#178 Making SMARTER Decisions with Lori Silverman, author of Business Storytelling for Dummies

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Feb 1, 2024

Lori Silverman, a business strategist and author of "Business Storytelling for Dummies," shares her insights on decision-making in the corporate world. She emphasizes the power of storytelling as a tool for impactful decision-making. Lori introduces the SMARTER framework, advocating for a balance of data and intuition to build trust among stakeholders. Additionally, she discusses the importance of fostering a strong decision-making culture and equipping employees with the tools they need to make informed choices, all while navigating group dynamics.

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INSIGHT

Language Gap

Business leaders focus on problems and decisions.
Data practitioners focus on tools and use cases, creating a language gap.

INSIGHT

Data-Informed, Not Data-Driven

Decisions require emotion and intuition, not just data.
Develop a documented, robust decision-making methodology.

INSIGHT

Brain's Preference

The human brain prefers narrative stories without data.
Data visualizations are still data, which the brain finds less engaging.

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We don’t think about every decision we make. Some decisions are easy and intuitive, others can be riddled with doubt. In a business setting, decision-making is often crucial, and with that comes pressure to ensure we’re making the right decisions in the best way possible. We can often accompany decision-making with context, providing a narrative for how we might approach a decision, citing what data and insights have had significant input into our choices. But how do we approach storytelling and decision-making to breed success? There’s probably no better person to guide us through the ins and outs of decision-making than the co-author of Business Storytelling For Dummies.

Lori L. Silverman is the owner of Partners for Progress, a management consulting firm. As a business strategist, she has consulted with organizations in fifteen industries including financial services, insurance, manufacturing and petroleum companies, government entities, and professional associations. As a keynote speaker, Lori has positively impacted the lives of thousands of people. She has appeared on over fifty radio and television shows to speak about using stories in the workplace and is the co-author of Critical SHIFT and Stories Trainers Tell.

She’s a pioneer in the business storytelling field, author of five books, and is known worldwide for her work in collaborative data-informed decision-making.

In the episode, Richie and Lori cover common problems in business decision-making, connecting decision-making to business processes, analytics and decision-making, integrating data practitioners and decision-makers, the role of data visualization and narrative storytelling, the SMARTER decision-making methodology, the importance of intuition, challenges faced when applying decision-making methodologies and much more.

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