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Interpreting the Results 99

We’ll discuss simplicity more fully in Chapter 5. For now, we’ll
just say that even if the particular analysis you are doing necessi-
tates gigabyte-sized models and complex mathematics, try to sim-
plify the results of that analysis to a level that an educated outsider
can understand.

TEAMFLY
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE
At the beginning of this section, we stated that once you have all
the facts (the results of all your analyses), your job is to piece
together a story from some, but not all, of those facts. You may
wonder why you shouldn’t tell the whole story and use everything
you have. To tell you why, we’d like to use a nonbusiness analogy

that may be familiar: the story of King Arthur and his knights of
the Round Table.
Although King Arthur and his knights may have been com-
pletely or mostly legendary, “facts” about them abound. If you dig
around, you will turn up sources dating back to the last millen-
nium—that is, A.D. 1000—and beyond from Wales, England,

France, Germany, Italy, and no doubt from other places. Authors
and storytellers have pieced these sources together in many differ-
ent ways over the centuries, resulting in works as diverse as Mal-
ory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King,
the musical Camelot, and movie versions ranging from John Boor-
man’s graphic Excalibur to Disney’s Sword in the Stone (not to

mention the Mr. Magoo version). Yet these very different end
products all stem from the same set of “facts” (and if you want to
see just how different they are, watch Excalibur followed by
Monty Python and the Holy Grail).
Each of these storytellers has a different story to tell and a dif-
ferent audience to tell it to, yet at some level, they are the same

®
Team-Fly