Making impact with change management charts – Infographic

Making impact with change management charts – Infographic

How do we make an impact by selecting the right change management charts for the points we are trying to make?

Which charts should we be choosing?

Are there tips to make it easier for the audience to understand?

What are some common pitfalls in creating effective charts?

Check out our infographic by clicking this link to download it.

To read more about storytelling through change management data, check out our Ultimate Guide to Storytelling with Change Management Data.

The change and disruption in Ukraine show how complex and dynamic the change process can be

The change and disruption in Ukraine show how complex and dynamic the change process can be

Assessing the change process and conducting effective change impact assessment are critical tasks for the change manager.  The reason is that a detailed change impact assessment is a map from which change interventions are pieced together to drive and manage the change process.  Most aspects of change management deliverables are tied to the effectiveness of the change impact assessment.  This means, if the change impact assessment was not thoroughly conducted, covering key angles and perspectives, then the overall change will likely fail.

Illustrating the effectiveness of change impact assessment is not always easy.  However, we currently have a great example.  Right now, Russia is attacking Ukraine with the goal of seizing Kyiv the capital.  What does this have anything to do with change impact assessment and the change process?

This event is felt globally around the world in many different ways.  Firstly, the most important acknowledgement has to be the horrendous human toll for the people of Ukraine.    As this article is being written, there are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian fleeing to neighbouring countries to find safety and refuge.  Lives are lost and buildings destroyed.

It may seem to be that the conflict is only in Ukraine.  However, the truth is much more than this.  The effects of this war are felt across the world at many different levels.  Let’s look into this more thoroughly as this illustrates precisely how change impact assessments should be done.

The above diagram is only a brief surface indication of a few of the impacts of the war.  You can see that it is not just economic impacts, but political, social, humanistic and technological impacts.  This complex web of different impacts evolve and form the overall change and disruption.

The same can also be said for organisational systems during change.  Different change impacts compound and affects one another.  What may be deemed as a simple process change, could impact operational factors, leadership factors, employee capacity, reporting process, system impacts, etc.

It is also worth calling out that when conducting change impact assessments different factors often converge and make it difficult to separate an impact from one category to another category.  Since we are talking about a whole global system, different impacts affect one another.  

Looking at this table and looking at what is unfolding in the attack on Ukraine there are some key call-outs that change managers should learn about when conducting effective change impact assessments:

1. Transitional states may be just as important as end state changes

During the change process, many things will evolve.  The change impacts that happen during transitional phases need to be fleshed out and defined.  Typically, what a lot of change managers do is to follow a change impact assessment template that focuses more on current state versus end-state gaps and focus on these as impacts.  

However, without clearly understanding the impacts during transitions the change process will be not successfully managed and the outcome will not be reached.  For example, if you had to do an impact assessment for the Russian attack on Ukraine, and you didn’t forecast the interim events that other countries will step in to support Ukraine or that Russian people will protest then the overall tactics used could be very different.

2. The change process may not be linear

A key observation of the change that is happening around the world resulting from the attack on Ukraine is that the direction, pace and volume of change is not linear.  It is systemic and even organic/viral.  

Within a war, setting change may be counted on a daily basis in terms of progress.  In an organisational change setting, and particularly for complex changes, the same comparison can also be drawn.  Complex changes are often not one-directional in terms of A affects B, or because of process change A, process B is changed as a result.  There could be a complex web of changes with multiple processes impacting each other.  There could also be impacted processes that as a result impact other processes.

When we look at the evolvement of this conflict, the human impacts are just as complex.  First is the civilian tolls with mothers and children fleeing to neighbouring countries.  Ukrainian men from neighbouring countries return to Ukraine, crossing the same borders in the reverse direction, to help the country fight.  More and more civilians enlist as volunteer fighters.  There are records that many residents dare to directly confront Russian military personnel.  There are families across both Russia and Ukrainian borders that are caught in this conflict.  There are even reports of discrimination against black refugees fleeing from Ukraine at border controls.  The diverse nature of impacts is huge.

