The specific content will take different forms depending on your situation. The following are some ideas for content that might make sense to include as you build out your story and convince your audience to buy in:
Further develop the situation or problem by covering relevant background.
Incorporate external context or comparison points.
Give examples that illustrate the issue.
Include data that demonstrates the problem.
Articulate what will happen if no action is taken or no change is made.
Discuss potential options for addressing the problem.
Illustrate the benefits of your recommended solution.
Make it clear to your audience why they are in a unique position to make a decision or drive action.
When considering what to include in your communication, keep your audience top of mind. Think about what will resonate with them and motivate them. For example, will your audience be motivated to act by making money, beating the competition, gaining market share, saving a resource, eliminating excess, innovating, learning a skill, or something else? If you can identify what motivates your audience, consider framing your story and the need for action in terms of this. Also think about whether and when data will strengthen your story and integrate it as makes sense. Throughout your communication, make the information specific and relevant to your audience. The story should ultimately be about your audience, not about you.
Write the headlines first
When it comes to structuring the flow of your overall presentation or communication, one strategy is to create the headlines first. Think back to the storyboarding that we discussed in Chapter 1. Write each headline on a Post-it note. Play with the order to create a clear flow, connecting each idea to the next in a logical fashion. Establishing this sort of structure helps ensure that there is a logical order for your audience to follow. Make each headline the title of your presentation slides or the section title in a written report.
The end
Finally, the story must have an end. End with a call to action: make it totally clear to your audience what you want them to do with the new understanding or knowledge that you’ve imparted to them. One classic way to end a story is to tie it back to the beginning. At the beginning of our story, we set up the plot and introduced the dramatic tension. To wrap up, you can think about recapping this problem and the resulting need for action, reiterating any sense of urgency and sending your audience off ready to act.
When it comes to the order and telling of our story, another important consideration is the narrative structure, which we’ll discuss next.
The narrative structure
In order to be successful, a narrative has to be central to the communication. These are words—written, spoken, or a combination of the two—that tell the story in an order that makes sense and convinces the audience why it’s important or interesting and attention to it should be paid.
The most beautiful data visualization runs the risk of falling flat without a compelling narrative to go with it.
You’ve perhaps experienced this before if you’ve ever sat through a great presentation that used run-of-the-mill slides. A skilled presenter can overcome mediocre materials. A strong narrative can overcome less-than-ideal visuals. This is not to say that you shouldn’t spend time making your data visualizations and visual communications great, but rather to underscore the importance of a compelling and robust narrative. Nirvana in communicating with data is reached when the effective visuals are combined with a powerful narrative.
Let’s discuss some specific considerations when it comes to both the order of the story and the spoken and written narrative.
Narrative flow: the order of your story
Think about the order in which you want your audience to experience your story. Are they a busy audience who will appreciate if you lead with what you want from them? Or are they a new audience, with whom you need to establish credibility? Do they care about your process or just want the answer? Is it a collaborative process through which you need their input? Are you asking them to make a decision or take an action? How can you best convince them to act in the way you want them to? The answers to these questions will help you to determine what sort of narrative flow will work best, given your specific situation.
One important basic point here is that your story must have an order to it. A collection of numbers and words on a given topic without structure to organize them and give them meaning is useless. The narrative flow is the spoken and written path along which you take your audience over the course of your presentation or communication. This path should be clear to you. If it isn’t, there certainly isn’t a way to make it clear to your audience.
Help me turn this into a story!
When a client comes to me with a presentation deck and asks for help, the first thing I have them do is set the deck aside. I walk them through exercises that help them articulate the Big Idea and 3-minute story that we discussed in Chapter 1. Why? You have to have a solid understanding of what you want to communicate before you craft the communication. Once you have the Big Idea and 3-minute story articulated, you can start to think about what narrative flow makes sense and how to organize your deck.
One way to do this is to include a slide at the beginning of the deck that bullets the main points in your story. This will become an executive summary that says to your audience at the onset of the presentation, “here’s what we will cover in our time together.” Then organize the remaining slides to follow this same flow. Finally, at the end of the presentation, you’ll repeat this (“here’s what we covered”) with emphasis on any actions you need your audience to take, or any decisions you need them to make. This helps to establish a structure to your presentation and make that structure clear to your audience. It also leverages the power of repetition to help your message stick with your audience.
