Data Storytelling for Kids with Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Founder and CEO of Storytelling with Data

Adel Nehme: Cole Nussbaumer Naflik. It's great to have you on DataFramed.

Cole Knaflic: Hi, Adel. It's great to be

Adel Nehme: For those who are not aware of what you do, you are a legend in the data storytelling space.

Cole Knaflic: Thank you.

Adel Nehme: I mean, definitely are, and your books really popularized and mainstreamed the concept of data storytelling. So maybe to set the stage what inspired you to turn your attention to a children's book with your new book, Daphne Draws Data?

What was the motivation behind it?

Cole Knaflic: of the things that we often hear, so I run a company called Storytelling with Data where we teach workshops to individuals and organizations about how to communicate effectively with data. And one of the things that we often hear is, oh, I wish that I had learned these skills earlier. And When you think back, we don't really get exposed to data storytelling or communicating with graphs very much in school.

And so simultaneous with that, I was watching my kids grow and start school and seeing the homework that they came home with. And there was this idea in my head ever since having kids, I think, which is, They develop language at such a young age and it's by repetition and being immersed and their minds are like sponges when it comes to being able to read and write and you know, carry on a conversation.

And it really seemed to me that we could be taking the visual language of numbers, of graphs and teaching that a whole lot sooner. core concept, I think, or core skill that any good analyst, any good, just person working in the business world has is the ability to ask good questions and then understand how to get answers to those questions.

And I think this applies for the analyst who's working with data day in, day out, but also for an executive who needs to know when to question and how and who to question. go to for different things. And kids have this innate curiosity. They ask questions about everything. I actually, I was in New York City with my family It was our last trip of summer before school started back. And I was walking with my daughter and my son was in front of me and my other son. And every two seconds, one of them was asking me a question, Mommy, how did this happen? Mommy, what's that? Bye. It. over and over and over again, which I think is fantastic.

I mean, it can get a little annoying, right? But if we can teach them how to hone their natural inclination to ask questions, right? Because their way of piecing in the puzzle of how does the world work and what's my place in the world, that if we can teach them how to hone that and, you know, it's so Instead of incessantly asking questions, you know, do keep asking questions, but also think about which are the most interesting questions or ones could we collect information and answer ourselves or talk to other people as a means of testing assumptions.

we can teach this all at such a young age and it would be so interesting. impactful when it comes to developing foundational skills that will serve kids as they grow in school and in basically any field which I think could be really empowering.

Adel Nehme: Yeah, that's wonderful. And you know, I read the book and I thought it was amazing. And Daphne is very curious dinosaur. Maybe, can you share with

Cole Knaflic: She's a dragon.

Adel Nehme: a dragon. Yeah, that is, that is true. That is true. Daphne is a very curious dragon. Maybe could you share with us a bit about the story and the characters?

What can, parents expect their kids to take away from it?

Cole Knaflic: main book is a story, a fully illustrated picture book, and it focuses on Daphne. She is a dragon with a unique talent in that she really loves to draw. And the thing that she loves to draw more than anything else is data. And so she gets in a bit of an argument with her brother about this, who, he tells her, well, that's not dragon y enough.

And so she leaves her cave in search of a place where she can be herself. And she goes on an adventure. And she goes to some different places meets different creatures and in every case helps them solve a problem or a challenge that they're facing by collecting and then drawing data. Really pictorial forms of graphs where a child looking at it, it's like, not even probably even going to realize that they're looking at a graph.

And I won't ruin the ending, but it's a happy one where Daphne finds her place and recognizes that her unique talent is actually what makes her really powerful and special. And then to further learning, the story is accompanied by a graph glossary at the end of the book that where there's a page devoted to each of the four main types.

of graphs that she draws in her adventures, bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and scatter plots. So each of those talks more about what is this, when would you use it, what sort of questions can you answer with it, gives examples from Daphne's journey, and then also has an activity for kids where they can collect data about themselves and use it to draw the given type of graph.

Thanks.

Adel Nehme: I love that. And one of the things that I, my favorite aspects about the book is that it really challenges some of the limiting beliefs that we, as people, often internalize as children, think about the idea, I'm not a numbers person, or I don't know math like these types of limiting beliefs tend to be developed quite early.

if you're a math

Cole Knaflic: Astoundingly early. And, and it can go either way. I'm a math person. I have a degree in applied mathematics. And it's been interesting for me to see the way that that influences my children. So I have two boys and a girl. They're right now, 11, 10, and eight. And with my oldest, he says, you know, mommy's great at math.

