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storytelling with data #90: ask smart questions (rebroadcast)

·41 min·2 clips

A six-year-old's dessert negotiation teaches us how to ask smarter questions.

The episode returns to the habit of asking smart questions before making a chart or a claim. Mike introduces it from company HQ in Milwaukee and says it was one of his favorite episodes from his first few months at SWD. Listening to it helped him understand what he would need to do to become a data storyteller. Cole lays out ten practical questions: five for exploring data and five more for explaining it. One useful prompt asks how things vary or do not vary by category. That can mean region, product line, customer type, or part of the business. Cohorts can also help when data can be lined up from a shared starting point. The point is to look past the total and ask whether a shift is happening everywhere or only in a few places. That distinction can change the action you take. Cole points to a client example with forecasts across different regions. The original bars and data table made the pattern hard to see. A closer look showed that the aggregate story was misleading: the initial forecast was much lower than the updated one overall, but that did not hold for most regions. One region, EMEA, was driving the total. Without that breakdown, the team could have made a broad decision on the wrong basis. The episode keeps coming back to the idea that good communication starts with better framing. It treats questions as a tool, not a formality, and ends by stressing that you should think ahead to how you will be presenting. Thinking broadly, and early, is time well spent.

As heard by us

A practical reminder to ask better questions before the numbers get too loud.

Storytelling with Data #90 revisits an early episode to underscore a simple lesson: better communication starts with better questions. Mike Cisneros frames the rebroadcast as a look back at the show’s early days, and the structure stays clear, moving through five questions for…

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Why you'd press play

You want a sharper question set before you explain the data.

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