One way to order the story—the one that typically comes most naturally—is chronologically. By way of example, if we think about the general analytical process, it looks something like this: we identify a problem, we gather data to better understand the situation, we analyze the data (look at it one way, look at it another way, tie in other things to see if they had an impact, etc.), we emerge with a finding or solution, and based on this we have a recommended action. One way to approach the communication of this to our audience is to follow that same path, taking the audience through it in the same way we experienced it. This approach can work well if you need to establish credibility with your audience, or if you know they care about the process. But chronological is not your only option.
Another strategy is to lead with the ending. Start with the call to action: what you need your audience to know or do. Then back up into the critical pieces of the story that support it. This approach can work well if you’ve already established trust with your audience or you know they are more interested in the “so what” and less interested in how you got there. Leading with the call to action has the additional benefit of making it immediately clear to your audience what role they are meant to play or what lens they should have on as they consider the rest of your presentation or communication, and why they should keep listening.
As part of making the narrative flow clear, we should consider what pieces of the story will be written and what will be conveyed through spoken words.
The spoken and written narrative
If you’re giving a presentation—whether formally standing in front of a room, or more informally seated around a table—a good portion of the narrative will be spoken. If you’re sending an email or report, the narrative is likely entirely written. Each format presents its own opportunities and challenges.
With a live presentation, you have the benefit of words on the screen or page being reinforced by the words you are saying. In this manner, your audience has the opportunity to both read and hear what they need to know, strengthening the information. You can use your voiceover to make the “so w
hat” of each visual clear, make it relevant to your audience, and tie one idea to the next. You can respond to questions and clarify as needed. One challenge with a live presentation is that you must ensure what your audience needs to read on a given slide or section isn’t so dense or consuming that their attention is focusing on that instead of listening to you.
Another challenge is that your audience can act unpredictably. They can ask questions that are off topic, jump to a point later in the presentation, or do other things to push you off track. This is one reason it’s important—especially in a live presentation setting—to articulate clearly the role you want your audience to play and how your presentation is structured. For example, if you’re anticipating an audience who will want to go off track, start by saying something like, “I know you are going to have a lot of questions. Write them down as they come up and I will make sure to leave time at the end to address any that aren’t answered. But first, let’s take a look at the process our team went through to reach our conclusion, which will lead us to what we are asking of you today.”
As another example, if you’re planning to lead with the ending and this differs from the typical approach—tell your audience that this is what you’re doing. You might say something like, “Today, I’m going to start with what we’re asking of you. The team did some robust analysis that led us to this conclusion and we weighed several different options. I will take you through all of this. But before I do, I want to spotlight what we are asking of you today, which is …” By telling your audience how you are going to structure your presentation, it can make both you and them more comfortable. It helps your audience to know what to expect and what role they are meant to play.
In a written report (or a presentation deck that is sent around instead of presented or also used as a “leave behind” to remind people of the content after you’ve delivered the presentation), you don’t have the benefit of the voiceover to make the sections or slides relevant—rather, they must do this on their own. The written narrative is what will achieve this. Think about what words need to be present. In the case when something will be sent around without you there to explain it, it’s especially important to make the “so what” of each slide or section clear. You’ve probably experienced when this has not been done well: you’re looking through a presentation and encounter a slide of bulleted facts, or a graph or table packed with numbers, and are thinking, “I have no idea what I’m meant to get out of this.” Don’t let this happen to your work: make sure the words are present to make your point clear and relevant to your audience.
Getting feedback from someone not as familiar with the topic can be especially useful in this situation. Doing so will help you uncover issues with clarity and flow, or questions your audience may have, so you can address those proactively. In terms of benefits of the written report approach, if you make your structure clear, your audience can turn directly to the parts that interest them.
While we establish narrative structure and flow, the power of repetition is another strategy we can leverage within our storytelling.
The power of repetition
Thinking back to Red Riding Hood, one of the reasons I remember the story is due to repetition. I was told and read the story countless times as a little girl. As we discussed in Chapter 4, important information is gradually transferred from short-term memory into long-term memory. The more the information is repeated or used, the more likely it is to eventually end up in long-term memory, or to be retained. That’s why the story of Red Riding Hood remains in my head today. We can leverage this power of repetition in the stories we tell.
Repeatable sound bites
“If people can easily recall, repeat, and transfer your message, you did a great job conveying it.” To help facilitate this, Nancy Duarte recommends leveraging repeatable sound bites: succinct, clear, and repeatable phrases. Check out her book, Resonate, to learn more.