I get my great math skills from my mom, which is awesome. My little girl said to me one day recently, I don't like math, it's hard. I was like, where did that come from? Like, the hard things are good because, and one of the ways you learn in math is by making mistakes and understanding why it wasn't right or why it could be done differently.

It's a puzzle. Math is fun. And she's come around because actually I was overhearing her talk to someone else the other day and she said one of her favorite subjects is math. So they are so influenced by so many things at that age that all it takes is some portrayal of, math being for nerds or being uncool or being hard.

And now you've just potentially turned this child off of a really powerful discipline, because for me, I think with math, I mean, yes, I use math and have in different parts of my career quite deeply. But I think for me, the bigger thing that math has taught me is just the ability to think logically and break down a problem that might be ambiguous.

into component pieces that I can attack systematically and put back together. And those are skills that, again, will be helpful in any sort of role. And you think about, kids growing up and, you know, the research they should be doing in, in school. And just, you know, It's the skepticism that they need to have towards the information that comes at them.

So these are definitely things that we should be fostering and helping them hone and not doing things that are inadvertently going to shut down their curiosity or their interest.

Adel Nehme: couldn't agree more, and I love especially your point on how math is not just, the ability to do formulas or stuff like that. It's meta skills that help you solve problems in life. And maybe kind of related to these limiting beliefs, right? Why do you think these limiting beliefs pop up in the first place?

And why do they still persist in today's day and age? And maybe Follow up question here. How intentional were you when writing the book to kind of focus on these limiting beliefs and tackle them?

Cole Knaflic: I don't, I don't know where it comes from, I think, but it's been pervasive for so long. I think of, you even TV shows or movies that portray kids in school in different ways of, you know, it's typically like the nerdy kid with glasses on who is like the smart one who does hard things like math and science.

And that persists. it's been that way. or I think of even books, children's books that my kids have, and some of them are books that I love, right? There's one, for example, that's called nerdy corn, and the message is amazing, which is it's a girl unicorn who loves science and sort of a similar like she gets made fun of by friends at school, but then ends up being the one who saves the day, but she's nerdy.

She's got glasses. It's just these little

Adel Nehme: got fun, she got made fun of by her friends at school. Yeah,

Cole Knaflic: Yeah, that. Yeah, I think it's it's these little things that we maybe don't even realize that culturally that are influencing kids at really young ages and for some reason, especially girls. And so you asked about how intentional was I going in and trying to, I don't know, counter some of these conceptions.

honestly, it wasn't super intentional going in. I knew that I wanted to do something that would introduce my kids or kids like mine, other kids, to these concepts. I mean, it made sense for Daphne to be a girl dragon because girls are cool and powerful. And so I guess from that sense that maybe there was a little of that in there, but that reading of it has come kind of since it all came together, but I'm happy that it's there.

Adel Nehme: I love that as well. And it's great how it organically came up. And, you know, you mentioned a lot of the concepts in the book, you know, data storytelling can be a complex topic, right, depending on how you want to approach it. So even for adults, which makes me wonder, like, do you think there's a right age to start introducing these concepts?

If you're a parent, I think there's a lot of parents in the audience. How do you think about introducing these topics as a parent to your children?

Cole Knaflic: I honestly think the earlier the better, once they've got language and a bit of logic, I mean, as soon as you're reading to them, I think there can be pieces of this, and yes, data storytelling can be complex, but it doesn't have to be, and oftentimes it's, not the data storytelling that's complex, it's the, you know, the analytics that might be happening behind the scenes, but that you don't need to, you know, we don't need to be teaching our four year old statistics, but we can definitely be pointing out it.

The structure of story. I think of some of the things that I creatively tried to do with my kids to keep them entertained when we were learning at home during the pandemic. And, I would draw from my work for that. So I remember us getting books out and I had mine was Herald in the Purple Crayon.

I love that book, but we were talking about story structures in a simple way of you have a plot, a twist and an ending. So this like really simple story mountain. And so you can boil down any good book to that, like any book that has a story, any movie that or show that has a story to it. You can also boil down pretty much every business problem or communication to this, where you've got the context, the so what, or the, like the peak of the tension and then the resolution.

And so we do that. We started off simple. And then we thought, well, we're But there's actually a lot more going on in the story. There's not just one up and down, there are kind of all these ups and downs. Like I picture it like a jagged mountain where you have this, little tension introduced and then resolved and introduced and resolved.

And then there's like the peak, the climax intention, and then you go down the mountain in the same stepwise fashion. And so we did this. with a few different books we read the Wizard of Oz and we had fun doing this because there's so many of things right on their journey down the yellow brick road and trying to get to the wizard.

