07-24-2025
Years ago, at my first job post-graduation, my team built a 45-slide deck full of insights from our latest model. We were prepping for a one-hour meeting with an executive stakeholder and felt ready.
We made it through two slides.
The client fixated on one metric in a table, and we spent the next 40 minutes deep in the weeds justifying how it was calculated and why it looked off. Our core message was lost, not because the data was wrong, but because it wasn’t accessible or intuitive in that moment.
In today’s data-rich business world, translating raw numbers into relevant insights is harder than ever. Data can provide answers — but only if we know what questions we’re asking and how to communicate what the answers mean.
That’s where storytelling comes in. But unlike fiction, business storytelling walks a tightrope. Too little, and your insight falls flat. Too much, and you risk distortion. The challenge is finding the balance between precision and persuasion.
We’ve all heard, “Let the data speak for itself.” But data doesn’t speak — it sits there quietly, waiting to be interpreted and framed into something useful.
Raw data is precise, but abstract. Without context, it often feels meaningless. Storytelling adds clarity, but it can also oversimplify or overhype.
To find the right balance, we have to ask: What’s the purpose of this information? Are we trying to inform? Persuade? Spark action?
There’s a quote often attributed to Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” While chilling, it reflects how human perception works. We connect emotionally to specifics. Abstraction flattens feeling and often, decision-making.
You don’t need a grim example to see this.
Take screen time. If I told you I spent four hours on my phone yesterday, is that good or bad? It depends. Is that more or less than usual? Was I reading? Or doom-scrolling at 1 a.m.?
Now, frame it this way:
“Your screen time is up 37% this week, mostly due to late-night Instagram use. Your average sleep dropped by 45 minutes."
Now it’s a story with context, implication and maybe even a call to action.
Too often in business, we either drown people in data or tell a story untethered from reality. I’ve done both. And neither is helpful.
Especially in decision-making, the goal isn’t just to share information, it’s to make it usable.
Let’s say you manage cherries for a grocery chain and an executive asks, “How’s our cherry business doing?”
There’s no single “right” answer. Sales might have been down last week, up last month, and flat year-over-year. What matters most depends on the context.
Instead of quoting one stat, you might say:
“Sales are down compared to last year, but market share is up versus our top competitor. A new entrant has surged thanks to a viral TikTok campaign. Their bold marketing targets Gen Z. We’ve identified three SKUs driving the shift, and the timeline matches their launch.”
Now, it’s not just a number, it’s a story built from data. But it’s easy to oversell, cherry-pick (pun intended) or jump to conclusions.
That’s why effective data storytelling isn’t about spin, but about staying grounded while making complexity digestible.
What you present, and how, should depend on your audience.
An analytics peer may want the full regression output. A busy exec might only need a takeaway sentence. A cross-functional partner may care most about how it affects their priorities.
No matter the audience, storytelling helps people care. But having data doesn’t mean we fully understand it. Being clear about what the data can and can’t say is crucial.
This is where motivated reasoning creeps in. When incentives, pressure or spin enter the picture, the temptation to "massage the data" grows. That’s when storytelling shifts from helpful to harmful.
Turning numbers into narratives is a creative process and also a responsibility. As Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker puts it: “Generalizations without examples are useless, and examples without generalizations are pointless.”
In a world where data increasingly drives decisions, communicating it well isn’t just a technical skill; it’s a human one. It takes judgment, collaboration and a willingness to inform rather than impress.
It’s a craft rooted in balance: engaging without exaggerating, clarifying without misleading. The delicate dance between precision and persuasion isn’t easy, but it’s what makes insights worth listening to.
Colin Myers (BS ECON ’18) is a media analytics manager with Circana, a market research and technology company.