When it comes to employing the power of repetition, let’s explore a concept called Bing, Bang, Bongo. My junior high English teacher introduced this idea to me when we were learning to write essays. The concept stuck with me—perhaps due to the consonance of the “Bing, Bang, Bongo” name and my teacher’s use of it as a repeatable sound bite—and it can be leveraged when we need to tell a story with data.
The idea is that you should first tell your audience what you’re going to tell them (“Bing,” the introduction paragraph in your essay). Then you tell it to them (“Bang,” the actual essay content). Then you summarize what you just told them (“Bongo,” the conclusion). Applying this to a presentation or report, you can start with an executive summary that outlines for your audience what you are going to cover, then you can provide the detail or main content of your presentation, and finally end with a summary slide or section that reviews the main points you covered (Figure 7.1).
Figure 7.1 Bing, bang, bongo
If you’re the one preparing or giving the presentation or writing the report, this may feel redundant, since you’re already familiar with the content. But to your audience—who is not as close to the content—it feels nice. You’ve set their expectations on what you’re going to cover, then provided detail, and then recapped. The repetition helps cement it in their memory. After hearing your message three times, they should be clear on what they are meant to know and do from the story you’ve just told.
Bing, Bang, Bongo is one strategy to leverage to help ensure that your story is clear. Let’s consider some additional tactics.
Tactics to help ensure that your story is clear
There are a number of concepts I routinely discuss in my workshops for helping to ensure that the story you’re telling in your communication comes across. These apply mainly to a presentation deck. While not always the case, I find that this is often the primary form of communicating analytical results, findings, and recommendations at many companies. Some of the concepts we’ll discuss will be applicable to written reports and other formats as well.
Let’s discuss four tactics to help ensure that your story is clear in your presentation: horizontal logic, vertical logic, reverse storyboarding, and a fresh perspective.
Horizontal logic
The idea behind horizontal logic is that you can read just the slide title of each slide throughout your deck and, together, these snippets tell the overarching story you want to communicate. It is important to have action titles (not descriptive titles) for this to work well.
One strategy is to have an executive summary slide up front, with each bullet corresponding to a subsequent slide title in the same order (Figure 7.2). This is a nice way of setting it up so your audience knows what to expect and then is taken through the detail (think back to the Bing, Bang, Bongo approach we covered previously).
Figure 7.2 Horizontal logic
Checking for horizontal logic is one approach to test whether the story you want to tell is coming through clearly in your deck.
Vertical logic
Vertical logic means that all information on a given slide is self-reinforcing. The content reinforces the title and vice versa. The words reinforce the visual and vice versa (Figure 7.3). There isn’t any extraneous or unrelated information. Much of the time, the decision on what to eliminate or push to an appendix is as important (sometimes more so) as the decision on what to retain.
Figure 7.3 Vertical logic
Employing horizontal and vertical logic together will help ensure that the story you want to tell comes across clearly in your communication.
Reverse storyboarding
When you storyboard at the onset of building a communication, you craft the outline of the story you intend to tell. As the name implies, reverse storyboarding does the opposite. You take the final communication, flip through it, and write down the main point from each page (it’s a nice way to test your horizontal logic as well). The resulting list should look like the storyboard or outline for the story you want to tell (Figure 7.4). If it doesn’t, this can help you unde
rstand structurally where you might want to add, remove, or move pieces around to create the overall flow and structure for the story that you’re interested in conveying.
Figure 7.4 Reverse storyboarding
A fresh perspective
We’ve discussed the value of a fresh perspective to help see through your audience’s lens when it comes to your data visualization (Figure 7.5). Seeking this sort of input for your overall presentation can be immensely helpful as well. Once you’ve crafted your communication, give it to a friend or colleague. It can be someone without any context (it’s actually helpful if it is someone without any context, because this puts them in a much closer position to your audience than you can be, given your intimate knowledge of the subject matter). Ask them to tell you what they pay attention to, what they think is important, and where they have questions. This will help you understand whether the communication you’ve crafted is telling the story you mean to tell or, in the case where it isn’t exactly, help you identify where to concentrate your iterations.
Figure 7.5 A fresh perspective
There is incredible value in getting a fresh perspective when it comes to communicating with data in general. As we become subject matter experts in our space, it becomes impossible for us to take a step back and look at what we’ve created (whether a single graph or a full presentation) through our audience’s eyes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t see what they see. Leverage a friend or colleague for their fresh perspective. Help ensure that your communication hits the mark.
Storytelling with Data Page 14