Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge   Companies in most African countries are yet to understand the power of  digitization. Individuals want to be directly involved in daily transactions and  hence they prefer to do things manually with stacks of paper work to be satisfied.  I believe that senior executives of fairly large businesses can manage their daily  transactions, regardless of region, time and place but selling the idea of  digitization to these executives was a major challenge as they already feel  successful at what they currently achieve.      Selection   After trying different methods to convey my idea, I finally zeroed down to  storytelling. Storytelling is a tool that presents a vivid view of the future and yet  connecting listeners with the present, presenting the desires of the story teller in  an informal yet formal way (Module 2). I have chosen storytelling hence forth in  selling new innovations to company executives because human beings are found  to naturally connect to stories empathetically. My magic story is “the Kodak  story”. How they neglected digitization and the resulting aftermath. Relating this  story to their current situation and making them see the need to make decisive  action toward what is clearly the future.    Application   In applying storytelling, I ensure that everyone is carried along and I allow for  feedback so that I can use their information to structure specific proposal for  specific organizations. I took the time to explain how Kodak would have evaded  the fall and how technology has thrived so far in photography, often describing  technology as a “moving target”. All of these end up in relation to specific areas in  their organization and ten out of ten times, it worked.    Insight   I think Design Thinking is the future of everything; business, innovation,  administration, leadership etc. Like I said earlier, it was serious work trying to  convince an executive who seem to (in his eyes) have everything working for him,  that there is a better way to reach more people, make more profit, do things with  more ease, but after discovering this tool which I had never thought was of any

importance together with insights gained, game changed. I now take the time to  look for stories that matches any presentation I am to deliver and it works  without any serious arithmetic efforts.    Approach   Apart from cases of selling innovation to clients, I have also applied it to general  presentations with the aim of keenly maintaining my listeners’ attention. This  week I was in a gathering to talk about a subject which was quite lengthy, the  trick to maintain my speech was storytelling. I injected stories relating to my  theme in between sections and just like I hoped, it worked. I have come to  discover this great tool thanks to Design Thinking. It’s the dawning of a new era  for me. I would continue to use Storytelling to aid any and every of my  presentations.

