Business storytelling

01The problem

A good dashboard lets people explore. But at the quarterly review, the managing director has 15 minutes and wants to know three things: How did we do? What changed? What should we do? A dashboard that makes her hunt for the answers loses the room. For that meeting you need a story: a short sequence that leads to a decision.

02The concept

The story structure

1. Context: where we are. "H1 revenue grew 19% to ₦290.7m."
2. Complication: what changed or what's at risk. "But the growth came from two regions, and North West nearly halved."
3. Cause: what the data says about why. "North West customers didn't leave. They ordered half as often."
4. Recommendation: what to do, and how we'll know it worked. "Visit the top five North West accounts this month; target 150 order lines next half-year."

Know your audience. Executives want the conclusion first and detail on request. Operational managers want the detail for their area. Build the story page for the first, and the explorable pages for the second.

Tools in Power BI

Honesty. A story selects; it mustn't distort. Keep axes at zero for bars, compare equal periods, mention the price rise when you show revenue growth, and show the counts behind percentages.

03Example

A three-page story for the review:

1. "H1 2026: up 19%, but unevenly." Cards (revenue, YoY %), and a bar chart of the change in revenue by region, in naira, sorted: Lagos and South West large positives, North West a large negative in red.
2. "North West: same customers, half the orders." Three cards for H1 2025 vs 2026 (revenue, customers who ordered, order lines), and a monthly line of North West order lines with an annotation where the decline starts.
3. "What we recommend." Three short recommendations, each with its target KPI.

Buttons at the bottom of each page move to the next.

04Walkthrough

1. Add a measure for the change in naira: Revenue Change = [Revenue] - [Revenue LY].
2. On a new page, build a bar chart of Revenue Change by region for the first half (filter Date[Month Number] to 1–6 and Date[Year] to 2026). Sort descending; colour negatives red via conditional formatting (Format → Bars → Colors → fx → rules: less than 0 → red).
3. Title the page with the finding.
4. Build page 2 with North West filtered, and add an annotation text box.
5. Insert → Buttons → Navigator → Page navigator, or single buttons with Action → Page navigation.
6. Rehearse: can you tell the story in three minutes using only these pages?

05Practice

06Check your understanding