Data > Insight > Stories > Impact

Data’s only useful to an organisation if you can use it to understand the domain or sector in which you work; if you can find truly relevant data and turn this into genuine insights, then use these evidence-based, data-driven insights to bring about some kind of meaningful change through what you say and how you say it.

Change that, ultimately, has impact. Otherwise, you might as well not bother.

You might be a psychologist, looking to understand why people repeatedly binge drink yet fail to learn from the often negative consequences.

You might be a communications adviser, seeking to make sense of consumer criticism of a brand in the wake of a crisis, attempting to help the company rebuild its reputation.

Or you might be in charge of healthcare spending, trying to assess where limited resources should be allocated to minimise sickness and optimise good health in your region.

All sorts of organisations are surrounded by more and more data in the modern knowledge economy. And yet, without the skills of data storytelling – that all-too-rare ability to fuse the ‘fire and ice’ worlds of narrative and numbers, stories and statistics – making sense of data can feel like a fool’s errand. We intuitively know that the answer must be in the data, but the challenge often is knowing where to start.?

Enhancing data storytelling skills demands capability building in three, interconnected areas. Questions. Insight. And stories.

First, asking smarter questions. Success in most jobs is predicated on our ability to answer questions – to develop logical, water-tight solutions to analytical thinking problems – which means that the ability to frame or phrase questions too often takes a back seat.

By the time they turn five, children have asked 40,000 “Why?”-type questions of their parents, guardians, pre-school teachers, siblings, and friends. Pre-schoolers are looking to understand what causes what; they want to establish the “if-and-then” contingencies that govern the world. Yet, as soon as they get to school, this thirst for knowledge – what the Freudian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein dubbed “the epistemophilic instinct” – is squashed out of them. Answers – particularly correct answers – hold sway. And this runs through education and into the world of work.

It's time this changed, because asking smarter questions it the key to surfacing truly relevant data. And it’s only relevant data that provides the raw material we need to get to genuine insight – that all-too-rare, profound and useful understanding of a topic, a market, a target audience; an issue, a subject matter, or a thing. Insight is profound because it answers the question “So what?” (what do the data mean), and it’s useful because it goes on to unpick the more useful question “Now what?” (what should we do as a result).

Armed with genuine, data-driven insights, we can then go on to build evidence-based action plans and narratives that successfully use these insights as fuel. And it’s evidence-based action plans that have most impact.

So when it comes to dealing with information overload, making sense of the data that threatens to overwhelm all of us – whether we work in business, academia, the third sector, or government – if we pause and choose to focus on questions, insights, and stories, we’re much more likely to succeed.

To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, click on the image above or the link below to complete our simple, 12-question quiz. This will generate an instant assessment of how you perform in the three critical dimensions of data storytelling, giving a rating overall as well as for your Questioning Quotient, Insight Index, and Data Delivery. Your personalised scorecard will tell you what’s currently working well and where you should invest energy to become “even better if …”.

You can access the questionnaire here: https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com

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Spreading the word on data storytelling

Earlier this month, it was my pleasure to host my long-time partner, friend, and collaborator –Novartis’ Global Patient Engagement Director, Beyza Klein , to a fireside chat at a meeting of I-COM Global ’s Data Storytelling Council. I-COM describes itself as “the global forum for smart data marketing”, and it’s been my honour to chair the group’s Data Storytelling Council since 2019.

Our fireside chat covered the way that Novartis – and the Patient Engagement function, which Beyza leads – uses data smarter to understand its customers better. We focused on using multiple different data sources to understand patients, care partners, and healthcare professionals in more detail. By putting themselves into the minds, the mindsets, the shoes of those they seek to influence – by really understanding the drags and drivers of adherence and compliance, side effects and why patients never really see themselves as patients – Beyza’s teams can develop better ways to help.

As detailed in the first article above, this is all about moving from data to insight and on to action, and the role that data storytelling in particular can play. Beyza and I recently co-authored a peer-reviewed academic article on this approach, and you can read it here in the International Journal of Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Marketing.

Thanks again to Andreas Cohen for inviting me – pre-pandemic – to chair the Council. Thanks also to Cosima Jend and Daniela K. for ensuring we keep on track with the Council, including our prodigious publication record of whitepapers and one-pagers. And thanks again Beyza Klein for being so open and willing to share the ways you’re transforming the insights function in healthcare.

