REFLECTION – STORYTELLING

Challenge:    I work as a Supply Chain Specialist in an E-commerce firm. Our company  is focused in the public sector. One of your biggest challenges we feel is  to keep a project moving forward and keep innovating new methods to  achieve our goals. In India, there is the public opinion that the public sector  is lazy, overpaid, and gets nothing done. A hindrance is often a small  group or a single individual who is blocking innovation in the whole  organisation. The ulterior motive why this person is blocking the  innovation can be many. But they have almost always one thing in  common, they don’t benefit directly from the project and don’t seem to  understand the improvements this project will bring.    Selection & Application:    I am using storytelling right at the beginning of this project, to create a  productive environment. I start by asking questions about previous  projects, bad and good ones. This way I can identify, who might be  sceptical about the new development. And also get a feel for what they  fear the most. As we learned, a great story always has 3 elements an  emotional connection, logic, and a higher course. For me, the higher  course is always the benefit for the consumers who will be using the  product. The emotional connections are people who will be working on the  project and some personal experience to let the receiver in terms of  promotions. The Logic part is the hardest to generalize and has to be  tailored for each project. Usually, the plot of my story revolves around,  how in the future could the customer use a product and what kind of  improvements could be possible in the future time.      Insight:    5-10 mins is more than enough to get everybody on board, or at least to  start opening up. I observed that this is very critical as afterward we can  have a more productive atmosphere during the discussion. But we have

to be very particular to not promise features that cannot be realized, it  should not be a science fiction movie, we still have to be realistic.       Approach:    In the future, I will continue to use storytelling to create a common ground  for my all my projects. I also endeavour to continue to improve my  storytelling skills by reading more or taking a dedicated course for it. For  bigger and more creative projects we should try the Mind-Map technique.  As good as the tool already is, we can imagine that they will increase  chances of success even better together.

