Two half-day sessions, in person or remote
The insight is already sitting in your spreadsheet. It just hasn't been asked to speak yet.
Cipafi Suheyi runs a compact workshop for people who build reports but never trained as analysts: how to spot what matters in a sheet of numbers, choose a chart that tells the truth, write a headline that carries the point, and stand in front of a room that would rather be doing anything else.
Based in San Jose, CA · sessions run on-site or over video
Who ends up in the room
Built for people who report on numbers, not people who model them
Most attendees did not sign up to become analysts. They signed up because a monthly report, a board deck, or a client update kept landing flat, and they were tired of watching people's eyes glaze over at slide four.
Operations and program managers
People who pull weekly or monthly numbers from a system and have to explain, in plain language, what changed and why it matters to someone above them.
Marketing and sales leads
Comfortable with a dashboard, less comfortable turning it into a slide that survives a leadership meeting.
Finance and grants staff
Reports are accurate but dense. The workshop focuses on trimming, not on adding more detail.
Small teams without a dedicated analyst
In organizations without a data or BI function, whoever is closest to the spreadsheet becomes the storyteller by default. This workshop is built around that reality rather than around specialized software.
The structure
Two half-day sessions, each built around real reports
The workshop is intentionally short. Each session runs roughly four hours, with breaks, and both are organized around participants' own material rather than invented case studies.
Finding the insight, choosing the chart
We start with a spreadsheet, not a template. Participants practice scanning for what actually changed, separating signal from noise, and matching that finding to a chart type that shows it honestly rather than decoratively.
- Spreadsheet triage techniques
- A working guide to chart selection
- Practice on anonymized real reports
Saying it, showing it, presenting it
The second half-day moves from analysis to delivery: writing a headline that states the takeaway instead of the topic, condensing a report to one page for executives, and rehearsing how to present numbers to an audience that tunes out at the first axis label.
- Headline writing exercises
- One-page executive summary design
- Live before-and-after makeovers
The before-and-after format
We work on the reports you already have, not a fictional case study
Participants bring a real, anonymized report from their own organization, or select one of ours if they'd rather not use internal material. In small groups, we walk through what the original version is trying to say, then rebuild it: trimming charts down to the one that matters, rewriting a vague title into a headline, and cutting the page count without cutting the meaning.
Nothing about the process assumes the report was done badly. Most reports we see are accurate. The gap is almost always between what the data shows and what the reader is expected to notice in the first ten seconds.
How the makeover exercise worksWhat the sessions cover
Five skills, practiced in order
Finding the insight
Reading a spreadsheet for what changed, not just what's there.
Choosing the chart
Matching a finding to the chart type that shows it, not the one that's easiest to make.
Writing the headline
Turning "Q3 Regional Sales Report" into a sentence someone can act on.
Designing the one-pager
Fitting an executive summary onto a single page without losing the argument.
Presenting to a room that doesn't care about numbers
Pacing, framing, and answering the "so what" question before anyone has to ask it out loud. This is practiced live, in front of the group, with feedback focused on clarity rather than delivery polish.
Format details
What attending actually looks like
Two half-days
Roughly four hours per session, usually spaced a week apart so participants can apply session one before session two.
On-site or remote
Delivered in the South Bay Area in person, or over video conferencing for distributed teams.
Small groups
Kept small enough that every participant gets time on their own report during the makeover exercise.
No software required
Exercises work with whatever spreadsheet or presentation tool participants already use day to day.
Curious what a session actually feels like?
Request a short walkthrough before committing a team's calendar to it.
Request a Demo