I’ve also just spoken at the 2023 European Data Analytics Conference, one of a rapid-fire series of short talks, followed by a very lively panel discussion. The question I addressed was: “What strategies do you use to create compelling data visualizations that deliver insights clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders?”. Regular readers and subscribers to this newsletter may not be surprised to learn that I argued that any amount of smart use of dataviz tools is all-but irrelevant if you don’t know what the data actually means. Questions – insights – stories first; that’s the mantra. Visualisation should always come last. Many thanks to Adam Patrick Fulham for the invitation and the platform.

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Dates for your diary

Four dates for your diaries where I’ve got a speaker role in the weeks ahead, two events and two training courses. Let’s start with events.?

First, CopyConX, the tenth, annual conference “for everyone who uses words to make a difference / who puts words to work”. This year’s event is being held in the Wolfson Theatre at the Royal College of Physicians.

CopyCon features eight speakers talking for half an hour each. No chopping and changing for formats. My talk – which is set to open the conference – is titled “Analytics + Storytelling = Influence”, and it’s great to bring my narrative by numbers keynote – always refreshed and updated with new examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of data storytelling from the news – to CopyCon. The last few tickets are available here, and the event takes place on Friday 20 October. Please note: this event is now taking place a week later than previously advertised …

… a change which nearly caught me out, as later that day, I’ll be on stage again – this time in Asking Smarter Questions mode – interviewing “the forensic scientists’ forensic scientist”, Professor Angela Gallop, at the 2023 Brighton Chamber Brighton Summit, whose theme this year is Human.

?After hitting her head on the glass ceiling of the Home Office Forensic Science Service, Angela became a serial entrepreneur, bootstrapping and scaling-up three, multi-million-pound forensic science businesses. She developed an expertise and a reputation for solving cold cases – criminal investigations, usually of murders, that foxed everyone…but Angela. From Rachel Nickell to Roberto Calvi, Damilola Taylor to Stephen Lawrence – each case was solved by Angela and her teams.

In this inspiring and deeply human chat, I’ll be asking Angela to explore and explain the meaning of the maxim of the founding father of forensic science, Edmond Locard, who observed: “Every contact leaves a trace”. Again, there are very few tickets left for the Brighton Summit, so head over for the last few ‘hot cakes’ here.

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Open access training courses

Wannabe data storytellers have two opportunities to attend my open access training courses in early November. Both titled “Narrative by Numbers”, I’m running a half-day session via the PRCA (Public Relations & Communications Association) on the morning of Tuesday 7 November (booking here), and a more leisurely, full-day session via the Market Research Society (MRS) the following day, Wednesday 8 November (booking over there).

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Both courses have a handful of spaces open at time of going to press, and both are open to both members and non-members of either body.

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The Data Malarkey podcast

Amazing to relate, we’ve just come to the end of the second season of “Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter”. We kicked off the Season Two with our most high-profile guest to date – Steven Pinker , the 美国哈佛大学 Professor of Psychology. Steve’s status as one of the world’s leading public intellectuals and best-selling authors has propelled our podcast to new heights, and we’re now into the tens of thousands of downloads, streams, listens, and subscribes.

But it’s not just Steve. Season Two also featured healthcare pioneer Tim Jobson of Predictive Health Intelligence ; digital reputation specialist Sam Michelson , Founder & CEO of Five Blocks Intelligent Digital Reputation ; Elizabeth Press , creator and owner of the Data-Driven Decision-Making blog, D3M Labs ; Stijn Gimbrère , MD of Media Futures Market ; and, Jean-Baptiste Bouzige , Founder & CEO of AI and analytics specialists, Ekimetrics .

Season Three kicks off on 27 September with another pot pourri of guests from an increasingly-diverse set of professions. We’ll be hearing from women and men at the top of their game – from the worlds of screenwriting, diversity and inclusion, and forensic science; from market research, digital marketing, and AI. Their common approaches to using data smarter have lessons for us all.

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Any suggestions for guests – if you think you’d make a good guest or you know or work with someone who’d tell a great story about how they make smarter use of data – drop us an email at [email protected] or complete the simple application form at https://www.usingdatasmarter.com/guest

If you haven’t done so already, head over to Apple, Spotify, or Google podcasts and join the hundreds of others who’ve already hit the ‘subscribe’ button to make sure you never miss another episode. And if video podcasts are your thing – like more than half of those who discover new content today – you can subscribe via our YouTube channel, @DataMalarkey, where video episodes drop a week after the audio versions.

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What do you think?

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