Data Storytelling – How to Turn Data into Decisions — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00there is one skill which can have a
2. 0:02significant impact on your professional
3. 0:04career in corporate and in Professional
4. 0:06Services and this is telling stories
5. 0:08with data this is exactly what we're
6. 0:11going to talk about in today's video I
7. 0:13will start first with sharing some
8. 0:15theoretical foundations on the topic
9. 0:16second I will show how this applies to
10. 0:19real life examples and third I will
11. 0:22share practical tips on how you can
12. 0:24implement the learnings in PowerPoint
13. 0:26big thanks to things that will support
14. 0:28firm learning by sponsoring this video
15. 0:30more about things said in a moment
16. 0:32they're crucial to it for everyone
17. 0:34working in Professional Services I want
18. 0:36to start by highlighting that the
19. 0:38ability to tell stories with data
20. 0:40matters and there are countless book on
21. 0:44this very topic describing all the
22. 0:46techniques and also advantages of doing
23. 0:48just that and in this picture you see
24. 0:51this stylized overview what this is all
25. 0:54about you might start with data and then
26. 0:57it's your task as a professional to cut
27. 0:59through this complexity to sort the
28. 1:02information to arrange the information
29. 1:04at some point also to present it
30. 1:06visually but then of course also to
31. 1:08explain a story and as you can see in
32. 1:11this picture it is only once you have
33. 1:14told a story that it really sticks that
34. 1:17people really can buy into it and one
35. 1:19Insight I want to share with you here is
36. 1:21that often people distinguish three
37. 1:23different levels of insights three
38. 1:25levels of insights that you can achieve
39. 1:27with your analyzes it starts with facts
40. 1:31so facts are raw data points unordered
41. 1:35information facts right so you have a
42. 1:37big Excel spreadsheet with lots of
43. 1:39numbers these are the facts and then
44. 1:42most of us are able to
45. 1:45consolidate the facts into some type of
46. 1:47summary right being an organized
47. 1:49condensed restatement of the facts but
48. 1:52the error that especially more
49. 1:54unexperienced professional to do is that
50. 1:56they stop here they send a summary to
51. 1:58someone and then more or less leave it
52. 2:00to that person to understand and figure
53. 2:03out what exactly this is supposed to
54. 2:05mean and so the third level of insight
55. 2:07that is missing here but is absolutely
56. 2:09crucial for professional communication
57. 2:12is the synthesis what does the summary
58. 2:15really mean what are the implications of
59. 2:19what you are sharing there's an
60. 2:21interesting scholar in this area called
61. 2:22Brent dikes who has a distinction that
62. 2:25he makes he distinguishes data telling
63. 2:28from data storytelling and if we match
64. 2:31this together data telling would be more
65. 2:33about the summary right you're just
66. 2:34repeating the facts whereas the center
67. 2:37this is the storytelling explaining how
68. 2:41certain facts fit into your
69. 2:43recommendation into an overarching
70. 2:45narrative so from all of this we can
71. 2:48conclude that successful storytelling
72. 2:50with data relies on a set of factors
73. 2:53data visualization narrative and an
74. 2:56understanding of the audience only if
75. 2:59you have a good understanding of your
76. 3:01audience can you really succeed in these
77. 3:04topics so for the remainder of the video
78. 3:05I want to discuss these principles based
79. 3:08on some tangible examples some of them
80. 3:10were provided by you from the community
81. 3:13so thanks to everyone who contributed
82. 3:15something let me start with this chart
83. 3:17which was sent to me this is an overview
84. 3:19of how the global market share for web
85. 3:21browsers changed over time trust me
86. 3:24first of all notice that this is not the
87. 3:26nicest way of visualizing the data right
88. 3:28it's a super intuitive to understand and
89. 3:30of course you also all can see that the
90. 3:32access labels are just absolutely
91. 3:34unreadable so let's try together to
92. 3:37think about how we can improve it and
93. 3:39also how we can change such a slide to
94. 3:42really share a narrative share a story
95. 3:44which is hardly the case here and so I
96. 3:47loaded all of this into the PowerPoint
97. 3:49plug-in thinks it and one of the
98. 3:52functionalities that is provided here is
99. 3:53that we are quickly able to change the
100. 3:56chart type so such an overview I'd
101. 3:58likely not choose these hundred percent
102. 4:00column charts are probably more like a
103. 4:03line shot so this might be the first
104. 4:05thing we want to do now we can see a new
105. 4:07visualization of the data which I
106. 4:09personally find already Superior in many
107. 4:11ways to what we've seen a second ago now
108. 4:13I cleaned up the chart a bit I toned
109. 4:15down the colors I included a chart title
110. 4:18if you don't know what that is I talked
111. 4:20about it else where it's a simple
112. 4:21element that talks about what it
113. 4:23actually is that you're looking at but
