Home › Posts tagged storytelling:

Tag: storytelling:

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

National Trust CIO Jon Townsend is laying down some home truths on sustainability. Five years ago, he notes that the message in the IT industry was not of reaching net zero, ESG commitments or being more sustainable, but rather of businesses becoming “bigger, better, faster.”

“We need to change that conversation,” he says, “and get [sustainability] higher on the agenda.”

Townsend says the COP-26 agreement in Glasgow, Scotland, last year, visible changes in weather conditions, and increased awareness on climate change are turning the tide and, as CIO of the UK’s biggest conservation charity, he acknowledges that the 125-year-old non-profit has no choice but to be an “example for others to follow”.

After all, if the National Trust, formed on the principle that humans want ‘quiet, beauty and space,’ can’t get this right, what chance do other institutions have?

“It’s not easy for anybody,” says Townsend, “but it starts for me with transparency around what you’re trying to achieve, and the scale of the problem you’re trying to overcome. You can either be proactive and see [sustainability] as a net positive for your organisation, or you can wait for your consumers, supporters, members, and customers to tell you they care about this.”

Sustainability starts with visibility and storytelling

National Trust oversees almost 800 miles of coastline, 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres) of land and one million pieces of art across 500 historic buildings.

Given this real estate, Townsend admits that the charity is better placed than others to respond to the climate crisis, yet he maintains that it faces a significant challenge around data and reporting, especially when attempting to review scope 3 emissions, indirect emissions that occur in the company’s supply chain. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from a company’s owned or controlled sources; scope 2 covers indirect emissions generated through purchased electricity, steam, heating or cooling; and scope 3 covers waste disposal, employee commuting and business travel, and purchased goods and services.

Jon Townsend

“The first thing is to make sure we have the data so we understand scope one, two and three emissions,” says Townsend, who formerly held senior technology and security roles within the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), prior to becoming director of technology and information security at the National Trust in October 2015.

“It’s not just about carbon capture, it’s also about reducing emissions because the simple equation is you may capture more, but if you’re still emitting that same level of carbon, you’re not going to solve the problem,” he says. “It’s important for us, but also for IT organisations everywhere, to think about scope three emissions, who you’re working with, and how seriously they’re taking the issue.”

For Townsend, who’s also the non-profit’s CSO, getting results comes down to storytelling, much in the same way as relaying a message to the CFO may do so in cost savings. In other words, conveying the impact of sustainability in ways the organisation’s employees can easily understand.

“It’s identifying the areas where you can make a difference, and telling that story to people,” he says.

He does, however, have a warning to how such storytelling plays out.

“We make sure we don’t sound too preachy, or like it’s some sort of parent-child thing,” he says. “It’s storytelling in a way that people get it, it’s easy for them to consume, and something they can relate to another on.”

IT sustainability projects in the works

As part of its 2025 business strategy, the National Trust has committed to reducing its conversation backlog, reducing energy use by 15% and sourcing 50% of energy from renewables by 2020-21 against its 2008 usage as a baseline.

It’s also made commitments to reach carbon net zero in operations by 2030, including ambitions to plant 20 million trees and create 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of new wildlife habitats.

Townsend’s IT department has its own role to play in reaching these objectives, from making better technology decisions and scrutinising IT suppliers’ own green credentials, to educating the workplace on their carbon impact.

For example, with suppliers, the team is working with hardware partners to reduce plastic packaging, making sustainability a key decision factor in partner and system selection during the RFP process, and looking for greater transparency from suppliers on scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

Systems no longer being properly utilised, such as data analytics platforms not in use, are swiftly decommissioned as well, says Townsend.

The National Trust is also migrating away from old, energy-intensive data centres, cutting back on content on its new website, and introducing smart IoT sensors in buildings to monitor emissions.

The communication to, and education of, the workforce is just as important. Townsend says the non-profit is attempting to cut down on excess emails and PowerPoint presentations — even advising of the trees saved on each virtual meeting.

Plus, within the IT department, the team uses technology to monitor emissions to reduce data storage for more efficient archiving.

Measuring effectiveness, of course, is vital to see what works and what doesn’t.

“We are helping the organisation understand its overall emissions, and measure total emissions caused by technology—both within the organisation and within our supply chain,” says Townsend of sustainability metrics, while still calling for suppliers to be as transparent as possible about emissions from their own supply chains. He adds that the National Trust measures its progress in this area by tracking everything from carbon capture, water management and use of materials, through to how its activities, projects and supply chains impact nature and people. The organisation is also measuring its sustainability impact in accordance with frameworks, such as BREEAM, LEED and WELL.