They encounter all of these different issues, you know, the flying monkeys or the poppy fields and in every case it gets resolved and it gets them closer to where they're going until the ruse is over and they realize that the wizard is not who he said he was. And so, so you get this jagged mountain.

And part of the point of that is, I think, well, one, you're teaching kids the structure of story. We did the same thing with Harold and the Purple Crayon. That was why that came up. But you're also, you know, teaching them how things can connect, how they can connect in little ways, how they can connect in big ways.

And you can draw parallels when it makes sense to stories and, you know, the story at the jagged mountain level versus story at the just up and down level. You can group. Relate that to different things that happen in their lives or different ways that they might interact with other people, right?

If you were introducing yourself to someone, do you give them your whole life story or do you boil it down to the sentence, right? That's similar to the every detail versus high level and fast forwarding to when they are in the working world. That ability to bounce back and forth between full detail and high level or know which peaks and valleys to include and which to not when you're talking to different people is a really important life skill.

Adel Nehme: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And then you mentioned here reading down with, sitting down with your kids, you know, looking over like structures of stories. I'm sure you've shown Daphne draws data to, you know, few kids here and there, you know, you are releasing the book and testing the book.

Well, how are they engaging with the material in ways that maybe you expected or surprised you?

Cole Knaflic: Yeah, my kids, so again, I have three and they were my first test cases and they were heavily involved all along the way. So they've grown to love Daphne as much as I do. But it has definitely been fun to see. other kids. So I went, before the school year ended last year, I read to each of my kids classes.

So they were then in fifth grade, fourth grade, and second grade. and I read to them in that order from oldest to youngest. And one of the things that was very interesting to me is in the fifth grade class, the kids were already reserved. They were clearly, before they raised their hand to ask a question, they were looking around the room.

they were starting to care what other kids thought through how they interacted with me. And so they, there was this feeling where they felt a little guarded. And then the fourth grade, they had great questions, but they definitely were censoring themselves, which I guess is, a good skill to develop.

The fourth grade class was less censored, I would say, and there were more questions and, and some more maybe off the wall questions. But then the, with the second grade class, it was just pure joy just question after question after. I mean, they asked me probably a hundred questions in the time they wanted to know everything.

They're so curious. And so I guess one of the great things. Well, and so I left that going, wow, I could read to second grade classes all day long. That was the best thing ever. But I guess part of what, what I see now actually just reflecting on it here with you is there is that natural censoring happening as kids are getting older which is a good skill to develop.

But I'm. I'm not sure we're teaching them how to do that in the right ways, because there were some really interesting questions that came up that were maybe off the wall with the younger kids that I think the older kids wouldn't have asked that may end up being more interesting or have greater impact in how they do things.

So I think one thing that's been interesting for me, just again, seeing my own kids come home with homework or what they're working on in school. is they're not encountering many graphs, but when they do, when they're either looking at graphs or making graphs, they're really boring. they're textbooky.

They are describing things that either aren't interesting, right? How many blocks are there? Who cares how many blocks there are? They're not your blocks. Um, uh, And half the time they're black and white. So they're not even colorful or anything. Or, you know, it's something mundane, like the weather, something they already experienced.

And I think if we could teach kids the power of good questions that we can answer with data, they could actually learn new things about themselves or about how they spend their time or the impact that doing different things has on their mood or their sleep. learn things that would empower them to say, Yeah, that's good.

I want to keep doing that. Or, Oh, actually, now that I understand that, I want to make changes. And that's what the activities in the book are really driven to do, is for kids to collect something about themselves that will, at the end of it, be actionable, right? What are you eating? Is it colorful? Are you getting a variety of different nutrients?

Or how is your mood compared to how much sleep you got? These things that are more personal and interesting and actionable.

Adel Nehme: Yeah, I love the takeaways at the end because, you know, they do make the, the activity of, thinking about the question and coming up with the data and drawing it very fun as well. And you mentioned here going to read the book for kids of different ages, as an author who usually writes long form nonfiction for adults, how was it like adapting?

A lot of what you've been, thinking about writing about for years now to such a different audience, how do you decide when it's too much information to add? How do you decide how long the book should be? Like, I'd love to kind of see the mindset shift that happened here when creating a children's book versus, a data storytelling for business users or data practitioners type of book.

Cole Knaflic: very different. So with the adult books, I was basically able to say everything I wanted to say, right? The, the latest one storytelling with you was like 80, 000 words which is a lot. And you would think that that's harder than writing a children's book, but after going through the children's book process, I don't know if that's the case.