114. 4:25now the main question I like to ask you
115. 4:27is well what you actually want to say
116. 4:29here right so what is your story what is
117. 4:32your narrative and this is exactly what
118. 4:34you should think about if we are talking
119. 4:36about storytelling with data and when
120. 4:38maybe it is the great success story of
121. 4:41the Chrome web browser that we clearly
122. 4:43see here in the numbers if this is what
123. 4:46you want to talk about make sure that
124. 4:49you adjust the visualization accordingly
125. 4:52so in this example I now bolded the line
126. 4:55of chrome you can see that I added a
127. 4:57different color to it I added the logo
128. 4:59to it really make it stand out to focus
129. 5:02on this narrative in the data
130. 5:04visualization and also notice how I
131. 5:07added an action title your title element
132. 5:10on top of the slide focusing on this
133. 5:13very very narrative so if you don't know
134. 5:15what action titles are I will link above
135. 5:17another video of me talking in detail
136. 5:19about action titles a very important
137. 5:22chart element indeed the word of this is
138. 5:25actually not the main narrative that you
139. 5:26want to portion you're rather presenting
140. 5:28maybe in front of a group of Apple users
141. 5:30I want to highlight the current position
142. 5:32of the zafari web browser where then
143. 5:36let's change the chart accordingly of
144. 5:38course you now want to rather frame the
145. 5:41message around zafari maybe you want to
146. 5:44talk about how Apple managed to defend
147. 5:45the 20 market share of safari despite
148. 5:49the dominance of chrome so let's
149. 5:51highlight the fiery browser a bit more
150. 5:53let's maybe also add a logo and now we
151. 5:56can use think cell to support this also
152. 5:58in the chart let's bold the lion of
153. 6:01safari and let's also add a little bit
154. 6:03more distinct color to focus on just
155. 6:07that hope you agree that now this new
156. 6:10narrative is much more present pops much
157. 6:13more and of course it's quite different
158. 6:14from what we talked about a moment ago
159. 6:17with chrome being the dominant browser
160. 6:19all of the charts are created for
161. 6:20today's video were created with the
162. 6:22PowerPoint plug-in thing say and think
163. 6:25cell is also sponsoring today's video
164. 6:27I'm extremely excited about that because
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166. 6:32I use it almost every day myself the
167. 6:35statistics are absolutely insane nine of
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171. 6:46MBA in addition all 10 of the top 10
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177. 7:00Role is going forward you will need to
178. 7:03make use of the tool so why not start
179. 7:06learning it right now personally I first
180. 7:08learned about it as a university student
181. 7:11so if you are currently studying in
182. 7:13business and Engineering in data science
183. 7:15Mass physics or any other data driven
184. 7:19discipline I can recommend you to use
185. 7:20think cell to just communicate the
186. 7:23results of your analyzes to tell stories
187. 7:26with data the right way and it is my
188. 7:29pleasure to announce that think cell has
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200. 8:01but of course if you are a professional
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209. 8:23out these things they'll offer it will
210. 8:24be very much worth your time let's look
211. 8:26at a second slide example first of all
212. 8:28thanks to the person delivering this and
213. 8:31here I want to talk a little bit more
214. 8:32about the narrative and how you can
215. 8:35support that with strong slides as well
216. 8:38so this is your slide talking about
217. 8:40expansion also from a business School
218. 8:42academic context and here notice how
219. 8:45there are two parts to the slide to some
220. 8:48extent right so there's an analysis how
221. 8:50this company grew in the past it talks
222. 8:53about internal needs it talks about
223. 8:55external opportunities and then here
224. 8:58also a chart talk talking about the
225. 9:00expansion showing how the numbers
226. 9:02changed over time so when I look at a
227. 9:05slide like this to me this seems like a
228. 9:07collage so let's try to improve a slide
229. 9:10like this and let's maybe focus a bit
230. 9:12more on this data part so let's start by
231. 9:15a strong action title highlighting the
232. 9:18strong growth that we found here and
233. 9:20also highlighting what the share of
234. 9:22Acquisitions was that maybe plays a role
235. 9:25let's include here in a simple bar chart
236. 9:27these chart types work for a lot of
237. 9:29different things that we want to show
238. 9:30until now I just copied over the data
239. 9:34that I found in this very text table
240. 9:36that we saw on the prior slide so this
241. 9:40is what we have here right a chart now
242. 9:42you can see also here that the numbers
243. 9:43are quite long with lots of digits but
244. 9:46this level of detail is often not needed
245. 9:48for analysis like this so let's rather
246. 9:49round this to millions and to do this we
