The Essence of the Story is in How one Creates it

“I have been a Research Analyst for 10 years, but after this training, I feel that I’ve been doing it all wrong!”, said one of my Training participants recently.

The key reason we are not able to communicate effectively with data is that we don’t have a clear understanding of the ‘message’ we want to provide to the audience. We get stuck in numbers, facts, and lose sight of the insights that these numbers lead to. More often, we have a tendency to present the data and insights that we think are interesting without once considering what the audience might want or need.

Charts and Words are just tools that help us convey our thoughts. The star of the show here is our ‘thoughts’, but often we get bogged down and overemphasize on the usage of these tools rather than focusing on ‘what we wish to convey’ with these tools.

When people hear the term Data Storytelling the first thing they think about is complex and fancy charts and then their focus shifts on learning how to use the tools that help them create these. Unfortunately, it is often forgotten that no matter how complex or advance a tool might appear, it still needs ‘your direction’.

When talking about Data Storytelling, first comes the Storyteller – their take on the story and then the tools come into the picture. The emphasis should be on creating an impactful story – which depends on the Storyteller’s ability to think, analyze and then connect relevant insights to present clear conclusions and messages. When the story is well-formed in the storyteller’s mind, even the most basic of charts and writing can make the message impactful.

When creating reports or presentations one should remember that the star of the show is not the complexity of the charts, but it is in fact the simplicity with which the Story – the message, is communicated to the audience.

The Power of Data Storytelling strongly emphasizes on the need to build the story before crafting it and introduces new tools to make this story building exercise simple and effective.

*Credits: Sejal Vora, author of The Power of Data Storytelling

                                               Do you want to ace the art of Data Storytelling?                                  

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