How to use Storytelling with Data to achieve your goals?
In his best-selling book, Cole Nussbaumer Knafic builds on years of practice as a manager of the Google People Analytics team, teaching courses, workshops and consultancies on his specialty in storytelling with a focus on data visualization.
Contrary to what many people believe, in the corporate world, the visual and strategically told representation of different data from a company has become a strong trend and enjoys excellent results.
Mainly because it makes possible the required understanding of graphics, tables, mental maps, organization charts and even mathematical models in 3D, in a dynamic, simultaneous, connective, evolutionary and multifaceted way.
Imagine having assertive answers about percentages of changes in customer purchasing behavior and in the planned performance of the company’s productivity, to offset the drop in sales due to COVID-19 and increase market share to 2022, for example.
Do you understand how each type of dataviz and its respective plot facilitates the readability and democratization of information, encourages the collaboration of different sectors and professionals, and creates optimization needs?
Best of all, you don’t have to work in a specific business domain to go beyond the conventional tools, capture the value of the key lessons proposed in this issue, and use them immediately in your next presentation.
In other words: never seen the field of statistics, its concepts and complexities were so well decoded and narrated with several real and accessible cases to drive the success of their actions.
And that includes you entrepreneur, leader, manager, analyst, academic, statistician, journalist and marketing professional, who participate in graphical information internally and externally, drive decision making and influence less technical audiences.
So why wouldn’t your organization and staff, regardless of size and industry, benefit from these selected methods for more effective data communication with your audience?
Before we really delve into the topic, check out below what Storytelling with Data is and its main projections to achieve your goals.
Tell a story with data
As we share what we learn, the more our learning gains qualitative experience and the same goes for Storytelling with Data.
Or do you think that bringing the data to life through inspiring stories, capturing viewers’ attention, calling them to action, has always been a bed of roses, without apparent difficulties, critical feedbacks and retroactive errors?
Quite the opposite!
Therefore, so that you don’t waste time and opportunities, we invite you to explore in your segment the relevant tips below about Storytelling with Data:
● No one knows the history of your data like you do.
Careful choice of which graphic to use to convey accurate impression, adding and placing annotations and captions, and purposefully employing color can take your Storytelling with Data to the next level: where you want your audience to wake up.
● Eliminate non-essentials
The default settings of the tools available to meet the demands of Storytelling with Data are a frequent source of clutter and unnecessary elements such as borders, gridlines, and superfluous numeric labels.
In this topic, less is more, and making those changes conducive to a closer, cleaner, and more organized design to align with the fluidity of your narration.
● Simplify as much as possible
Developing a Storytelling with Data without knowing the commonplaces you want to highlight and without figuring out how to show them in an enlightening way is similar to planting in infertile and dimly lit terrain: harvesting takes time and fails!
Therefore, link your text visually to the data, even if the excess of information is grouped in distinct but clean graphics.
● Amplify the purpose of the data
When we reflect on the practice of Storytelling with Data, revealing a great data-related idea that helps your audience understand something new and transformative is quite a purpose!
● The power of words in the right place
In Storytelling with Data, contextualized words and titles are projected onto strategic locations on the charts, so the viewer doesn’t have to struggle or guess what he’s seeing.
Thus, the speech ensures that the main message does not lose its essence and is not forgotten.
As we’ve seen so far, Storytelling with Data helps professionals from various areas, in their reports for a proactive visual demonstration, in work meetings, lectures and other interaction channels.
Craft bones of our Digital Age, do you agree?
Therefore, improving communication and analysis skills with this challenge, in which data are the protagonists through storytelling, means converting information into solutions, absorbed by many more people.
Follow the Storytelling with Data structure step-by-step now for you to take on your promising journey.
But after all, where to start?
A good Storytelling with Data requires a beginning, middle and end that convey credibility, convincing reasoning and emotional connection with the audience:
➔ What is the situation?: show the big numbers in the current scenario;
➔ The pros and cons of the numbers: point out the problems and also the successes that the data counts;
➔ There are no arguments against data: make it clear how pains can be resolved with data;
➔ Radar perspectives and predictability: Recommend actions based on the data and speculate what might happen.
That’s the point that can never be overlooked: open up to the reality of numbers and never lie about them!
Let’s find out once and for all what are the two golden lessons motivated by the Storytelling with Data book?
Lessons to Strengthen Your Target
The basis for a true construction of Storytelling with Data is the organizational culture, the collective interaction and the politeness you give to what happens around you.
1. The importance of context
At this point in the reading, here are key questions for your Storytelling with Data to take off: who is your target audience? What do you need him to know or do? How to adapt your language to the mechanism used to communicate?
See, data is interesting when you first think about your users, what’s important to them, and present the data in a way that makes it clear and actionable.
Then, the domain of Storytelling with Data is fulfilled, because people give more value to explanations that make sense to them and that generate identification.
2. Direct where you want to reach
Storytelling with Data also features setting, plot, rising action, climax where tensions peak, falling action, and finally, resolution.
No creative and well-told story is not naturally engaging, and the same occurs when aggregating analytical results in favor of noble benefits.
And, above all, it’s critical to plan to tell stories not for ourselves or for our data or analytics, but for our audience.
This expresses rethinking the way we manifest Storytelling with Data!
According to author Cole Nussbaumer Knafic, keeping the audience in mind during the analysis, visualization and communication of data, from graphics to narrative, puts us in a position of triumph in motivating potential actions.
What we can glean from this article, and from the book in its entirety, is a great action plan for applying Storytelling with Data to any believable process!