And so I think initially I didn't do my research. I just needed to write. And I ended up writing something that was about 5, 000 words, which is way too long for a picture book. That's more like early chapter book length. And so, but there were some things that I learned through that because that was where the dragons came from.

came into the picture because in that longer form story which also took like an hour to read out loud, which most parents are not going to want to spend that time in a single sitting uh, I will say from experience, they, it was children were the main characters, but then they were, they'd gone to a world of dragons and they were solving like population dynamics sort of issue.

So it was way too complicated for what I wanted to do. And but there were nuggets of that I needed to get it out. And then there were nuggets of it, like the dragons that came forward into Daphne. And then I stepped back and did my research and learned that a traditional. children's picture book is exactly 32 pages, and that's because of how the paper runs through the printing press and gets folded into signatures.

 It is less than a thousand words ideally a lot less than a thousand words, but you definitely want to max out at something like that. And it's different in that you don't have to say everything because the pictures do a lot of the communication of the story. So it's really important how the pictures and the words work together, which makes sense.

All of these things seem very obvious once you know them, but until you know them, it's like, oh yeah. Uh, And then something else that I learned along the way, and actually this I didn't come to on my own, this was feedback that I got from one reviewer and I will be forever grateful. Because. original manuscript for Daphne was written first person, present tense.

Because that's how I've always written, right? My business books, it's me, it's, the voice is me. I am writing to you, so you're reading, we're kind of having a conversation as we go through the books. It makes total sense for that purpose. It doesn't make sense for a kid's book though, because when you think of how kid's books are read, either the child is reading it, or a teacher or parent is.

And so then if I am reading as I am Daphne, That like it just it gets very confusing very quickly. And that would not have even occurred to me. And also the present tense piece. And so it was that was the big aha. again, the feedback that I will be forever grateful for that.

Changed it from first person present tense to third person past tense. And so now it's reader is the, the narrator recounting the story of what happened to Daphne and her friends, which again, it's obvious now and it would have been a totally different book had that not happened.

Adel Nehme: indeed. And you talked about kind of the power of the visuals in the children's book to kind of convey the message, maybe what was it like as well, you've definitely had a lot of visuals in your previous books, but they tend to be, you know, visualizations and data visuals in a lot of way, So maybe yeah, walk me through kind of the process here of, Also looking at illustrations, like thinking about like, how do you tweak illustrations? So I'd love to learn that person from you.

Cole Knaflic: Yeah, so in the original manuscript, I drew some things. So we had a version of Daphne that I had drawn I had fun with the kids. They got involved as well. There are some scenes with the aliens. And so at one point we had a big roll of butcher paper out and they were drawing aliens and stuff.

spacecraft. And so then I, redrew some, I picked some out of those and, and redrew those. And then I drew all of the graphs because I needed to make sure that those worked and that they made sense and that they were easy to interpret. And there was the underwater scene in particular went through a lot of iterations or the, the scenario there to get to where it ended up.

 Maybe, I think probably because that's the scatter plot, which is. Arguably the most complicated of the graphs that Daphne draws, but I think we landed in a good place there. So I drew everything and then I'll tell you a little story. So there's a presentation that I've given. I think the first time I did it was at the tapestry conference in like, I don't even know what year it was, a long time ago but that I'd done in several keynotes where it's a story about my son Dorian, and it was when he was two.

Okay, this tells you how old he is because he's ten now, so eight years ago. So he's two and he's got this book, I've got this picture of him reading and the book he's reading is called Larry Gets Lost in Seattle. It's by John Skews. He's written a whole series about a little boy Pete and his dog Larry, and so I tell the story of Larry Getting Lost.

In Seattle, I used some of the illustrations from John's book and I'd reached out to him when I wanted to do this to make sure he was okay with it, get his permission. And so I used it in giving keynotes several times. And then I reached out again when I was writing the yellow book, storytelling with you, because I wanted to draw on some of the presentations and, and show again, some of these images and how they influence the style of the presentation.

It was in the slide design part. And so he says, yes, great. And then I reached out to him a couple of years ago to say, I've been thinking about writing a children's book if I do this, is this anything you'd be interested in partnering on? And at that point in time, he said, ah, you know, I know I just started a new thing, no time right now.

And it turns out I wasn't ready to do it yet because that was when I, you know, started writing and went in all these weird directions and then I'd shelve it for a while and write another book instead. But then when I came back to it in Ernst and had the manuscript, I reached out to John again and said, Hey, what about timing now?