The CIO’s role in sustainability

CIOs have developed a greater role and responsibility in prioritising sustainability within organisations, from inputting into strategy and becoming executive sponsors on sustainability programs, to actively contributing to ESG goals through their IT strategies. And yet previous studies have suggested that sustainability is way down their priority list.

It’s not always straightforward to pin down what the sustainability objectives are in the CIO’s role but Townsend believes they should support, rather than lead, the sustainability initiative outright.

“It needs to be somebody who understands the impact on nature, farming, and our let state,” he says of National Trust’s position, pointing to the non-profit’s land and nature director as the most obvious candidate to lead the sustainability charge. “We have many thousands of properties and holiday cottages that we rent out. That isn’t a CIO function to me.”

At the National Trust, which has almost six million members, Townsend has regular conversations with investment boards on the topic, and invites the charity’s sustainability team to meet the IT department and join his quarterly leadership meeting so he can understand what more he and his team can do as an IT organisation.

He does, however, admit that this role may vary. For example, a smaller financial services firm, one leading with digital technologies and with little real estate, may take a different view. Ultimately, he says, sustainability should be every executive’s priority.

Cultivating cloud-based organisational regrowth

The National Trust reported losing £200m in operating income through the COVID-19 pandemic, with Townsend admitting it was a tricky time for an organisation reliant on supporter funding.

“Most organisations have had a tough time in the last couple of years and it’s no different for us,” he says. “However, one of the lessons I think we learnt is that technology underpins everything we do.”

Digital channels have become another way of reaching supporters and customers, with one such fundraising campaign raising £1 million in 21 days for the National Trust to buy 700,000 square metres of land around the White Cliffs of Dover. More recently through COVID-19, the National Trust utilised digital channels to offer virtual tours of places and gardens, as well as baking recipes.

With the Trust now in its second wave of digital transformation, it’s delivering a new membership and fundraising platform, built on Salesforce’s Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Experience Cloud, and a new enterprise data platform built on Snowflake and hosted on Microsoft’s Azure, which is used along with Alteryx and Tableau to provide data analytics, insights and reporting.

In addition, the Trust has delivered a new Enterprise Integration platform using Microsoft Azure Integration Services, and is building a digital platform for National Trust’s website, utilising the Bloomreach CMS and hosted on AWS. Townsend says the website will improve accessibility features and should reduce the carbon impact of the website by 50%.

The hope is to join up digital and physical experiences so the National Trust can continue to help people through a difficult time.

“We want people to be able to experience nature, beauty and history,” says Townsend, “and to find some relief from all the pressures they experience in the rest of their lives.”

CIO, Data Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

To be a truly data-driven enterprise, organizations today must go beyond merely analyzing data. Rather, business experts and IT leaders must transform relevant data into compelling stories that key stakeholders can readily comprehend — and leverage to make better business decisions.

This vital skill is known as data storytelling, and it is a key factor for organizations looking to surface actionable information from their data, without getting lost in the sea of charts and numbers typical of traditional data reporting.

Following is a look at what data storytelling entails and how IT and analytics leaders can put it to work to make good on data’s decision-making potential.

What is data storytelling?

Data storytelling is a method for conveying data-driven insights using narratives and visualizations that engage audiences and help them better understand key conclusions and trends.

But that’s often easier said than done.

“Telling stories with data can be difficult,” says Kathy Rudy, chief data and analytics officer at global technology research and advisory firm ISG.

For Rudy, data storytelling begins with knowing your audience.

“Remember to start with who your main characters are, that is, the audience for your data story. What information is most important to them? Structure your data story so you anticipate the next question the audience will have by thinking like the reader of the story,” says Rudy, adding that, in her 20 years in benchmarking and data analytics, she has had to learn to tell a clear and concise story using data to validate ISG’s recommendations.

The first hurdle most data storytellers face is gaining acceptance for the validity of the data they present, she says. The best way to do this is to hold data validation and understanding sessions to get the question of data validity out of the way.

The goal of the data storyteller is to clear up all questions as to the source of the data, the age of the data, and so on, so that in subsequent views of the data, the storyteller isn’t continually defending the data, Rudy says.

“Don’t get overly technical or you will lose the audience,” she advises. “In the case of IT benchmarking, they don’t want to know about the technology stack, just that the data is relevant, secure, current, comparable, and accurate.”

Elements of data storytelling

Data storytelling consists of data visualization, narrative, and context, says Peter Krensky, a director and analyst on the business analytics and data science team at Gartner.

“With visualization, a picture is worth a thousand words,” he says. “How are you making the story visually engaging? Are you using a graphic or iconography? That doesn’t mean it can’t be a table or very dry information, but you’d better have a visual component.”

The narrative is the story itself — the who, what, where, why. It’s the emotional arc, Krensky says. “If it’s about sales forecasting for the quarter, are we doing great, or are people going to lose their jobs?”

