Why we need data storytelling to drive change

Last year, my family and I decided to move to another house. We spent few weeks comparing advantages and disadvantages of different houses, and finally, we considered three options: house 1 and 2 were on par, while house 3 was very distant from the others and, to tell the truth, I couldn’t remember why it arrived at the final decision.

Can you imagine which one we decided for? Exactly, the third one, just because it had a big terrace and my significant other insisted it was this single feature that made it preferable to the cheaper, larger, and more comfortable other two. Was it a logic or data backed decision? No. Can you relate to this scenario? Yes. Why? Here come the stories.

Stories drive change, not data

My partner pictured me the right story. While I was lost in rows of Excel data, she just painted a single image of barbecuing and happy children camping one meter from the kitchen. She took the right insight and highlighted the way we both imagined our future.

Stories are an effective way to connect to other people, (which, in business, take the form of managers), and their goal is communicating a clear and actionable message. Stories are solid and proved tools to deliver messages in a linear and compelling way. Besides that, data stories are also backed by the right amount of objective knowledge, enough to keep them credible and authentic. With a bit of help of imagination and visualization, they provide the perfect structure to make sense of and navigate through big data sets.

Decisions are never based on data only. They are based on what we make of those data, what future they promise, who we are reporting them to, which simple line of thought we see prominent, and which insights we consider over the others. In a word, decisions are based on stories.

Storytelling is the traditional vehicle to carry values, and data backed stories are even more relevant as they are authentic too. Authenticity derives from facts, and facts from data. A factual story is data-driven and detail oriented, two essential characteristics that bring any reasoning to a convincing conclusion, which hopefully is the message that the storyteller is trying to get through.

Stories can get us a glimpse of the future, and since numbers are scary (lots of numbers are even scarier), they comfort us with the soothing sounds of words. The first task of every data storyteller is to make some order in the data so to extract value from them. In this, they are no different from the storytellers of the past, seated around campfires, telling traditional stories whose goal was precisely the same: make order in life and deliver the moral, or the message, of the story.

So What is the message of a story

If you look at the Data Complexity Model, you can see that from sparse data to information, knowledge, insights, and up to the wisdom of stories, the need for simplicity and purpose is more and more evident. Here is when the message becomes the much sought after golden egg.

The message corresponds to a vital component in every story. If we try to examine an ideal data story, we see that it contains the same elements that journalists take into account to compose their pieces. In fact, we have the data, or the what, the audience, or the who, the perspective, or the how, and the sought for so what, which is the invitation to change.

Stories drive change, not data

Going back to the house story, all these elements appear evident: data were in place as house 3 arrived at the finals, I was the audience to persuade, and the how was isolating a peculiar element from the insights. So what? I had a clear vision of what was relevant for my family and me. The change happened.

Yes, narrative has the incredible added value to make entirely clear the element that so often is missing from many presentations: so what. Even if this one was the only advantage of stories, it should be enough to promote them in all executive meetings. 

Data visualization

For a data story to be credible and convincing, it should not only be easy to understand but exciting and memorable also. And here is why data visualization is so important: visuals help understand and simplify the message, as they are processed much faster (actually 60 times faster). And besides that, they convey the right amount of eye candy to be memorable.

There are enough rules and theory about data visualization to fill hundreds of books, but here we recall three basic rules: data driven type of charts should be relevant to the message, should ease data discovery and should make ideas pop, underlying the insights that will be part of patterns and trends.

Indeed they are not the easiest ones to produce, still, the design must establish a base for a straightforward narrative, to drive home a clear point.

Data visualizations are not only charts or infographics, in stories there other figures (of speech) that are as effective as images: in stories, anecdotes, analogies, and metaphors captivate the imagination of any audience and vividly reinforce any point.

Connect the dots

Have you ever wondered why we often reason and make examples according to the rule of three? Beginning, middle and end; head, body, and tail; past, present, and future; you name it… Our attention and memory have limits which we must consider when crafting a data story: even in decision-making sessions, it is tough to take into account more than three factual points.

As a general rule, the first thing to consider is the body, i.e., the three points that make the central part of the story; then you have to chose the premise, backed by data, and finally the decision or change you want to happen. Connect the dots of these three parts together, and you will have a useful and compelling story.

Here is my actionable piece of advice. For the next meeting, drop the slides, cut the charts, ban notebooks and cellphones. Telling a story that drives change and supports the ideal course of action is something always worth trying. And since it is your story, you must tell it, if not you, who else?

#changestory #storytelling #datastorytelling #storytellingforbusiness #successstory #datadriven

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Author and journalist for many decades, Nick Gandolfi thrives in the complex world of digital and content marketing where he curates the many contents and digital services which float on the web. A storyteller at heart, Nick Gandolfi published comics, kid tales, mystery novels, tech, history and educational articles (few e-books too). Nick Gandolfi firmly believes that all stories are important because they go to the heart of things and people.