Right? It's been a couple of years. And he said, Yeah, you hit me at the perfect time. I'd love to do it. And so I gave him my manuscript, which again, it had Daphne, it had some characters, it had all the graphs. And the first thing, so, and John has, he's an amazing illustrator and has a lot of experience, like he's worked for Hanna Barbera and and more, right.

And has a lot of experience. doing character design. So the first thing that he did was design Daphne. And I remember my husband saying, because I was waiting to see the initial, like, oh, what's she going to look like? And my husband, Randy said to me, what if John comes back with something that's totally different from your Daphne?

And I was like, well, that's not going to happen. And he's just going to take my Daphne and make her better. And so then I almost couldn't even show Randy when I got the email that had the, there were two versions of Daphne because they were both completely different. from my Daphne. One was like petite and purple, and the other one was big and green and I was just kind of like, huh.

But then John and I got together and we talked through the three Daphnes now and talked about what fit for the character and what didn't. And out of that conversation, the ultimate Daphne emerged and she's perfect. I mean, she makes me smile every time I see her and we're doing really fun things like, I've got one here so I'll show her up,

Adel Nehme: That's so nice.

Cole Knaflic: a stuffed animal Daphne and that.

And so Daphne came about and then John took my manuscript and the rest of the for me was like magic because he, he went through and the first thing he did was roughs. And so they were just no color, black and white sketches. And he does all of it on his iPad. And so sketches of all of the scenes, he's the one who, he laid out the book in terms of which parts of the story would be on which book.

Which is an interesting way to do it. When he does his own books, those pieces happen together, which makes a lot of sense. And I think if I write another children's book, I would have that going in as well of, of what's going to fit on each page. And. The initial thing he came back with, I made very few comments and then once he added color I printed everything and I had it all laid out on my floor.

And one of the things that I love is there are so many thoughtful details. And when you get the book, you'll see just, there's a lot of different paper, textural, like graph paper or lined paper just embedded in either backgrounds or elements of things like trees which is a really fun touch.

But there's also this Neat progression of color where you get Daphne leaving the cave and it's in one color and then, you know, it's very green in the jungle and very purple in space, but actually in space with the pages laid out, and this is something I would never would have even seen, I don't think, had we just been, you know, had I just been flipping through the pages, but seeing them laid out on the floor and you see See the progression of color really clearly.

There was one space scene that just didn't have enough purple and so it became more purple. So there, there was a lot of back and forth of just everything. I mean, we tested out, because I also worked with a designer then, so John did the illustrations, I wrote the words, and then all of that needed to be put together.

Which you would think, oh, that seems simple. No, there's a big art to that as well. 'cause you have to, pick fonts and size. And placement and, designing the jacket or the cover. And so there's a lot that goes into it. So Matt was my designer and he's worked with me on every book since the blue one let's practice out of California flight design and he's fantastic.

And so he did the layout and we, everything was pretty straightforward until we got to the glossary. Cause the glossary initially was like a lot of words. and one picture. I was like, that's not going to work. It needs to be really fun and easy to navigate and hopefully draw kids in and a block of text isn't going to do that.

And so we did a lot of iterating to come up with the design there.

Adel Nehme: Yeah, it really shows you what a labor of love it is as a book. And it's awesome to see. So maybe, you know, we talked about Daphne draws data and storytelling for kids, but maybe let's shift a bit of focus and go back to data storytelling for adults, which is where your work has been truly impactful in this space.

for those who might be new to the concept, I'd love to learn, you know, what is Cole's theory of data storytelling? Like what are the foundational elements that every data storyteller should have?

Cole Knaflic: When, when we're teaching this in a shorter form, form session. So maybe this would be a good way to do it. You know, a half day or a full day workshop. The concepts that we are generally teaching have to do with just a few foundational areas. And none of it's rocket science, but a lot of these concepts that seem obvious after you say them aren't obvious until somebody says them to you.

simple things like we shouldn't start by generating content by making slides or making graphs. We should start by thinking about our audience, understanding who are they? What do they care about? where do our needs overlap with theirs? what's the tension in the situation for them?

And how can we use that to build upon when we think ahead to story? So we spent a lot of time on the things that don't have a lot to do necessarily with the data, but more about communicating in general. Who's your audience? What is your message? How can you say that concisely so that you are so aware and clear on it that it becomes easier to then put together content that's going to support it.

I am a big fan of sticky notes, small sticky notes for plotting out any sort of communication. Once you've done the analysis and you have something you're going to communicate to say, okay, who's your audience? What's the message? And now what pieces of content are going to support that? That and not inadvertently work against you, right?

