Reflection - Storytelling

Challenge

I head the marketing function of our business that’s been around for over 6 years and deals in analysis of  data, uncovering insights and acting on those insights remotely, to provide desired outcomes in the areas  of energy and operational management. Our business was acquired earlier this year by an American  multinational conglomerate with revenues of over 57.24 billion USD.  So now we have a lot of potential  customers within the conglomerate who has tons of data for us to study, make connections and offer  services to. Bear in mind, these are businesses themselves serving their immense base of customers  around the world. These businesses have been around for decades and used to doing business and  offering services in a certain way and they are not as comfortable with data analytics and what it can do.  Imagine only being able to diagnose a problem with your eyes and ears all this time and suddenly  someone(us) comes in tells you what the problem is and what the fix is, simply by studying data. It’s a  paradigm shift. We found that there’s great potential for them to improve and/or offer new services to  their customers simply by studying the data that they’re collecting. Some of these services can be  delivered remotely which is again new for them. Working with them would of course translate into  revenue for us too.

Given all this, the challenge was to convince these business leaders and sales leaders in these businesses  that we can help them earn more revenue from their existing customer base and even improve customer  relationships, by working with us on new services that we proposed.

Selection

We decided that we would conduct workshops for these leaders in batches (based on their respective  businesses) of 20-30 at a time. These are leaders from across the world – namely North America, EMEA  (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific). We conducted the first one last week. As we had  people from multiple geographies and hence multiple backgrounds, I decided to use the storytelling in  our workshops to convey what we do and to cut across the boundaries. After all, stories are what people  are used too right from when they’re children. In the video on storytelling in week 2 I liked this point which  affirmed by choice of tool – “A good story at its essence, is simply conveying a message that has logic.”  The workshop also allowed me to use the Visualization tool as we could hold the attention of the audience  through visualizing the story and similarly capturing their questions and suggestions on sticky notes and  pointers in the process we tried to explain to them. The video also had another key point for me when  Brij said, “Storytelling is the difference between solving a problem and creating a cause… A cause is  something that ignites people.” And that’s what exactly we needed to do, create a call to action. Get them  to believe in our proposal and work with us on a new model that they never thought of before.

Application

We conducted a 1 day workshop. We prepared a 10 minute video that was centered on “how our proposal  can offer a whole new type and quality of service to their customers” using a fictitious character - a user  of the service (their customer) - and how he went about his day.  We covered the challenges he faced and  how using the ‘proposed’ service, he could find more time in his day to be with his family. All the while

we created an up and down tone to the movie – a big problem confronting our protagonist and then a  solution that solved it. This finally culminated in all of the protagonist’s problems being solved. The video  covered 3 case studies which were actually 3 of the use cases we attend to with our proposed service. In  addition to the video we had PowerPoint presentations as well that allowed us to break the story into  parts, to discuss each part of the service delivery with our audience. We also used a whiteboard to capture  feedback/thoughts/ suggestions of the audience.

The video allowed us to immerse the audience in the story and feel the call to arms. This story was inspired  by Brij’s following suggestions in his lecture:

i)  Have a clear sequence of events.

ii)  Ask questions and tell answers along the way. (We answered all the problems with data  points, thus leaving no ambiguity)

iii)  In case of transformation, the story has to be about the big wicked problem facing the  organization. This was relevant to us as we are transforming the way they are servicing their  customers.

Insight

Firstly I’m glad I saw the video in time for me to plan using a video during the workshop and tying in a  story into it. The story allowed us to have an interactive workshop with the audience. We got everyone  on board. Else it is likely that there could have been differing points of view. Like Angela said in week 1,  “Show, Don’t tell”. They were able to see the positive difference we could bring to their customers and  how it would thus make them look good. The story allowed us to create a point of reference in our  discussions as they were able to visualize how the problems were being solved and we could then discuss  how to execute the solution as that was their strength. They agreed to pilot our new joint services with  them with a few customers in each of the geographies that they came from. The exercise validated Brij’s  view of how stories can make everything understandable from the business leader to the line worker.  Seeing these business leaders understand the story so well, I’m certain they can pass the message on  down their organizational hierarchy. This will ensure everyone has an understanding of the proposed  service and thus will offer it as per the design to their customers. This was a great learning for me to see  design thinking in action leading to a desired result.

Approach

For the next workshop, I plan to make multiple videos and replace the PowerPoint presentations  completely. I shall use video to show the story, explain how each case is to be solved and then have a  discussion after each section. Much like how this design thinking course was delivered. All stories were  not shown at once. We had the Good Kitchen first and then later the Startup story and then later the IBM  story. All 3 were used to take us on the journey through the course.  I’d like to do something similar with  our workshop.

An alternative approach would be visualizing on a board how we’d offer the services to the customer. But  then this would rely on my delivery to get them to feel the call to arms. For this reason, I feel the  storytelling tool works better. An audience member is less likely to interrupt a story that has a good flow.

