Storytelling

As you just read in the previous sections of this chapter, communicating with data is absolutely essential and critical, as it relates to your change management process. This skill applies across multiple phases of the process. You may have just come up with a decision that will save your organization millions of dollars, save countless lives, or something else just as spectacular. However, if you cannot communicate the right information at the right time in the right way to the right people, your decision may be ignored or ostracized. Your ability to come up with key insights to help with your decision is one skill but communicating it is another completely. Good communication of your data-informed decision can help stakeholders understand, accept, and then act on the decision.

As shown in Figure 10.12, appropriate and skillful communication of data includes an approach called analytic storytelling. This approach includes contextual design to achieve proper communication...