are often advised to turn their data into stories to make them more persuasive. But they are given precious few tools to help them do that. It turns out though that graphs can be remarkably useful in demonstrating the mechanics underpinning an effective story.

Some people have a way of making the complex clear. They know who they are, why they do what they do, and where they want to go. Because they have internalized all this, they are able to sharply crystallize ideas and vision.

Last week, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. As is the case every year, it is a tour de force of ideas and initiatives about the customer experience (Amazon Prime), disruptive technology (Fire TV), and strategic consistency.

What attracts top talent? Is it great benefits, flexible hours, steep pay packages, or state-of-the-art training? New research suggests it’s something simpler – but more difficult to obtain. Prestige.

What makes for a great presentation — the kind that compels people’s attention and calls them to action? TED talks have certainly set a benchmark in recent years: HBR even asked Chris Anderson, the group’s founder, to offer lessons drawn from the three decades he’s run TED’s signature events.

Brendan Eich had been CEO of Mozilla, the free software community, only two weeks when he resigned under pressure last Thursday because he’d financially supported California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, in 2008.