I'm at the Imagine Solutions conference in Naples, Florida, and change is on everyone's mind. But though we're ostensibly debating issues like health care, the environment, energy, and the economy, I keep picking up on the meta-debate about what kind of leadership these issues require.

Dean Ornish, for instance, spoke Monday morning about the motivational power of focusing on the positive. He's a doctor who champions preventive medicine (he's the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute). He lambasted what he called the false choices between what is "fun" and what is healthy, and instead called on medical leaders who focus on the benefits — the fun side effects, as it were — of living a healthier life. And to convince us, he presented intense quantitative data culled from his research: tumors arrested (and by how much), heart disease reversed (and how quickly), genes expressed and unexpressed (with color-coded diagrams.) (Yes, living healthier can actually turn harmful genes "off." But I digress.)

At the other end of the communication spectrum, but also supporting the goal of a healthier America, was Alexander Tsiaras. Rather than relying on charts and metrics, he showed us videos from his website, TheVisualMD.com, that explained things like blood pressure and heart disease with narrative — terrifying narrative. We watched as blood vessels constricted, as fat cells ballooned, and as concerned-looking doctors shook their heads and frowned at x-rays. Indeed, at more than one point I had to look away — on the big screen, the high-def narrative of disease was so powerful it was practically nauseating. Tsiaras explicitly argued that you need to have a good story to convince people to change — "statistics are soulless," he declared.

That statement felt slightly awkward coming on the heels of Christopher Hoenig's presentation of his new website, still yet to launch, called The State of the USA. It essentially compiles reams and reams of statistics — in Hoenig's way of thinking, metrics are the only way to know how we're really doing as a nation; those right-track-wrong-track polls just don't cut it. "It's easy to lie with statistics," he quipped, "But it's a lot easier to lie without them." His message was essentially a hopeful one: armed with the metrics (and some really nifty animated graphics) there's nothing the American people can't do! One can almost imagine the whitehaired politicians grumbling, "And we might have got away with it too, it weren't for you meddling kids and your data."

Combining both approaches fell to the environmental speakers on the docket. David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution elicited the biggest oohs and aahs from the audience by demonstrating the awe-inspiring camouflaging skills of an octopus. (No mean feat considering that the day also featured a performer who can seemingly bend spoons with his mind. However, perhaps the credit should properly go to the cephalopod.) Gallo then pivoted back to anxiety-as-motivator, talking about water scarcity: if the earth is, say, the size of a basketball, then the volume of water on it is only about the size of a ping pong ball. The amount of fresh water? A tiny dot no bigger than a pinprick. And while he had plenty of numbers dotted here and there throughout — we've explored less than 5% of the ocean, for instance — he evoked some very human stories, too: Every year, about 14 ships the size of the Titanic sink.

Which of these approaches — fear, hope, data, narrative, or some combination — is more effective when it comes to leading change?

This is a data point of one, but I was confronted with an immediate test as soon as I left the lecture hall: A tableful of Whole Foods-donated cupcakes each the size of a softball, each topped with a creamy pyramid of cream cheese frosting. I didn't think about how eating one (or six) would tax the health care system. I didn't think about their water footprint or the deforestation required to graze the cattle that produced the milk that eventually became — zomg — that frosting. The voice I heard was Ornish's, and it told me to focus on the positive: by not eating the cupcake, I would actually feel better; healthier; happier. I would have more energy. I wouldn't stress out about the calories. I wouldn't run the risk of smearing delicious, delicious frosting on my blouse in front of Niall Ferguson.

And it worked.