247. 9:53can leverage things sale as well we
248. 9:55cannot divide the numbers by a certain
249. 9:57factor to give us the result that we
250. 10:00want now of course we want to look at
251. 10:02proper formatting and also colors as
252. 10:04well so we'll use the very same coloring
253. 10:06Technique we saw earlier but now let's
254. 10:08think of the narrative let's think about
255. 10:11what we actually want to show here what
256. 10:13is the point that we want to stress and
257. 10:16maybe this is about the very significant
258. 10:18growth that this company experience here
259. 10:20and so think so does offer different
260. 10:23ways for you to make it easy to include
261. 10:25messages like this so one thing we might
262. 10:28want to include here is a difference
263. 10:31Arrow so an arrow indicating now the
264. 10:34growth of this company let's maybe only
265. 10:36focus on the organic growth and if I
266. 10:40select this it directly calculates the
267. 10:43right number that we want to include
268. 10:45here and this is now of course a number
269. 10:47we can also pick up in the chart title
270. 10:51now you have here a column available to
271. 10:53the right where you can focus on the
272. 10:55implication so what does all of this
273. 10:57mean you make sure that your really
274. 10:59focusing on implications and not just
275. 11:02some random points which are not really
276. 11:05connected to each other at all let's
277. 11:08start with this slide example which I
278. 11:10want to use to highlight some topics
279. 11:12relevant to data visualization now I
280. 11:16want to work together with you to
281. 11:18improve this very slide I want to
282. 11:21especially focus on the chart creation
283. 11:24so you're on the different diagrams here
284. 11:26in limited so let's start by making it
285. 11:29all left aligned indeed and now let's
286. 11:32start by including a diagram here the
287. 11:35first one on the left this is where
288. 11:37things say can come in quite handy here
289. 11:40in the things and menu you can choose a
290. 11:43chart type that you want to use let's
291. 11:46copy in the data that we have seen a
292. 11:48moment ago and let's add a proper Legend
293. 11:51to these items as well now to make
294. 11:54everything properly aligned you can
295. 11:56actually also left align the labels now
296. 11:58with things that you can also use the
297. 11:59legend to choose the colors I would
298. 12:02always recommend you to choose rather
299. 12:04toned down Colors Let's now also include
300. 12:08an element to highlight the Millennials
301. 12:11color maybe such a shading here so let's
302. 12:14compare this to how it looked earlier I
303. 12:16hope you agreed that this already looks
304. 12:19much cleaner much more professional so
305. 12:22let's Now work on this medium chart so
306. 12:25here the one thing that is definitely
307. 12:26quite disturbing is that you they're
308. 12:28talking about two very different things
309. 12:30the generations and then something like
310. 12:32income brackets Without Really
311. 12:34explaining this and maybe include
312. 12:36something like boxes like this to just
313. 12:39explain what the two categories are all
314. 12:42about and now we can think about the
315. 12:45right chart type to add and then it
316. 12:48might look something like this for color
317. 12:50coding I suggest to use tone down colors
318. 12:53and distinguish the positive from the
319. 12:55negatives and now we can of course
320. 12:57include here some nice shades as well
321. 13:00these are the segments you would
322. 13:02consider most relevant for this smart
323. 13:06mirror project of yours let's now talk
324. 13:09about the third chart type here to the
325. 13:11right so this collection of bar charts
326. 13:13so let's include here again a bar chart
327. 13:15and no now aggregate the numbers based
328. 13:18on the generational split that we have
329. 13:21been using throughout the presentation
330. 13:24so far so the Boomers Gen X Millennials
331. 13:27gen that something that likely will
332. 13:29stick more with your audience than just
333. 13:32collecting lots of facts in the
334. 13:34potentially also not stressing the right
335. 13:36information points that we've seen in
336. 13:38this very chart now I'd love to learn
337. 13:40from you do you have any tips on how to
338. 13:42tell stories with data let us know in
339. 13:44the comments trust we can all learn from
340. 13:47that also big thanks again to think so
341. 13:49for sponsoring this video if you are
342. 13:51involved in Academia either as a student
343. 13:53or staff member with the link in the
344. 13:56video description you can get access to
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350. 14:09if you already worked with things that
351. 14:11in the past let me know in the comments
352. 14:13as well if you took any value out of
353. 14:15this video at all please like And
354. 14:17subscribe to the channel big thanks to
355. 14:20all the members of the channel as well
356. 14:21thanks for your support my name is
357. 14:23Heinrich I release weekly videos here on
358. 14:25the channel so see you again next week
359. 14:26all the best to you