With complex organisational changes, similar comparisons can be made in that the change evolution can be systemic and organic/viral.  Leaders, influencers and networkers can have a strong influence over the organisation.  Formal and informal organisational networks such as internal communication channels, functional groups and centres of excellence all exert influences on shaping the change.  The trick is to understand the key drivers of influence, change, communication and engagement within the impacted stakeholder groups and use these to design the change process.

3. Every perspective should be assessed to ensure potential gaps are covered

In implementing change often there are perspectives that are not considered and these usually show up during the implementation and can potentially derail the project.  This often happens when the change seems simple and so stakeholders usually resort to what has occurred in the past.  However, no company is operating in a vacuum and organisational situations evolve constantly.  

The key is to thoroughly consider each perspective, whether it is the perceptions of each group of stakeholders, downstream impacts of process on operations and planning, or potential role changes resulting from workload changes or oversight required.  Understanding the interplay between each of these is key.

4. Anticipate tactics in altering the change process

In a war situation, both sides constantly assess the situation in a super agile environment to constantly pivot from a tactical perspective to influence the outcome.  For example, Russia resorted to strict censorship and mass arrest of domestic protesters to control any opposition to the attack.  Russia also exerted significant influence over US social media channels in Russia to adhere to its censorship objectives.

On the other hand, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Zelensky resorted to grassroots support at a national level and an international rallying approach to appeal for support.  He is constantly on social media to appeal to the people of Ukraine to take up arms and fight for Ukraine, and this is one of the key tactics in slowing down Russia’s advances.  He also proactively appealed to international leaders for financial and military support. 

In a change impact assessment setting, anticipate key tactics of key stakeholder groups to support or resist the change. Document and list down previous or likely tactics used by these stakeholder groups to drive the change further, to slow down the change, or to resist the change.  Leverage these perspectives and build these into the change approach to derive a much more systemic approach to achieving the change outcomes.

In Summary, whilst our first response to what is happening in Ukraine is strongly on the suffering of the Ukrainian people and the wish for the suffering to end.  As the conflict unfolds it teaches us some very important lessons about change and disruption and how complex, organic and dynamic they can be.  There are some important lessons on effective approaches in conducting change impact assessments and assessing the overall change process.

Acknowledgement: Featured photograph from The Independent

Top 4 Challenges with Using Agile Change Management

Top 4 Challenges with Using Agile Change Management

The increasing pressure to change and evolve continues to challenge the very existence and design of every organisation.  After waves of change and disruption from industry competition, technology evolvements, customer preferences, surge in commodity prices, and Covid, change is, more than ever, a constant. To meet with this rapid and increased intensity of change, organisations are resorting to agile ways of implementing change management to keep up.  

Agile ways of implementing change often times mean that the outcome may be reached faster, and sometimes with fewer resources than previously.  With these promises, there are very few organisations that are not jumping along the agile bandwagon.

So what are the challenges of using agile change management?

1. Agile change may not suit every change scenario

Agile ways of change management may be great when we are developing a new product, a technical solution, a new process or a new way of working.  However, not every change scenario.  If the change setting requires strict adherence to complex regulations and standards, significant documentation, testing and quality assurance, full agile may not be the most suitable.  Pharmaceutical companies would not use a pure agile approach in developing new drugs simply due to the level of regulatory and industry standards required to be met in the process.

However, this does not mean aspects of agile practices may not be incorporated.  For example, pharmaceutical companies have been incorporating practices of involving customers in product design and marketing communication.  The trick is to balance those agile aspects which would benefit the overall solution and outcome, versus others that may be less applicable due to organisational and industry challenges.

On the other hand, if the project is concerned with developing changes to meet a new government regulatory requirement for customer product disclosure, an agile change approach may be more suitable.  Change iterations can be designed to form the solution required to both meet regulatory requirements and not negatively impact customer experience.  

