Three Top Tips for Data Storytelling
Days, weeks or even months can be dedicated to collecting, analysing and interpreting the right data to get the right insights to answer pressing business questions. At the end of this demanding process, how much time is dedicated to preparing how those insights will be communicated? The likely answer – nowhere near enough.
In this article, we’re going to talk through some of the most common questions when it comes to storytelling with data:
“Maybe stories are just data with soul” Brené Brown
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller” Steve Jobs
A typical story follows a narrative arc, based on rising and resolving tension. Scholars have been analysing this structure, and its impact on audiences, since 335BC. People naturally engage and respond to this arc, meaning that stories are significantly more memorable than facts.
The concept of storytelling with data is therefore about finding the tension, guiding the audience through that rising tension, through the narrative arc, and then ultimately to resolution.
It is this tension that will sustain your audience’s attention and lead them to take action. Most importantly, it is the tension that is important to the audience – not to those who conducted the analysis. This means that you might have to change the story depending on who you are presenting to.
Excellent data visualisation alone is not enough. If there is no compelling story behind the data that the audience will resonate with, the chances of them taking action as a result of your presentation are minimal.
You can do everything else right…
You can understand what the key business challenges in the organisation are
You can prioritise your work effectively, ensuring you’re working on the most pressing business challenge
You can do great analysis and generate fantastic insights
You can even come up with some great recommendations for action to be taken that will deliver business value
… but if you can’t communicate the insights and recommendations effectively to your audience, all of this great work will be wasted, and you won’t get the action that you need.
Often, those most familiar with the analysis have a tendency to forget that their audience does not have the context – or the time – to figure out what the key message is. The work required to focus the audience’s attention and translate weeks, or even months, of hard work into short, sharp, actionable information is underestimated.
“It is not about dumbing anything down, but it is about thinking about who your audience is and how you can speak in ways that are going to be accessible, easy and not make people work harder than they need to.”
Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, CEO of storytelling with data
Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, CEO of storytelling with data, joined David Green on the Digital HR Leaders podcast to discuss the importance of data storytelling in People Analytics. Cole honed her skills in Google's fabled people analytics team and now helps people and organisations become better at storytelling with data, making sense of data, and weaving them into compelling stories that drive action. You can listen to the full episode here.
In this episode, Cole shared her top three principles for data storytelling:
Be specific with your audience
Use colour sparingly
Use words, not just data visualisation
You can read more about these three top tips in our article How to Improve your Skills in Storytelling with Data.
One more piece of golden advice from Cole is to not overcomplicate things. Too often people try to share data in a novel way, focusing on grabbing people’s attention over communicating a clear message. There’s a reason that line charts and bar graphs are common, it’s because they’re really easy for us to make sense of quickly.
Once again, think of your audience and be mindful of their time. Don’t make them spend minutes figuring out the visual. The data you are presenting is only part of the story, and ideally, they should get the message quickly and then be able to move on to a productive discussion about those results.
Test the interpretability of your visuals by trying to summarise one slide or visual in one sentence. If you can’t do that, you’re not ready to communicate it yet. Iterate and figure out a different way of visualising it.
Don’t let your data and analytics efforts go to waste - ensure that the insights you’ve generated lead to action. Harness the power of storytelling to communicate a clear message. There’s a reason we’ve been telling stories for over two millennia!
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