Steve

Franconeri

People think better with their heads together

contact

Steve is a instructor and speaker on better presentations, and on better disagreements

Becise Founder

Platform that creates clear and efficient presentations, and smarter presenters.

Point Taken Founder

Game + workshops for clear and calm disagreements, and reconnected people.

Cognitive Scientist

Professor at Northwestern University,

applies practical research-backed tools across MBAs (500+ Kellogg students per year), PhDs, analysts, and 200+ organizational workshops.

Directs a leading research lab, continuously funded for 10+ years by the National Science Foundation. and the Dept. of Education. Served as academic chair of the primary data visualization conference.

Professor at Northwestern University,

applies practical research-backed tools across MBAs (500+ Kellogg students per year), PhDs, analysts, and 200+ organizational workshops.

Steve's academic rigor is fused with vast practical experience in facilitating critical thinking in teams, and designing high-stakes dashboards, decks, and documents.

Speaking & Workshops

Steve doesn't offer mere motivational or abstract strategy talks.
He provides concrete, evidence-based tools that you can use immediately.

Steve doesn't offer mere motivational or abstract strategy talks. He provides concrete, evidence-based tools that you can use immediately.

He proves the science with live cognitive demos and interactive experiments,

and shows the power of structured tools using your organization’s own materials and topics, making the learning memorable and instantly actionable.

He proves the science with live cognitive demos and interactive experiments, and shows the power of structured tools using your organization’s own materials, making the learning memorable and instantly actionable.

Better Presentations

Intuitive and Powerful Slides

Effective teams need to present slides that convey complex ideas and data-driven solutions in engaging and clear ways, across both colleagues and customers. Unfortunately, those slides typically overwhelm, confuse, and waste valuable time.   

This interactive workshop will teach you to design slides that are understood in seconds instead of minutes, using cutting-edge research on cognitive science and data storytelling. We will teach you how to precisely distill your slide's argument, spatially arrange that argument on a slide for immediate understanding, and apply essential rules of graphic design to engage and generate trust.

We'll bring the guidelines to life by weaving in your slides along the way, and end with a participant redesign practice exercise to build muscle memory.

Better Disagreements

Point Taken

Disagreements are healthy - they sharpen our thinking and broaden our perspectives.

But they've been hijacked by anger and fear.

Point Taken uses an engaging game to turn aversive arguments into an engaging joint exploration that is infused with mutual respect and smarter thinking.

After feeling the power of the game firsthand, we'll extract its research-backed techniques into a portable toolkit for navigating disagreements with clarify and calm, across your colleagues and at your kitchen table.

See more at PointTaken.social

Disagreements are healthy - they sharpen our thinking and broaden our perspectives.

But they've been hijacked by anger and fear.

Point Taken uses an engaging game to turn aversive arguments into an engaging joint exploration that is infused with mutual respect and smarter thinking.

See more at PointTaken.social

Better Presentations

Craft Your Storyline

Some organizations have famously banned slide presentations because they encourage sloppy thinking and a confusing storyline. Their meetings are instead driven by collaboratively written memos that encourage clear thinking and clear communication.

But slide presentations can receive the same boost in clarity if the author takes the time to create and revise an outline of their presentation's argument and story.

This interactive workshop will demonstrate a research-backed approach for crafting clear and concise outlines that focus your story toward your audience's perspective.

Build your muscle memory with hands-on practice with your own presentation files.

This interactive workshop will demonstrate a research-backed approach for crafting clear and concise outlines that focus your story toward your audience's perspective.

Build your muscle memory with hands-on practice with your own presentation files.

Better Dashboards

for Decision-Makers

From analysts to the C-suite, making effective decisions requires powerful views of well-governed data.

But great dashboards can't be designed by a technician.

The decision maker must define the questions to ask, and then translate those questions to an intuitive and powerful visual design that makes the answers clear.

After a few hours of training, we'll teach you those steps, leaving your confident in your ability to create a 'napkin sketch' of the dashboard design, that your talented technician can implement for you.

No technical expertise necessary. Bring your own example to this live interactive workshop, and leave with a finished sketch of your new design.

From analysts to the C-suite, making effective decisions requires powerful views of well-governed data.

But great dashboards can't be designed by a technician.

The decision maker must define the questions to ask, and then translate those questions to an intuitive and powerful visual design that makes the answers clear.

No technical expertise necessary. Bring your own example to this live interactive workshop, and leave with a finished sketch of your new design.

Better Pitches

Engage and Stick

Too often, important ideas fail to engage or gain traction.

Learn how to assure that your ideas become implemented realities, by communicating them in ways that stick and become viral.

Anchored in the latest research on cognitive neuroscience, this session identifies strategies for using compelling visuals, concrete demonstrations, stories, and familiar metaphors to engage your colleagues and customers, make your message stick, and inspire action.

The workshop includes a live experiment where a set of participants each give a 1-minute pitch, followed by the audience recording what they remember on an online form.

A live dashboard will show that pitches that use the tools above lead to far better memory – proving that those tools work in the audience’s own brains.

Too often, important ideas fail to engage or gain traction.

Learn how to assure that your ideas become implemented realities, by communicating them in ways that stick and become viral.

The workshop includes a live experiment where a set of participants each give a 1-minute pitch, followed by the audience recording what they remember on an online form.

A live dashboard will show that pitches that use the tools above lead to far better memory – proving that those tools work in the audience’s own brains.