Data is not useful until it becomes information, and that's because data is hard for human beings to digest.

This is even more true if it's news that contradicts what we've already decided to believe. Can you imagine the incredible mindshift that Mercator's map of the world caused in the people who saw it? One day you believed something, and then a few minutes later, something else.

We repeatedly underestimate how important a story is to help us make sense of the world.

Jess Bachman wants to help you turn the data about the US budget (the largest measured expenditure in the history of mankind, I'm betting) into information that actually changes the way you think.

Hence Death and Taxes, which we're publishing today. The new version belongs on the wall of every classroom, every public official's office, and perhaps in the home of every person who pays taxes.

It is not possible to spend less than ten minutes looking at this, and more probably, you'll be engaged for much longer. And it's definitely not possible to walk away from it unchanged. That's a lot to ask for a single sheet of paper, but that's the power of visualizing data and turning it into information.

Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.

Leaders, on the other hand, know where they'd like to go, but understand that they can't get there without their tribe, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.

Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.

We need both. But we have to be careful not to confuse them. And it helps to remember that leaders are scarce and thus more valuable.

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