Context is what the people hearing this story need to know. Why one sales representative is always outperforming all the other sales reps is an example of the context for a data story, Krensky says.

Grace Lee, chief data and analytics officer at The Bank of Nova Scotia (known as Scotiabank), says blending context and narrative requires a keen understanding of what makes a story compelling.

“The way that we think about stories, if we remove the data term, it needs a plot that you care about, it needs characters that you root for, and it requires a destination or an outcome that you believe in and aspire to,” she says.

Being able to put the data into context in the form of a narrative allows people to care more and to understand what the action is that comes out of it, Lee says. In addition to focusing on storytelling as a discipline, Lee’s team is also working to create more storytellers across the organization.

“The way we’re educating people around storytelling is really around action orientation, helping people create those narratives, providing more of the context, and allowing people to see the clear line between the data, the insight, and the action to come,” she says.

Lee sees the role of Scotiabank’s data and analytics organization as the storyteller for the enterprise because it’s only in the data that some of the insights about what customers need and want appear.

Key steps in data storytelling

Lars Sudmann, owner of Sudmann & Co., a Belgium-based consulting and management training network, offers insight into the steps that go into data storytelling.

Identify the ‘aha’ insights: One of the greatest pitfalls of data-based presentations is the “data dump.” Rather than overwhelm the audience with data and visualizations, CIOs and data analytics officers should identify one to three key “aha” insights from the data and focus on these. What are the surprising, absolutely key things one needs to know? Identify them and build your presentation around them, Sudmann says. Share the genesis story of the data: To tell a good story with data, a good starting point is the genesis, i.e., the origin of the data. Where does it come from? This is especially important when storytellers present data sets for the first time. Transform surprising turning points into engaging transitions: When storytellers present data and facts, they should share where the data/graphs/trendlines make “surprising” moves. Is there a jump? Is there a turning point? Doing so can provide compelling transitions to deeper analysis, for example: “Normally we would think the data does X, but here we see that it declined. Let’s explore why this happened.”Develop your data: One of the biggest issues in giving presentations today is that people throw heavy data on the screen and then play “catch-up,” with words, such as “This is a crowded slide, but let me explain.” “This might be difficult, but…” Instead, storytellers should develop their data step-by-step. “I am not a fan of fancy animations, but for instance in PowerPoint there is one animation that I recommend: the ‘appear’ animation,” Sudmann says. “With it one can harmonize what one sees and what one says and with that a data story can be built step-by-step.” Emphasize and highlight to bring your story to life: Once storytellers have identified the flow and key aspects of their data stories, it’s important to emphasize and highlight key points with their voices and body language. Show the data, point to it on screen, walk to it, circle it — then it comes to life, Sudmann says. Have a ‘hero’ and a ‘villain’: To make stories more engaging, data storytellers should also consider developing a hero, e.g., the “good tickets,” and a villain, e.g., “the bad tickets raised because of not reading the FAQs,” and then show their development over time, in different departments, as well as the “hero’s journey” to success, Sudmann advises. 

Data storytelling tips for success

Rudy is a firm believer in letting the data unfold by telling a story so that when the storyteller finally gets to the punch line or the “so what, do what” there is full alignment on their message.

As such, storytellers should start at the top and set the stage with the “what.” For example, in the case of an IT benchmark, the storyteller might start off saying that the total IT spend is $X million per year (remember, the data has already been validated, so everyone is nodding).

The storyteller should then break it down into five buckets: people, hardware, software, services, other (more nodding), Rudy says. Then further break it down into these technology areas: cloud, security, data center, network, and so on (more nodding).

Next the storyteller reveals that based on the company’s current volume of usage, the unit cost is $X for each technology area and explains that compared to competitors of similar size and complexity, the storyteller’s organization spends more in certain areas, for example, security (now everyone is really paying attention), Rudy says.

“You have thus led your audience to the ‘so what’ part of the story, namely, that there are areas for improvement,” she says. “The next question in your audience’s mind is mostly likely, ‘Why?’ And finally, ‘So what do we about it?’”

The rest of the story leverages a common understanding of the validity of the data to make recommendations for change and the actions necessary to make those changes, according to Rudy. Data in this story created the credibility necessary to establish a call to arms, a reason to change that is indisputable.

And taking the old adage “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” into consideration, it’s crucial for data storytellers to consider the medium various individuals are using to consume information and what times they’re accessing this information.

“The pandemic has definitely helped in the shift of allowing thought workers to work from home,” says Kim Herrington, senior analyst for data leadership, organization, and culture at Forrester Research. “And a lot of times you’re communicating with thought workers that are across the globe. So it’s important to think about the communication software that you’re using and the communication norms that you have with your team.”

Analytics, Data Science, ROI and Metrics