2. There are significant capability requirements in implementing agile changes

Implementing agile changes does not just mean using agile techniques in the project team.  Every team involved needs to be able to build up agile capabilities.  This includes not just the technical teams, quality and testing teams, but also business stakeholders, and depending on the change, customer advisory teams as well.  

Project teams may be used to agile techniques after several projects.  However, these may be foreign for business stakeholders.  Sufficient education and capability building may be required in impacted businesses to undergo the change process.  This is because without this experience, the impacted businesses may not sufficiently buy-in to how the change was designed and implemented.  Moreover, without adopting agile practices, the impacted business teams may not be able to adopt the changes at the rate expected in agile environments.

3. The agile methodology has not clearly specified change management elements

Agile project management methodology clearly lays out the roles of the various members of the agile team, including the project manager, business owner, quality and testing, developer, etc.  However, a big hole exists for change management.  The clear role for change management has been left out.  For example, methodology and training providers such as Scaled Agile.  In a seemingly detailed and comprehensive treatment of all parts of agile methodology, the specific details of the role for change managers are not mentioned anywhere.

To tackle this big gap, there are various attempts to try and close this gap such as Jason Little’s Agile Change Management approach that is possibly less comprehensive than those detailed by Scaled Agile.  

Why is it that the role of the change manager is clearly omitted?  It is not that the role of change manager is becoming obsolete.  The increasing popularity of agile is matched by the increasing demand for change management professionals.  There has been a consistent growth in the recruitment for change professionals year after year.  It could only be that perhaps those in charge of documenting agile methodology don’t have a background in change management and subsequently have not ventured to detail any requirements within the methodology.

Imagine a world where change professionals won’t need to tip-toe and educate others about how their roles fit within an agile setting.  Given the importance of change management is it not a gap that cannot continue forward? Perhaps we can garner the change community to drive this through in the 2020s? 

4. Oversight of multiple agile changes is more critical than ever

One of the key challenges of using an agile approach is that often the end change outcome or the solution of the change is not clearly known at the commencement.  With each iteration, agile changes become more and more defined.  Or at times, the solution may continue to evolve and pilot as required according to project requirements.

What this means is that at any one-time business stakeholders are dealing with multiple projects that are constantly evolving.  The impact of those projects may or may not be known depending on the development of the specific agile iterations.  This could make it a nightmare to plan and get ready for multiple changes from a business unit perspective.

The solution is to develop oversight of the entire group of change initiatives.   With constant oversight, the business is much more capable of preparing for change overall.  And with the shifting iterations of agile across initiatives, the picture continues to evolve so that the business can keep a pulse on the changing nature of change.  This includes not just the volume of impacts, but types of changes, role impacts, timing, change pace, readiness, etc.  Utilise digital change management solutions to support your stakeholders as they continue down the agile change journey.

How will you support your business stakeholders as they charter through the ever-increasing environment of change and disruption?  What digital tools are you adopting within this digital world to get ready for increasingly agile changes?  Just like the agile principle of including and integrating multiple disciplines to promote collaboration, leveraging digital tools to aid change readiness and collaboration is key to future change outcome success.

To read more about agile change management articles visit our Knowledge Centre where we have articles such as:

Agile for Change Managers – The Ultimate Guide

Five agile change toolkits

As a Change Manager How do I Improve my Organisation’s Agility

From change management data to business impact – Infographic

From change management data to business impact – Infographic

There are many steps in getting from collecting change management data to making business impact. Data does not equal business impact.

Is the data you’re showing presented in the right way for the right audience group?

Do you have a compelling story you are telling using the data? Without the story and context the data could be meaningless.

What recommendation are you providing and what action are you prompting your stakeholders to make?

For more on change management metrics visit our Ultimate Guide for Measuring Change

For more on storytelling visit our Ultimate Guide to Storytelling with Change Management Data

Here is a powerful infographic that highlights the key steps from change management data, sorted change management data, change management data visualization, generating change insight, storytelling the change insights generated, and actioning on change management insights.

To download the infographic please click here.

