Exercise $1\mathrm{.}15$: storyboard!

For this exercise, we'll create a storyboard using the CFO's Q$1$ financial update introduced in Exercise $1\mathrm{.}12.$ As a reminder, the background is as follows:

You are the Chief Financial Officer for a national retailer. You are responsible for managing the financial well$-$being of the company and your duties include analyzing and reporting on the company's financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing corrective actions. Your team of financial analysts just completed a review of Q$1$ and have identified that the company is likely to end the fiscal year with a loss of $$45$ million if operating expenses and sales follow the latest projections.

Because of a recent economic downturn, an increase in sales is unlikely. Therefore, you believe the projected loss can only be mitigated by controlling operating expenses and that management should implement an expense control policy $("$expense control initiative ABC"$)$ immediately. You will be reporting the Q$1$ quarterly results at an upcoming Board of Directors meeting and are planning your communication $-$ a summary of financial results in a slide deckthat you will present to the board with your recommendation.

Your goals for the presentation are twofold:

For the Board of Directors to understand the long$-$term implications of ending the year at a net loss, and

Get agreement from the daily operating managers $($CEO and executives$)$ to implement "expense control initiative $AB{C}^{\text{'}\text{'}}$ immediately.

the BIG IDEA worksheet

storytellinglul data$*$

Identify a project you are working on where you need to communicate in a data$-$driven way. Reflect upon and fill out the following.

PROJECT

$q,$

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

$(1)$ List the primary groups or individuals to

$(3)$ What does your audience care about? whom you'll be communicating.

$(4)$ What action does your audience need to take?

$(2)$ If you had to narrow that to a single person, who would that be$?$

WHAT IS AT STAKE?

What are the benefits if your audience acts What are the risks if they do not? in the way that you want them to$?$

FORM YOUR BIG IDEA

It should:

$(1)$ articulate your point of view,

$(2)$ convey what's at stake, and be a complete $($and single!$)$ sentence.