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Reflection - Storytelling

Challenge

My organization, as any mid-sized company with global presence, depends a lot on projects  to get from/implement strategy to operations. However, over the years the set-up of a PMO  has not been approved. This put a lot of challenges for qualified project managers to work in  a cohesive, organized, structured, supportive & networked manner. The downside of this is  that many a times instead of the most qualified Project Manager being assigned; it is the  person with capacity or accessibility who is often chosen to lead a project.

At the same time my company is open to employee self-initiatives at various levels including  forming self-organizing teams (SOTs). One of the possibilities we could see was for a PM  Network that could do wonders to bring the PM experience in the company together. With  this in mind I decided to think of a way to bring together Project Managers across the group  as a networked collective in the absence of corporate PMO.

Selection: Storytelling

First of all we needed the numerous experienced project managers like me to jump in on this  idea and to be able to relate to its need and benefits and come together as a collective and  then propose the concept to the top management for their assent. The tool I selected to get  the ball rolling was Storytelling. Going through the video of Luis Leon (Week 2 of this  course) on Storytelling, I was able to enhance the thought process even better and refine it  in a logical manner to make it connect to the challenge at hand.

Application

I started plotting two lives; 1) that of a project manager in an organization with a PMO and 2)  one similar to me and others in my company without a PMO. The stories showcased the  different working methodologies and the pros and cons. These two stories then were put  together to describe the problem statement. A probable solution that serves a larger purpose  in bringing all the PMs in the company together for a structured collaboration was also  developed. Then I did a few workshops/interactions with several Project managers to gauge  how much they could relate to the problem statement. I worked with a few project managers  who were really affected by the current situation.

Some of the perspectives and events from their own experiences were really interesting and  adding to the cause and even validated the story. So we incorporated these inputs to the  story. During the process we also worked on detailing a solution. Several proposals/ideas  have also come in which would make it highly possible to reach the desired outcome with  the stakeholders and management. These points have been put together and the idea is to  put together a mind-map with brings together all the aspects together.

Insight

Storytelling as a tool certainly hit the right notes during the interactions, when compared to  standard approach which is usually the norm. The participants feedback was that the topic,  put together in this manner, made it clearer for them to understand and relate to, in a logical  and emotional manner. We found that this connect helped in getting more involvement and  engagement from the individual stakeholders.

The outcome was more than we anticipated with the additions from the participants. This has  made the case more valid with a higher chance of success to realize. The story itself has  been enhanced by incorporating experiences from the individuals.

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Approach

The next step is to get the buy-in from the top management. By following the path of  storytelling in an effective manner, I believe to the top management would see the benefits  of the initiative that the stakeholders themselves have brought in and take forward this  initiative. In addition to the Storytelling, I see that Visualization & Mind mapping tools could  be incorporated as we go further to realize this initiative. For similar activities in the future, I  would also see the benefit of starting with visualization.