The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling with Change Management Data

The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling with Change Management Data

From the beginning of civilizations, storytelling is a way to help us understand what is happening.  In caveman paintings, the pictures reveal a lot about the significance of the pictorial story and the message being conveyed.  Cave art is considered to have symbolic or religious purposes.  Even oral stories can be passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.  The bible is an example of how stories can be passed down and documented.  Children’s fairy tales are also examples of powerful stories.

Stories are easily remembered and inspire understanding and belief.  This is why the industry of influencers is such a large market.  We connect to influencers because we associate with them, find them interesting, or aspire to be them.  Influencers share their everyday stories with us and through this, we grow increasingly connected and engaged with the messages they are conveying.

Here is an example of powerful storytelling.  The Australian Broadcast Corporation which is a public TV channel aired a show called ‘War on Waste’.  The purpose was to inspire the public to change personal habits to reduce waste.  The show was hugely powerful.  

A report by the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures found that the show triggered 452 high-impact waste reduction initiatives.  These include supermarkets and hospitality businesses deciding to remove plastic straws from their stores in Australia and New Zealand, and states banning single-use plastic bags.  Almost half of the 280 organisations surveyed in the report based their waste reduction ideas from the show.  These were all just 6 months after the show had aired.

Imagine using the power of storytelling with change management data?

Yes, we’ve all been there.  Remember the last time that you were at a meeting where there were lots of figures and data thrown around.  With each PowerPoint slide, the presenter aimed to cover as much information as possible.  An hour later, what did you remember from all the various data points shared?  Probably not much beyond one or two points at the most.  

This illustrates the power of storytelling.  Rather than flashing lots of data at the audience, telling stories is a much more powerful way of conveying messages.  In this guide, we will cover various facets of how to convey powerful messages through storytelling with change management data.

1. Types of change management data

Collecting and sharing change management data is critical throughout the implementation of the change process.  It tells the impacted stakeholders where the change is taking them and is also essential to help stakeholders understand whether things are on track or not.  

In this guide, we will not cover in-depth the various types of change management data.  However, the key types of change management include:

  1. Change readiness surveys
  2. Training assessments & evaluation surveys
  3. Communications metrics
  4. Employee sentiments/culture survey
  5. Change adoption tracking
  6. Change leadership assessment
  7. Change maturity assessment
  8. Change management heatmap
  9. Other capability assessments (e.g. sponsor, change champion)
  10. Various change impact charts

For a comprehensive article on change management data visit The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Change.

2. How to tell change-data-based stories

1) Providing solid context

A. History

In any business meeting context is critical.  Whether you are in a meeting to make a key decision, to brainstorm ideas, to critique an idea, or to track team progress, the context of the meeting is critical.  Without a strong and clear context, participants will not understand what the meeting is about nor why they are there.

When I was at Intel, in every meeting room there is a poster listing key meeting effectiveness etiquette points.  One of the most important points listed is having a clear meeting agenda prior to the meeting starting.  Even before you walk into the meeting, ensure that you have already communicated to participants what the context of the meeting is and what you will be discussing.  This could be as simple as listing this clearly in the meeting invite agenda or sending a clear email to participants prior to the meeting.  

If the subject matter is particularly complex it may be helpful to send an email of any ‘pre-read’ materials so that audience has time to digest various content prior to the meeting.  This is particularly important if the subject area is complex and requires a lot of information context-setting prior to the meeting.

When you first enter the meeting it is also important to once again establish the context of the meeting in case your participants did not read the agenda or are not clear.

B. Crafting the story

Crafting a meaningful and compelling story that resonates with your audiences is not difficult. However, it follows a logical flow.  The challenge is to craft the story in a way that achieves the balance of painting the storyline that gives the user sufficient ‘colour’ of the plot, without having too much detail and overwhelming the audience.  On the other hand, storylines that have too few details are may not be compelling or impactful.

Here is a useful structure to follow – The story structure ring by Tomas Puego.

This structure can be applied to any story and is particularly suited to business settings.

