Challenge and Selection

I have never really used Storytelling in the past.  In fact, prior to this course I hadn’t considered Storytelling  as a tool to solve a problem.  After watching the Storytelling video in Week 2, Preparing Your Mind for  Innovation I realized that I had been missing an important and effective means for issue resolution.   Previously, I would typically use data and hard facts to highlight a problem, but this wasn’t always  meaningful to the various stakeholders.

Framing the issue in the guise of a story allowed me to get everybody on board, not just the technical  people.  Knowing my audience, and having something relatable for each distinct member accelerates the  process because everyone is now engaged.  For my particular situation I followed the three principles of  a good story, know your audience, create a sequence of events, and ask, then answer questions to build  intrigue.

Application

Recently I encountered a problem at work that was affecting my day to day progress.  After I alerted the  colleagues that could help me resolve this issue I realized I had a second problem, they simply didn’t care.   I followed my usual approach that involved some very boring graphs, lots of numbers, and reams of data.   What I failed to do was engage the key stakeholders and convince them that not only was this a problem  for me, but for them as well.  After hitting a brick wall with my first attempt, I recalled the Storytelling  video and decided on this approach for my second attempt.

If the room were only full of engineers, then graphs and data would have been suitable.  Instead, there  was a broad spectrum of people and disciplines therefore engaging the audience with a story seemed to  be the best option.   I started my presentation with a simple picture instead of the usual data.  I used the  picture to start my story which included something compelling for each of the disparate groups.  Once I  had the audience engaged, I proceeded to outline the problem and use questions to help everyone better  understand how it impacted their group.  The end result was that a simple, relatable story got all the key  stakeholders involved in bringing a resolution to this problem.

Insight and Approach

Looking back I can understand why my data driven approach was not well received.  It did not provide a  clear picture to each group how my problem should be their concern.  By using a story I was able to show  the connection of my problem to them and ultimately get a response.  I connected everyone in the room  to the problem in a way that simply providing the data was unable to do.  The alternative approach, just  providing the data, was still useful but only after everyone was able to see the problem from their own  personal perspective.