It's very much like the jagged mountain that we talked about earlier, where there's a big desire on, you know, if you've done the analysis or you've done some sort of in depth study, there's an understandable desire to want to take everything you've done and communicate that. But that would be taking that jagged mountain that we talked about earlier and trying to get your audience to sit with you through every up and down that you face.

And a lot of that's not going to matter to them at the end of the day. It matters to you. It was hard work. It took time. You needed to go through it, probably, to get to your result. But for any audience, it's going to be a subset of that. Or it might be higher level in some cases. And so that's really where the storytelling comes in, is understanding which pieces, which ups and downs, are going to be the ones that you need to communicate to your audience Given what they need and who they are and what you want them to do.

And so we spent a lot of time just getting people to understand that and giving tools to plot that. Again, low tech paper, pen, post it kind of tools. We also spend time on just the basics of graphs. And the graphs that are used most commonly in a business setting, and it's, the few, I mean, it doesn't span much beyond what we talked about with Daphne, honestly, it's bars and lines that you should probably be using most of the time.

So understanding when do you choose the different ones, what are the pros and cons of each and then when it comes to visualizing data for purposes of communicating, we spend time. talking about decluttering, getting rid of the elements that don't need to be there, and then focusing attention on what remains so that your audience can't help but see what you want them to see.

And the most powerful thing there is to use color sparingly. So if you make everything gray and just put color where you want people to look right, first. And then if you add words to that to tell them why you want them to look there, then that becomes a graph that is effective that you can now weave into that overarching story that you've planned.

So I think it's. Part story, it's part data and graphs, it's part design, and it's mostly just it all boils down to being thoughtful about how you're communicating to other people, because I think too often, we communicate with ourselves in mind and a story. Assume that other people are going to see what we see That other people have the same preferences as we do, and so just a little bit of time thinking about the people on the receiving end of what you're going to communicate and then doing these things with them in mind just helps communication happen better everywhere.

Adel Nehme: So quite a few things to unpack there, but one thing I want to focus on first is creating compelling visualizations, but I couldn't agree more here on using color sparingly, making sure you focus the attention of the audience. And something I often think about is that people's attention is becoming a rarer and rarer commodity as time goes on.

There's so much stimulus in today's world. We're so connected. I think, you know, an average workday, you get so many notifications that it's easy to miss. So many details in a lot of the graphs and tables that we see. So maybe I'd love to, if you can expand a bit more on the relationship between attention and how we perceive visualizations.

And then a bit, Go into a bit more depth of, okay, how do we actually create a data visualization that sticks and is compelling?

Cole Knaflic: So when it comes to attention, there have been different studies on this, but ballpark wise, you put something in front of someone, you've got like on the order of three to eight seconds during which that person is going to decide whether they're going to continue to look at what you've put in front of them or turn their attention onto something else, right?

Move on to the next thing. So if you've focused attention such that the first place people look is what you want them to see, you're able to capitalize on that. even if they don't spend more time. And that's where the pairing of color and words or contrast and words becomes really powerful. Because if you think of a graph or a slide and you draw attention via contrast, color again is the most powerful tool for that or one of the easiest, to where you want them to look.

And then you title the slide or put an annotation right there that why you want them to look there. Now you've given them some information. And then when you talk about stickiness, or if you're wanting to hold their attention longer, then you have to make that information relevant to them. Why should they care?

So if you can think of anytime you show a graph, you need to answer the question for your audience of so what, what does this mean for me? Why should I care? Why should I spend more than a cursory glance? at this. And if you can do that, if you can pique their interest by this thing that is unusual and important for some reason, then you can get them to stick with it and remember it and like actually read the details.

And certainly when you are there in person, live with them, there are ways that you can use yourself as the communicator and your voice and your body and embed things into a story in different ways. ways. But when you're just relying on the thing that you create to do that, think color and words and using those intentionally and thoughtfully are going to be the lowest hanging fruit.

And again, coming back to audience, what are they going to care about? how do you make them care about the thing you want them to care about and where do those things meet?

Adel Nehme: Yeah, there's an additional component here, which is narrative, right? Being able to build a story and also present that story in front of a room of executives, colleagues, etc. Now, putting here written reports on the side, So, I think a big, probably a big idea or a big challenge data practitioners or analysts or data scientists have, right, is I'm not necessarily a presenter on stage, right?

I'm not, I'm not like the most excellent at public speaking. How do you get better at public speaking? How do you get better at presenting data insights to a broad group of folks? Yeah.