If you are making a presentation to managers to senior managers who are often impatient and have little time you will need to tweak your storyline and flow accordingly.  Whilst the bulk of the storyline structure ring can still apply, it is better to add to this an initial step on the key takeaway right at the beginning of the presentation.

  1. Initial situation.  This is when we show what the situation was like when everything was normal and prior to the problem occurring.  This is an important part before it reminds the audience what the situation was like before the problem started.
  2. Problem.  Here we explore what the problem is and what happened.  Go into what this means for various characters and their lives.  What’s the result of the problem and what pains did it cause?  What has the characters tried to do to resolve the problem?  What has or has not worked?
  3. Midpoint insight.  This is a key reflection of the story when there is a particular revelation or insight that changes the storyline.  With the new insight characters realise something they did not previously.  
  4. Explore the insight.  Explore what lead to the insight, and what the insight meant to the characters.  How do the characters see the problem in the new light?  Did the characters approach the problem incorrectly and now with the new insight they are able to see what was wrong?
  5. Solution.  The character(s) finally realise how to apply the solution using the insight.  It could be a series of struggles of trial and error.  It could be using data-based insights.  
  6. Aftermath.  After implementing the solution the characters are able to address the problem and resolve the pain.  If you are making recommendations in a business context, this may not have happened yet.  Instead, you can use this step to outline what will be the aftermath after applying the solution.

3. Presenting to managers or within limited time

This is proposed by the Barbara Minto Pyramid model whereby there is a pyramid of information that is recommended using a top-down presentation structure.  It starts with the end or the conclusion first to satisfy the informational needs of those impatient managers and also to create curiosity from which to engage the audience and present through the rest of the storyline.

In this way, the audience does not get flooded with a myriad of information, data, and arguments and is able to clearly understand where the story is going from the outset.  

The other highlight of using the model is to summarize key points at a high level first before going into the details of each point.  This way you’ve already provided a structure of the storyline of what the top-level points are before you start diving into each point.  This is critical because without the structure it is easy for your audience to get lost in the details.

The Minto model is very useful for those who rely on PowerPoint or document-based presentations where they walk the audience through the materials.  This is common practice and it may be easier from a preparation perspective since the content prompts the presenter on what to say.  A better way of storytelling is always to rely on verbal storytelling at least in the beginning to engage the audience and fully connect with them before launching a series of slides.

If you are only relying on slides to make your points there is a big risk that your audience is spending more attention looking at the words and details of what you have shown in the slides and this may conflict with what you are talking about.  If what you are saying is not what the audience is reading into on the slide content this may create confusion.  Slides are good at the right time with the right content to complement what you are saying, not the other way around.  

In presenting to managers you also need to be very summarised in your overall presentation.  Err on the side of talking at a high level with some illustrations of details.  Prepare more detailed data and information as needed so that if asked to elaborate you’re able to dive into the details.  However, the flow of the presentation should be fairly succinct and to the point.  Often, your presentation may be shortened due to other agendas running longer than expected.  It pays to be focused and summarised in your presentation.

4. Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a way to graphically show the flow of the story.  Whilst it is a common technique in product development or learning content development, it originated from film/play development.

For screenplays, storyboarding is about physically drawing out each key scene to outline the overall story.  Stick figures are sufficient and the drawings do not need to be artworks.  They are simple depictions of what key scenes would visually look like.  

Think about the angle of each scene, what the main characters are, what happens, and where it happens.  Then for each scene, write brief short bullet points describing what happens in each scene.  Use quotes as needed to portray what characters are saying.  

In business, a lot of people don’t visually depict the storyboard, instead, reply on comments for each scene.  More visually explicit stories will be more powerful, so it is better to practice to visually draw out scenes along with written notes.  It helps you to picture clearly and visually the characters you are centering on, how they are behaving, and what situations or environments they are in.

You also don’t necessarily need to make the story a long and drawn-out one.  A storyboard can be as simple as 3 scenes.  A more rich story outlining the setting and context can be longer.  Try to stick to no more than 6 scenes when you work on your storyboard.  This will enable you to have ample content to outline the development of the story, the climax, and the outcome of the story.

