Billions of dollars are spent on data. Analytics. Business intelligence. Modeling and profiling. Surveys and focus groups.

This data is presented to decision makers. But that’s not the same thing as saying that data is driving the decisions.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re in a meeting with executives. The Marketing Department presents data supporting the necessity of a change in the way your company is currently doing business. The execs politely listen to the data read-out, then announce their plan to continue pursuing the current course of action. Why?

Lots of reasons. The data went against their intuition. The data was presented by a department other than their own. The data threatened someone’s fiefdom. The data pointed to a course of action that was difficult or complex. The data was too math-intensive to hold their interest.

If you ask these execs whether they are making data-driven decisions, they will usually say yes and actually believe it. They are, in the sense that they are making decisions in the same room where data was presented. But that’s not the same thing, is it?

It’s not enough that the data is solid. It has to be sold.

Sometimes the people who are the best at crunching the data aren’t the best at presenting it or pursuading others that it’s important. That’s why the presentation of data is best when it’s collaborative. Gather data, make it bullet-proof, weave it into a story non-geeks can understand. Then, let the best communicator on your team (or someone else’s team) tell the story and sell the story to the people who need to make decisions from it. Good analysis only gets you halfway there – pay attention to making it come alive.