How to Turn Data Into Stories

When all you have is data, how do you craft a story that will help your audience understand, engage and adopt your ideas?
 
Watch the video of this weekly workshop recorded on April 9, 2010, and you'll see how we created stories from data-intensive information for three presentation topics:
  1. Recommending to kill a project after market research showed it wouldn't fly
  2. Teaching project managers new techniques
  3. Showing investors how to avoid making bad interpretations of financial data

The learning points we covered on these three data-driven topics included:

  • Why data does not exist in a vacuum and has to impact people who make decisions based on emotion, organizational politics and power dynamics
  • How stories can make the emotional impact that you then back up with your data
  • How to establish a simple framework that holds together complex information

>>>To launch the recording of this workshop, click this link

 

Video Timeline (Total Time 01:00:13)

Time

Activity

Detail

0:00:00

Introduction

How do we turn data into stories?  A topic that strikes at the heart of many presentations.  Inspired by a workshop Cliff did with a consumer products corporation working with the market research team.

00:01:10 -
 The need to be able to take complexity and turn that into actionable information - a core challenge (Cliff reviews an example from his recent workshop)
00:04:00 -
 What do you want to accomplish with the data? How to get from point A to B, from data to decision making?  (Through story)
00:10:45 - If you are pursuading with data then you have to engage and deal with emotions, make an emotional appeal
00:15:00 - Joe - works with project managers and providing technical training courses for monitoring projects
00:15:35 - Challenges: biggest challenge is creating story, knowing what formula to use when, reams of data to teach
00:16:00 - Working on the story template to find the core story of a data presentation
00:34:25 - Before you dive into numbers, the up front piece should make an emotional connection with the audience
00:38:00 - Working on the three main points project managers would learn in Joe's presentation
00:39:30 - All the data, all formulas that you have to teach falls into the "explanation" slots of the storyboard template
00:40:20 - Mark - dealing with individuals and shedding light on retirement planning, and the data invloved
00:41:30 -
 Most people are overwhelmed, confused and don't have the correct data, and/or don't believe the data
00:42:00 -
 Brainstorming the top level story for this type of presentation
00:57:15 - Again, as in example #1, brainstorming Mark's presentation focused on the high level concepts and emotional connection
00:58:35 - Mark realizes that the emotional connection is the absolute key to get people to be interested in hearing the data, how the data actually plays out in their lives
00:59:45 Wrap Up -
01:00:13 End -




Printer-Friendly Format
#bottom_spacer# height=1 ALT="">
How to Turn Data Into Stories ">