To learn more about crafting different change stories read our article on How to tell stories of change.

2. Visualisation

A.Simplicity with visuals

After you’ve crafted a story, it’s time to work on what data visualisation to show in your presentation or discussion.  

Principle 1: Visual charts

The first principle to remember is to always error on showing charts versus raw numbers.  Charts are inherently more memorable and in general more impactful for most people.  Of course this depends on exactly the point you are trying to make.  Even if you are comparing the data across two areas of the business it’s still a better idea to show a simple bar chart with the 2 data points, versus just quoting the raw numbers.  The simple bar chart will visually show the difference between the 2 numbers visually, and you can still show the actual numbers in addition.

Principle 2: Less is more

There is a tendency for business people to show lots of charts in meetings.  The thinking is that the more information that is shown, there will be greater clarity and fewer questions.  In fact, the reverse is true.  The more data you show, often this leads to confusion and lack of clarity.  It is harder to stick to a simple storyline when the audience is overwhelmed by lots of data.  

The charts are only there to illustrate and support your storyline.  The immediate reading of the chart should relate directly to the point you are making.  If the chart is conveying lots of other information, be careful.  This can launch other questions and discussions and therefore lead the flow of the story away from what you had intended.

Where possible, stick to 2 or 3 charts for your presentation.  You can always have a few backup charts if your audience wants to dive into further details.  Again, the key focus is on you telling the story and the key medium of communication.  The charts are a supporting medium to make things visual, and easier to understand and remember.

Principle 3: Avoid visual distractions

This principle is about the chart is focused on the message being delivered and avoiding any visual distractions that could create ‘noise’ and distraction for the audience.  These include any graphic design, use of colour, lines, sizing, etc.

Below is an example of a typical change heatmap table chart used to depict the level of change impact across different projects.  Let’s take a closer look.

3. Using different charts

A. Focusing attention on the right part of the chart

To help the user zoom in on the point that you are making, your data visualisation should also draw attention to the point that you are making.  Use colour highlighting to draw your audience’ attention to the data point you are focused on.

For example, to draw attention to the particular week that you wanted to highlight to the audience, use a darker shade of the same colour to the rest of the charts to draw the focus.  But be aware that using too many different colours may end up confusing the audience instead.  This is preferrable than using a circle to highlight the same data point, since this may also be another source of visual ‘noise’ in distracting the user.

B. Using pie charts

Pie charts are very popular with business users.  They are useful and effective in comparing different data points.  However, when there are too many data points, it becomes quite hard for the user to read and compare the different data points.  For this reason, be very careful in using pie charts.  When you are using more than three to four data points in the same pie chart, it may be better to use other charts such as bars charts or line charts.  This is particularly when the data points in the chart are similar in value.

Have a look at the below 2 charts.  One created using a pie chart and the other using a line chart.  Both are exactly the same data.  You can see that with the pie chart it is almost impossible for the audience to tell which Project has more impact hours than the others.  Comparing the data points within the pie chart is extremely difficult.  On the other hand, looking at the line chart it is significantly easier to decipher the data difference across the projects.

C.Treemap charts

Treemap charts are a great way to show, in a neat and tidy way, the relative data value across a number of data set.  Ideally, the data set is not so great that it becomes too complicated to read (i.e. over 20 data points).  This chart is a great visual when you want the user to see and compare the size differences of data points.

Now have a look at the below chart.  Once again this is using the same data.  If you would like your audience to compare the different hours of impact across each project it is very difficult for them to decipher which one has more impact than others.  What this chart may be good at is when there is a big range of differences in data points and you want to be able to show the range of the different hours.  However, when the range in differences are not great, which is the case here, it is better not to use this chart.

Now have a look at the below chart.  You’ll see that it is much easier to see the data size differences because the sizes are quite significantly different.  For example, if you want your audience to visually just how much the impact difference is, then this is a good chart.  If you want to, you can always show the numerical values, if you would like your audience to see the numerical differences as well.

