Including Pre-Survey Information in Presentation of Effectuation

Disclaimer

If you already know how to embed Excel graphics into a Powerpoint presentation, you can skip this note. But it is useful if you want to be able to give your students/participants a little pre-survey and then include their data with your presentation (of effectuation in this case). Here is how I do it.

1) Set up Survey

The survey here is a simple, non-academic set of 8 questions that I have used on the IMD survey tool, but that you can also put it up on your own internal intranet, or use Survey Monkey ( or any simple web based survey tool. It asks one question with 8 answers:

Which information will be useful to you as you work with the uncertainty of new markets, products, competition and technologies?:

  • The performance of your competitor’s products
  • An inventory of what you have available to work with
  • Expert predictions of where the market is “heading”
  • Commitments from partner businesses
  • A clear idea of what the worst-case looks like
  • Forecasts of customer demand
  • Willingness to change direction with new information
  • A valuation of the market potential where you are headed

And each answer offers a scale that includes:

  • definitely
  • very
  • somewhat
  • not

You can see the graphical version of the survey on the first page of the powerpoint.

2) Scoop data in spreadsheet

After my participants/students have completed the survey – I (even in realtime in the classroom) copy the data out of the survey tool, and paste it into the (SurveyDataChartsForPresentation.xls) spreadsheet. I have it all formatted with the questions in the order I present them in the survey, and to process the output that the survey generates which in my case is actual words representing the scale from point 1). The spreadsheet generates the charts based on the data I paste.

3) Open the Powerpoint

Then, I have created dynamically generated charts in powerpoint so that when you open Powerpoint (TerracycleExampleSlidesWithSurveyData.ppt), it asks you whether you want to “Update External Links”. If you are happy with the data in your spreadsheet, make sure that the Excel application is closed (thus making sure that your new data is saved in the file) and then tell Powerpoint that you want to “Update External Links”.

4) Presentation

Nothing like having peoples own data to show them that even though the effectual principles make sense when they see them – their actual predispositions when faced with predictive alternatives might not be quite as clear!