Why this conversation matters
One of the hardest parts of embedding good insight communication practice isn’t helping teams ask better questions or structure a clearer narrative, it’s helping them let go of detail.
As part of our ongoing Insight Communication Expert (ICE) interview series, I spoke with Claire Rainey, Head of Insight at VMO2, about what changed after conducting the storytelling and activation training, what took longer to land, and where insight still struggles to cut through at senior levels.
Claire’s reflections highlight a familiar tension for many insight, data and analytics teams: the desire to be rigorous and thorough versus the need to be concise, senior-ready and decision-focused. This interview, alongside others in the series, is feeding into our upcoming white paper on how insight is activated in organisations.
What shifted quickly after the training
One of the most immediate changes was the adoption of upfront one-page thinking. Claire describes how the team quickly became more disciplined in clarifying the positioning early, and using one-pagers to frame the question, context and recommendation before building slides. This worked particularly well as an opening device in decks, helping teams align before getting into the detail.
The habits that really stuck
Two habits stood out as having the biggest impact.
The first was shorter, high-level versions of the outputs. Claire shared a powerful example of a two-month project that had been meticulously built but largely ignored. The turning point came when the work was re-cut into a 20-minute, senior-level version. That act of distillation unlocked momentum, and recommendations that previously failed to land suddenly began to cut through.
The second habit was peer-to-peer sharing. By actively circulating strong one-page examples within the team, Claire saw confidence grow. Seeing a peer produce something clear and impactful made others think, “I can do that.”
The mindset shift that made the biggest difference
The instinct to show all the work – months of analysis and every chart – remains strong. Yet this is precisely what causes challenging messages to get lost. The more complex and detailed the deck becomes, the harder it is for senior stakeholders to engage with the core point. So, letting go of that comfort blanket has been one of the hardest, but most important shifts.
“The team are more comfortable with telling a challenging story than they are with chopping out loads of the content from the challenging story. The problem is that the challenging story gets lost because they’ve gone on infinitum about it.”
Impact on decisions and senior engagement
Where storytelling has been most effective is in supporting decision-making at senior levels. Claire highlighted how one-page summaries and shorter decks have become particularly valuable for senior leadership teams, who often don’t need a full story. Concise documents focused on the strategic impact and commercial implications are far more likely to be discussed, championed and acted upon.
“I just think we still get aren’t always landing our insights sometimes because it isn’t senior enough and in the right format to be in the right forums. It is on us to package our work, so it is exec-ready for the right forums and committees. This reduces the risk of it being pulled from the agenda at the last minute pulled because they haven’t got time”.
Where embedding storytelling is still hard
Despite progress, challenges remain. Agency-led debriefs still arrive too late, too long, and too focused on exhaustive detail. Tight timelines mean teams often see decks only hours before delivery, resulting in sessions that are information heavy.
In these cases, Claire describes having to “go again”, re-synthesising the work after the fact to make it usable. This precursor to activation, she argues, needs far more time and focus than it typically receives.
“Activation and outputs should be at least 50% of the time, not 20%. But culturally, that just takes a while to shift.”
What needs to change next
Looking ahead, Claire sees two major priorities.
The first is strategic-level decks: five-slide, consultancy-style outputs that focus on judgement, trade-offs and opportunity cost rather than elaborate stories.
The second is better use of AI. Not to replace thinking or magically fix decks, but to support synthesis, summary creation and clarity. While AI is already helping with distilling findings and actions, it hasn’t yet cracked high-quality, executive-ready deck creation.
What this tells us about storytelling in practice
Claire’s reflections reinforce the point that insight communication doesn’t fail because teams can’t tell a story. It falters when teams struggle to prioritise clarity over completeness.
Embedding great insight communication requires:
- Permission to cut content
- Confidence to simplify
- Formats that match senior decision-making forums
- And time allocated to activation, not just analysis
These themes are echoed across multiple interviews and form the backbone of our upcoming white paper on insight communication and activation in practice. We will be sharing more insights from the interviews and the white paper over the coming months…so watch this space.