Learning & Development Data storytelling is the art of telling the outcomes from your learning programme using data and a narrative model.
It helps you understand how to find and use data that already exists in your business such as:
- Sales data from your CRM
- Customer service data from customer interactions
- Talent data looking at attrition and promotions
- Leadership data around project completions and budgets
and then using that as a way to gain buy-in for a programme to address these challenges.
You then pilot a programme and measure the effectiveness of it. You can use whichever measurement model you like, but the key point is to turn your findings into an emotionally resonant story. A story that puts your people at the heart of it and takes your audience through what they did, how they succeeded, what didn’t work and what would be different next time.
Again, you can use any narrative model that you like. I prefer a 7-step version of the Hero’s Journey model. Through experimentation, I’ve found that this is a great way to keep your audience focused and help them understand what goes into supporting their people.
As I set out on my own L&D Data Storytelling journey about 10 years ago I was focused on getting to Return on Investment. This focus gave me a purpose (and I did there, it’s quite straightforward to do) and while on this journey there were some surprising outcomes that I’ve found have improved me as an L&D practitioner that fall outside data or narratives.
Here are 6.
It’s made me a better learning experience designer
By understanding what performance outcomes are needed I can align the learning experience to meet these. This means the learning provided to a pilot group is specifically designed to meet the performance outcome. It cuts fat from the build time and enhances the colleague experience by providing exactly what’s required.
You don’t need to be a data visualisation expert
Early on I realised that people outside of L&D don’t need a constantly updating dashboard. They’re not going to use it and often can’t interpret the data. I’ve seen increased engagement from stakeholders by getting in front of them and telling to story, using easy-to-understand visuals that are specific to the programme to highlight key findings.
It’s helped me better understand organisational design
I had some idea of this field. By understanding how an organisation’s structure and working practices can block people’s ability to acquire and use new skills I was able to incorporate that into presenting ideas for pilot programmes. During the design, we could remove any organisation’s blockers and show what effect this removal had on the group. This is a key step in moving from correlated outcomes to causation outcomes.
This also shows your audience that you’re thinking strategically about how your offering works to improve the organisation and its people.
It’s helped me understand how finance works with L&D
This was a big one for me. By sitting down with finance teams, over the years I’ve understood how a business accounts for learning and development. Understanding how this is reported and how it affects how we measure the monetised ROI for some programmes.
From this, we can align our learning offering to how the business wants to grow and then show how we helped the business do that. Using the same reporting methods as the finance team shows you’re commercially astute and fiscally prudent.
It’s helped me appreciate what data different people want to see
Not everyone cares about Return on Investment. Some people care about how they feel about the programmes. That’s their No.1 concern.
I worked with a sales director on a programme and his main concern was that people felt they’d enjoyed it and had learnt something new. So I built the survey and gathered testimonials to show him what his people thought of it (it was very positive and where things could have been improved we improved them). The MD at the same business cared about the ROI. So we built the mechanism to gather that data.
The point is you can tailor your story to hone in on what people care about. This shows you’ve listed, draws people toward you (and your work!) and helps you keep the people you support front and centre.
It’s helped me be more courageous
Having a good quality data story that shows how we helped people grow and ho we helped the business save or make money has given me more confidence when putting forward suggestions for, and gaining investments in L&D.
And maybe we could all be a little more courageous.
If you want to better at the above, I encourage you to start learning about L&D Data Storytelling.
Thanks for reading. You can head back to the blog here or get a copy of Narratives and Numbers: 7 Steps to proving L&D’s value here.
