Force your Data to KNOW your Audience
News Flash: People Don’t want to Think.
Provide facts and figures if your audience is solely finanncial analysts.
However, most business colleaques don’t actually want facts and figures. They want the intuition that sits atop the facts and figures.
Some analysis is required to create the intution. Intution is a model. Intuition is a logical cause and effect that perhaps only accounts for 80% of the data.
Intution has to sit above absolute facts. It has to put the facts in context with the common place, with competition, or at least with our prior self.
Consider facts that add up to be in the Millions, Billions, or measuring something else in metric tonnes. Consider how much a ton weighs? 2000 pounds right?
The point is it’s not unusual to describe a heavy object in tonnage. But no one has any idea how much a ton is, really.
Is 250 tons a lot? 250 tons is 500,000 pounds. About the weight of 8 houses. Or the weight of 100,000 bricks.
Which is a solid stack of bricks 10 x 10 by 1,000 bricks high.
It would take you more than 2 months, working 24 hours a day, a brick a minute, to unload that many bricks.
Facts are facts; images, however, resonate; and itution is long-lasting.