D. Using bar charts

Bar charts are one of the most common forms of data charts.  There is a very good reason for this.  Humans are very good at comparing lengths when they are aligned neatly next to each other.  We can naturally see the beginning and end of each bar chart and be able to easily decipher the comparative differences across the bars.

There are many different types of bar charts including:

  • Vertical bar chart
  • Horzontal bar chart
  • Clustered bars
  • Stacked bars
  • 100% stacked bars
  • Waterfall chart

Some of the tips in using bar charts effectively include: 

  • Avoid using too many colours since the audience may be overwhelmed and focus on the colours instead what the chart is trying to show in terms of comparative differences
  • Ensure labels are clear and easy to read
  • Use a zero-baseline so that the audience only focuses on the difference at the other end of each bars

E. Using bubble charts

The bubble chart is a very visual chart and easy for people to compare across data points.  The bubble chart is a good chart to use when there is a number of data points, but no more than 20.  If there is over 20 data bubbles it starts to get too overwhelming for the audience. There are many different types of bubble charts

  • Standard bubble chart where there are no axes, with each bubble representing the different sizes (e.g. impact size, completion rate, etc.)
  • Scatterplot with 2 axes and changing bubble size.  This chart shows 2 dimensions of data, i.e. the 2 axes and the bubble size.  For example, bubble size could represent number of people impacted, with impact size and change readiness rating on the 2 axes
  • Scatterplot with 2 axes and no changing bubble size.  This type of chart is useful to show the differences along the axes.  The ‘bubbles’ or dots are simply representations of different data points since they do not have bubble size differences.  For example, the horizontal axis can show time, and the vertical axis can show change readiness, with each dot showing a different project.

4. Colour blindness

Approximately 8% of men have colour blindness.  The percentage is less for women.  So, it is important to note that you will likely come across audience members who may not be able to see certain colours.  Most business people do not make a point of designing charts that take into account colour blindness.  However, you do not want to risk making a blunder with critical stakeholders who may not be able to see what you are referencing.

To check that you are using colours that are not going to disadvantage colour-blind audience, use ColorBrewer and select the colour-blindness safe box to come up with the right colours. 

Colour-blindess tool ColorBrewer

5. Examples of story flows

What are some of the examples in which change practitioners can use data-based storytelling to influence stakeholders?  In this section, we look at a few examples.

A key ingredient in all of these story flows is that they all contain a logical sequence of stories.  A good way to add ‘colour’ and bring the story to life is to add quotes, and observations to support the data.  This balance of quantitative and qualitative data can be very powerful and persuasive.  

The other call out is that in each of the 5 steps, data may be used to support the story flow.  The use of data does not need to only be injected in the steps of ‘Problem’ and ‘Insight’.  It can be every or any single step of the story flow.  In this way, the story becomes even more powerful and convincing.  However, note again that having too much data may overwhelm the audience and create confusion.  So, achieving a balance is key.

6. Making recommendations

Essentially, data-based storytelling is not just about informing the business of what is going on or what is going to happen.  The value comes when you use it to make recommendations.  Recommendations are hard to dispute when the story sequence is backed by data.  When you make a sequence of logical deductions backed by data, the audience is naturally convinced by the recommendation proposed.

It is also a good idea to come up with options when recommending a solution.  Ideally, create two scenarios for your stakeholders to select from, or a maximum of three scenarios or choices.  Describe clearly what each scenario could look like and supplement the recommendation with the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario option.  

Below is an example of a chart from The Change Compass where an alternative delivery sequence is proposed.  It illustrates what the alternative change impact looks like for impacted business stakeholders across projects.  The star indicates planned go-lives.

Telling compelling and persuasive stories using change data takes practice. Through regular practice, you will discover what your stakeholders resonate with and what they find challenging to understand. Tweak your presentation accordingly. Note any individual stakeholder differences. Also, note any commonalities of preferences across your stakeholder groups.

Don’t forget to visit The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Change for more detailed practical information about using change data.

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