Challenge  We had conducted one year training program to train our Scientists on Technical Writing Skills by  collaborating with external consultants. After 1 year of utilizing their licensed software, we were  facing challenge to project the outcome and benefit of the training program. While the scientists  who had actually been trained were all praises for the training, top management were not able to  see the organization gain from the skill enhancement in scientists. The training program helped the  scientists create documents applying a methodology which was acceptable to different regulatory  agencies, with no errors, and with ease of creation. This resulted in uniform approach towards  documentation across the organization, however it was difficult to showcase the wholesome benefit  of this training program.

Selection  I opted for the tool – Storytelling. This is a powerful tool through which we are able to convey the  key message by explaining in a story format – the gradual buildup of events which then lead to a  conclusion. In case of our problem, we wanted to highlight the entire journey of 1 year and how the  benefits had flown-in during the entire duration. Storytelling also sets the emotional connections – it  not only provides the data that is required by the audience, but also provides insights into the actual  process of getting the improvements done. And mainly we wanted to cover the insights of nearly 75  participants, which needed a tool like storytelling.

Application  Firstly I got the details of each type of document worked upon by the participants. There were  different categories of these documents. By understanding the time spent by each participants on  the documents with and without the tool, we then found out the types of documents on which  scientists would spend most of their time and then compared it to the time required after using the  training techniques. We could see significant improvement on it.

Secondly, we had conversations with the teams who worked on these documents after the scientists  had submitted them. They talked about the reduction in errors and thereby the documents getting  accepted quickly than before.

Thirdly we also looked at how the trained scientists had in-turn trained their team mates and juniors  who were also effectively using the techniques.

All these points were put into a story format with each of the team members talking about their  experience and about the difference the techniques had made in their daily job. This was very  effective because, many a times, the top management is unaware of the on-the-ground actions and  how minor changes improve/change the lives of scientists by greater margins. All this was presented  to the top management by having one anchor (the program sponsor/leader) taking them through  the program details and short videos from few team members sharing their views about the training  and its benefits. The anchor covered all aspects – how the training was designed, how the  participants worked on their documents, how the reviewers helped them through the process, how  alignment was brought about between cross functional teams, with a link from one topic to the  other by using appropriate short videos.

Insight  Had I not known the storytelling tool, I would have probably looked at putting data quantitatively –  number of documents created, hours of efforts saved, etc. While this would have told us what the  benefits of the program are, it would have not told how this has changed the life of a scientist, how  much have they loved this training. Also, during the training process, few managers and document  reviewers had put in extra efforts to help the teams with the methodology and creation of  document templates – these efforts would have gone unrecognized. By storytelling, we were able to  capture all the details and present them in a format such that it was very interesting for the  audience. In fact post the presentation all they wanted to know was the plan for future trainings!  This got me thinking about how useful the design thinking process is. We need to look at what  message is to be conveyed and then assimilate relevant information by keeping the  audience/customer in mind – what do they want from us? This helped a lot in systematically  channelizing the efforts of the team.

Approach  I would probably select the same tool next time for a similar challenge. Reason being – storytelling is  very effective in connecting the emotions and getting the right message conveyed to the audience. It  also keeps the audience engaged with some suspense to know what happens next. I also feel that I  can incorporate some aspects from another tool – visualization. Using a whiteboard to list and  represent various aspects of technical document writing technique, a visualization can easily connect  these aspects to the larger business outcome required. In this case the primary business outcome  was a faster submission of documents to government/regulatory agencies with zero errors resulting  in quick approvals. The visualization tool can definitely reduce the time taken for presentation by a  few minutes.

