I was drawn to Chris Jordan's talk (below) by an rss feed which talked about the plight of the albatross. That talk is actually a different video, but this one has something I had to share. Chris demonstrates how we can use visual images to help us understand gigantic numbers. In today's society we struggle with numbers; the scale of them. As a result he believes that, as culture; we are not feeling enough.
I was struck by his reference to the 9/11 attacks. Over 3000 people died, the world was appalled and rightly so. Everyone was talking about it and was affected by it on some level. To paraphrase Chris's numbers, the 9/11 attacks happened on a Tuesday. In the following three days approximately the same number of people also died: of smoking related diseases. What's more, every day since, another 1,100 people die from the same cause. Yet nobody talks about that.
Chris makes a powerful point! On a day-to-day basis do we really care enough? As you will see in the video Chris's work helps us visualise some of these gigantic numbers. Hopefully they encourage us to feel more. He explains that if we feel more, we can change more. His comment is not that one issue is bigger than another, or one should get more attention. He merely states, "This is who we are today."
For me this is one of the best demonstrations of how you can take impossibly large and often complex numbers and present them in a way that makes a connection; a way that tells a story.
In the same way Chris has done this for some of the big issues in society, financial storytelling can do the same in business. The numbers may be impossibly large, often they may be complex - but if they tell a story that can be communicated effectively, they can drive real change.
Comments