From raw data to a story the boss will act on

Management doesn't want your pivot table. They want to know what happened, why, and what to do.

My four-step structure

• Headline: one sentence with the main number ("Sales grew 18%, but the South fell 21%")
• Three insights: biggest contributor, fastest mover, biggest risk
• One action: specific, owned and dated
• Appendix: the data, for anyone who wants to check

Engineering habits that help

As a mechanical engineer I learned to ask "what's the root cause?" before "what's the fix?". The same works in business data: a drop in sales is a symptom, and pricing, coverage or competition is the cause.

Try it: the "Raw Data → Story" tool on my homepage turns a sales table into a headline, insights and an action.