Reflection- Storytelling

Challenge: I run an event organizing firm. Organizing different events like fairs, competitions,

workshops etc. are common portfolio of the firm. Various times it has launched many

educational programs on different educational institutions premises. Its main purpose is to create

opportunities for students to enhance their extra curriculum skill. Through launching various

programs the firm uses to provide a platform where students from different institutions can

participate and engage and enhance their creativity. For that University permission must be

granted. At the initial stage I have to convince the university authority about the effectiveness of

arranging such programs. Many times it happened like they were not much willing to allow such

programs to be arranged and launched by third party organization, externally. Moreover they are

not So it becomes difficult for us to convince them. What I need to do is to use different tools to

make them understand its effectiveness.

Selection: I decided to focus on the results of participating such programs to convince the

stakeholder. So I choose storytelling tool. A storytelling tool is a very effective tool that creates

emotion very easily by connecting all the elements than just giving a list of benefits. It easily

attracts and holds the attention of the listener. My type of problem is very much solved by this

tool. I share the results in the form of story.  This is the reason I choose storytelling to give

stakeholders a compelling reason to allow such programs.

Application: During a meeting with a certain stakeholder, I presented the whole thing in the form

of story. A story of a previous program held couple of months ago. The mind blowing

performance improvements of the students really surprised us all. It was a story of a competition,

a poster presentation competition. 200 students participated in the competition. They were

supposed to brainstorm about a particular social problem and its probable solution that comes out

from their mind. And they were also supposed to find out a business implications of the solution.

It was a group work and they have to solve the issue on the spot.  Create a concise map of the

whole idea and draw it in a poster. Panel of judges evaluated their performance. This event

occurred three consecutive times. I shared the tremendous cognitive development of the students

with the stakeholders.

Insights: The result was unexpected for me. The stakeholders, who were not much willing to

talk even or to give an appointment, were impressed by listening the story of student’s

tremendous development. They were much willing to give us a schedule to organize the

competition. They provide us the different sessions to meet with their students. After this we

never had to present our story to those specific stakeholders. I realized the power of storytelling.

my task become easier than before. I understood how to create emotion and interest in the mind

of stakeholders using this tool, how to make them understand and visualize the benefit of a

certain offerings. I was really impressed by the result.

Approach: Definitely I will use storytelling tool in my next projects. Because this is the tool that

can bring the expected emotion and action from the stakeholders.

