Not all data stories persuade
By design, some may need to be informative
I love being proved wrong. Don't let my husband know this because I'm typically not that happy when he proves me wrong, but I am delighted when I'm proved wrong about a communication belief that I held to be quite true.
I was invited to teach for two days in a fascinating “summer school” organized by the Kansas Health Foundation (KHF).
While I flew back home with the goal of teaching, in one way I was also “schooled.” I came to realize that one of my ardent beliefs just didn't pass muster. You see, I have long thought that there is no such thing as informative communication in the world of business. Everything we share at some level has to be persuasive. Often when I'm reviewing the writing of my students and clients, I will urge them to take a stronger stand. Use a more powerful headline. Don't simply summarize the information, persuade leaders to take the next action.
I see now, however, that there are certain situations where an informative stance can actually be even more powerful than a persuasive stance. Let me explain. I conducted a two-day storytelling workshop sponsored by the KHF for a group of about 30 leaders from five different organizations, all of whom were involved in advising, advocating, or in some cases even lobbying for changes in state law and public health policy. Day one went fairly well. We covered origin stories, a topic I love to teach, and worked on the basics of effective storytelling. Overnight, I asked them to look at the Kansas KIDS COUNT data book and see if there was a story in there that they believed needed to be told.
In preparation for this activity, I had reviewed the book, produced by Kansas Action for Children, and found it rich with data and many opportunities to find stories they could tell the next day. However, that night back in my hotel room, as I more earnestly prepared the lesson, I realized that the book fell short of my standards in a handful of ways. While it was comprehensive, beautiful, incredibly well-produced and designed, all of the headings and subheadings were merely topics. None of them took a stand about the data that was being presented. I reached out by email to Ryan Reza, the data and policy analyst who was on the team that created most of the document. I wanted to give him a heads-up that I would be taking a little bit of a dig at his work when I critiqued the lack of compelling headlines. He emailed back:
“If you want some additional context for the Data Book proper and our rationale behind it, we consider it as an Education-first, Advocacy-second product. We were strategic on how to design and craft the layout for the Data Book so it would not be perceived as purely an advocacy-based tool, but rather as a foundation for which KAC can use to launch our data-driven advocacy.”
I was simultaneously floored and inspired.
I loved that it was not an oversight that the headlines lacked verbs and any sort of persuasive power. It was a conscious, deliberate choice on their part. They believed that the document would go much further on both sides of the legislature in Kansas if it was informative first and persuasive second.
The next day, when the participants began their storytelling creation and delivery activity, we had a rich conversation about the inherent value in deliberately choosing on occasion to not persuade with our information, but to simply inform. In fact, there was a real light bulb moment for all of us when we realized that the document Ryan and his team had created was there as a tool for all of the other agencies to use and turn it into a persuasive and compelling story for a legislator or a healthcare administrator or a constituent.
While I still believe that the vast majority of business leaders and communication students at USC simply put topics in as their structural cues for the reader without realizing they could go four or five more words, to make it into a persuasive or colorful subheading, I do now see there are indeed times when somebody can choose to be informative first and persuasive second.
Please check out the remarkable work in this book. It is a gift to all those who toil for the benefit of the children in the state of Kansas. It is part of a national network, the KIDS COUNT data center led by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. They live up to their mission of being the premier source of data on children, youth and families.
My invitation for you this week? Review the KIDS COUNT data for your own state. Look through the data presented there and see if there's a story that you believe you could tell. Then, find somebody to whom you can tell it.
As always, jds
JD’s Recommendations: what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing:
Reading: Game-changing HBR piece on Storytelling that Drives Bold Change by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss.
Hearing: my brain-trust partner Sarah Moody just dropped her 150th episode of her podcast Rock Your Brain. Rock Your Life. Check it out.
Seeing: Recently saw the impressive work of Kreatives as they captured the Futures Happening workshop at Stanford’s d.School.
Happy to share what’s lighting me up, but welcome your thoughts, too. Let me know what you are reading, hearing, or seeing.
What a great post, as always. You are spot-on. Mostly persuade. But strategically "just" inform sometimes. Sometimes I get "change fatigue" with presentations. Everyone wants me to change and do. Sometimes I just want to learn. And then I can decide how to apply it. ;)
Definitely an interesting article. It was powerful to read how your thinking and belief evolved, showing (a lesson for us all) cognitive flexibility to see a fuller picture.