Cole Knaflic: It's a myth, right? There

Adel Nehme: Yeah. I, I agree is that

Cole Knaflic: very few, like, naturally fantastic speakers. Most of the speakers you see who are good have put in an incredible amount of practice. And I think for me, the story that people tell themselves, right, I'm not, I'm not a public speaker is the same as the story we talked about earlier.

I'm not a numbers person. Like, no, put those outside. Anybody can do both of these things and do them well. I'm, an introvert. My comfortable place is behind my computer, in a room, by myself, right? That's my happy place. However, I learned pretty early on that if I stayed there, I wasn't going to be able to do the things that I wanted to do or impact the kind of people change that I wanted to, and for me personally, it was just my, I think, early just passion around visualizing data and wanting to teach others how to do this that carried me through some probably really awful presentations because at least the passion was contagious.

And then over time was able to hone the speaking skills to catch up. But I think that is actually a really important thing is, You need to find the thing that interests you about what you're talking about, what you need to communicate. Because if you aren't interested, if you don't sound interested, and you need to find the nugget of interesting thing to genuinely sound interested, there is no way you can get other people interested.

So I think figuring out why it's interesting to you, because then that in and of itself can be helpful in both, I think, propelling somebody who might have some nerves, but then also in connecting with an audience. Practice is also really important, and I am a big fan of practicing aloud. And this, this should be by yourself, right, because what you don't want, and especially in a case where it's something important, you don't want the important words coming out of your mouth to be for the first time when you're doing it for real.

Like again, if there are any nerves involved, that's not going to be a good scenario for you or for anybody else in that room. So a huge proponent of practicing aloud. And when I'm practicing aloud, I tend to do it in, and I do this before any important thing that I'm going to do when I have a topic and I'm going to talk and I know what is going to be ahead of time, which is I practice aloud with my materials.

I practice aloud without my materials. And those are the most important because practicing aloud with your materials and. I think allowed is important because it forces you to verbalize the transition between things, versus if you're in your head flipping through graphs or slides, it's easy to focus on what you're going to say in a given place but not necessarily the connections.

And actually, smooth transitions from one thing to the next can help an overall communication presentation or something that you're delivering to others feel really polished without your materials can be useful because it forces you to force your brain to do a lot of work, forces you to remember what comes next as you're talking.

And with. out the cue of your slides or your graphs. And if you can do it, then it'll make it much easier. You will be, you'll have to use less of your brain when you are there in the moment, which then leaves that open for some other things, leaves you open to be able to observe the posture of people in the room, which can give you cues on whether what you're saying is landing or not, or how you might adjust.

So practicing aloud and, and also practicing aloud, you may find that you talk through things in a different way that actually works better and so can lead to improvements in your supporting materials as well. And that really is the way to think about any communication you're going in with when you're the one presenting is you don't want slides or graphs to, compete with you.

They should be a helpful assistant. They, they can remind you of the next thing that you want to say. They shouldn't say the next thing you want to say. And often a little bit of animation in small ways, right? Things appearing or disappearing or becoming transparent can be helpful guides for how you speak.

 And then one more thing I'll say on this topic is just, especially for anyone who's nervous going in and if it's something important, I'm never a fan of memorizing, but I am a fan of committing certain things to memory. So if in your opening, you know, there are these three key points you want to hit, then practice that aloud in different ways, right?

Allow yourself to figure out what are those different pathways I can use to connect the three things and get there verbally. So, So that you have multiple different paths to draw on when you're there in the moment. Just means you won't be stuck searching for a word or trying to figure out how to get to the next thing because you've already committed that to memory.

And often it's just getting through that first like 30 seconds even that if that goes well, then you are fine being in the moment and the nerves subside and can help with the rest of it.

Adel Nehme: I've always felt that the scariest part of a presentation is the five minutes before the presentation, then when it starts it just clicks and it, even if it goes good or bad, right, like at least you're in the moment and then, yeah, you're in it and then it's like being on a rollercoaster in a lot of ways.

Cole Knaflic: One, if you can reframe, right, because the nervous energy that I think most people have before they do something important think of that as something that's going to fuel you. You just need to harness it and not let it overtake you.

Adel Nehme: Yeah. Do you find that there are activities that are like non work related that can help in becoming a better speaker? One thing that has helped me, for example, when I was a college student, I took theater classes, for example. Yeah. That really helped in like at least dispelling the nerves around being on stage in front of people, right?

Because I would do it three times a week almost.

Cole Knaflic: That's fantastic. And then you get used to not only do your nerves subside, but then you get used to projecting your voice and moving your body and all of the, or you become aware of how you're doing that and watching others perform, you see what works and what doesn't. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that, that I think we, all can do, even just watching other people or putting ourselves in positions that might feel a little uncomfortable, but where it's productive discomfort.

I mean, you ask about what, what other things non work. I know. So on the theater event, Simon on my team always talks about the improv

Adel Nehme: Yeah, improv class is great.

Cole Knaflic: As being really useful. I I've never done anything on stage before this, but one thing you can do is just, Talk to other people and use every opportunity to be observant in how that goes, how that exchange is.

How do you sound? What are you doing when people are leaning in and smiling and interested? And this doesn't have to be anything about work. This can be when you're talking to your friends or, you know, a family member and notice, How you can take the best parts of that and tap into that when you're talking about work things as well.

I think when it comes to work, just talking about your work with colleagues can be a useful thing, right? You can see when people tune out. And then use that to say, all right, what happened there? Did I go into more detail that they didn't care about? Was I being too monotone in how I was doing things?

Did I need something visual or something else there to break things up? Where you can take these cues and actually really use them to hone and roll into how you practice speaking.

Adel Nehme: Maybe, you know, as we wrap up here, it's Data and AI Literacy Month. Tons of organizations are looking at, Watching this, listening to this, thinking about, okay, how do I integrate data storytelling into my organizational culture? Right? You've advised a lot of organizations on how to approach this.

How do you build a strong culture of data storytelling within your team, within your workforce? What are the first steps?

Cole Knaflic: I think support for it certainly is one thing and, and that can be bottoms up or, or tops down where if you have, if there's a leader at your organization who cares and who understands the value of, you know, not just the Throwing data on a slide, but really taking time to weave that into a story because it does.

It takes time. It takes a different skill set than just turning out graphs. So if you have a leader who values that figure out how, how that can spread, right? Who might they influence? and how can you use that? I think there also is a great bottoms up approach. And honestly, as I think back through them, My different roles working in different analytic capacities, it was usually this or some combination of the two, which is pick things that are going to work well as data stories.

that would be, it's something where you need somebody to take a specific action and you are going to recommend that. And it may not even be specific. It might be you need to discuss this thing or you need to weigh these options, like some action that you need an audience to take at the end of it is the scenario that generally lends itself best to this versus any sort of like purely for information sort of communication.

if you can take the time to do some of the things we've talked about, right? Think about your audience, get clear on your message, plan your content in a low tech way, make sure your graphs make it clear via contrast and words, where to look and what to see what you find happen is when that works.

It just. Everybody sees it and then what you start to get is other people coming to you to say how did you do that or can you give me feedback on this or I saw that worked really well and don't get discouraged if it doesn't work beautifully the first time it's a skill that you've got to develop so you can use every time as learning and then decide what you might tweak or try differently the next time.

Or try it in a low risk space, Your weekly team update or something like that, where you can say, Hey, I just want to try something new today and get your reaction. I'm going to spend five minutes and go through this in story structure and let me know what you think, where you can, bring your team into this as well.

And then I think, In the right the culture is right, you can develop excitement through that if the culture is wrong, and these are skills that you really want to be using, then you have to decide. Are there ways for you to do that successfully in your current environment? Or do you need a different environment?

It's not every organization or culture is ready for it, I think. And you try to go too far beyond the norm, that's not usually a recipe for success.

Adel Nehme: And then, maybe as we close out, Cole, how do you see the data storytelling skillset evolving over the next few years? Especially when you have a big elephant in the room, such as Generative AI, that can, help out, assist, or maybe hurt a data story. So I'd love to learn how you see the evolving nature of the skill set as well as how it intersects with the emerging tools here.

Cole Knaflic: Yeah, I think for this, I'll come back to Daphne and the ability to ask good questions, because that becomes a really important skill as we think about doing things with AI. And as we think about not just taking, The first thing it spits out, but really honing it is, you know, quote unquote, thinking and doing things of the ability to ask questions, the ability to be skeptical and dig in and you know, frame things so that you fully understand when using it, what you're getting out of it and what that means and assumptions are going in so that you can understand when it makes sense to do that and when it might not.

So again, if we can start teaching that ability sooner, I think these skills will naturally evolve so that we can be using these new technologies in smart ways. So teach your kids first and Daphne can teach everybody. She's cute for all ages.

Adel Nehme: A hundred percent, I couldn't agree more. Everyone do get the book Daphne Draws Data. It's an amazing children's book. Very, very useful. And I think this is a great place to end today's episode, Cole. Thank you so much for coming on DataFramed.

Cole Knaflic: Thank you, Adele. This was fun.