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Overview: My experience in using Storytelling tool as part of Design Thinking method, for defining a framework for  gathering business requirements, for a complex multi-vendor multi-country IT transformation project

Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge  I am a project manager for a world-leading IT Services company. My company has recently won a  systems integration contract from a major telecom services provider in Europe. The contract is for an IT  systems transformation project for multiple operating units in different countries. It is a digital  transformation project, wherein the telecom operator wants to transform their businesses in the chosen  countries and replace old IT systems with new state-of-the-art IT systems. Key objectives of the program  are to improve end-customer experience in these countries, reduce time-to-market of new products &  services, harmonize business processes across these different countries, bring in latest technology,  reduce maintenance cost of IT systems in the long run and being able to provide new-age digital  products & services to end-customers.  This is a very ambitious program. Such a program has never been tried in the Europe region in the  telecom market. There are no existing case studies for such an engagement in terms of size, scope and  complexity. Therefore, it a good opportunity to use some concepts of Design Thinking.  Moreover, we were not the only vendor. The primary vendor for this program was the product vendor  itself (which is unusual). Typically, it’s the other way round, as in systems integration (SI) vendor  generally plays the role of primary vendor in such IT programs and the product vendors’ work under the  SI.   The specific challenge came about 1 month after the kick-off of the project. The main vendor had  started the business requirements gathering workshops and after 4 weeks of workshops, the project  came to a grinding halt. Client was very unhappy with the way primary vendor was running the  workshops and were completely unsatisfied with the outcome workshops achieved after 4 weeks.      Selection  I and my team took this standstill in workshops as an opportunity. Even though we were the secondary  vendor, but coming from a systems integration (SI) background, we could grasp (or understand) the  underlying fundamental issue. Issue was that the ‘Big Picture’ was missing. And the client was expecting  that the primary vendor will show them the way, will paint the big picture, will help their business users  understand why their senior management has decided to launch a transformation project. But the  primary vendor failed to fulfil this (unwritten) client expectation.   After identifying the issue, we proactively reached out to key stakeholders from client side. It was not a  regular meeting. This was too complex an issue to be handled by just creating simple MS powerpoint  slide deck. We took a holistic approach and created a compelling story that would resonate with all  levels of stakeholders, using tools like videos, client testimonials, cardboard cut-outs, board drawings  etc.

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Application  The most innovative thing we did was that we created cardboard cut-out of a man and a woman. We  placed these cut-outs in the meeting room. These cut-outs represented the end-customers of our  clients. We also printed out an entire customer journey, from beginning when a new customer starts as  a prospect, till the end when a customer decides to leave. We pasted this long customer journey chart  on one side of the meeting room. Lastly, we brought-in people from our organization who had  successfully similar projects in other geographies to talk about their experiences.    The cardboard customer cut-out made the biggest impact in our meeting. Our side always kept end- customer in the centre of our story. We used to physically point to (cardboard) customers. This helped  drive home the point, that biggest beneficiary of our transformation project has to be the end-customer.   At the end, we were able to successfully convince the client that the new methodology suggested by us  should be adopted to run the business requirements workshops. If we would have gone-in with a  standard presentation with bullet points, graphs, charts etc, then it would not have made any real  impact. The fact that we focussed on creating a story around the client’s end-customer, really made a  significant impact, and affected meaningful change.       Insight  The biggest insight that I gained was that storytelling really works. It helps simplifying complex  messages. It helps breaking silos within teams, and it increases people’s excitement and motivation. It is  a natural tendency of people to be sceptical to new ideas and be generally against drastic change. A well  drafted story helps people to get engaged. And, once people are engaged, it becomes easier for a  message to get transferred.   Another very significant personal insight that I gained was the importance of listening in storytelling. A  story has to be very contextual and the story teller has to be open to customizing his or her story based  on the feedback from people. Hence, having good listening skills is essential to be a good storyteller.        Last insight gained was the difference between an overarching story and small sub-stories. An  overarching story is like an epic. And one epic can have multiple stories. Having a grand epic helps a lot.       Approach  As you can expect, there were multiple follow-up meetings with client after the first meeting. We took  the concept of keeping our storytelling, with end-customer at the centre, even further. We involved our  sub-vendors in the storytelling sessions. We even invited the primary vendor on the same platform and  they also appreciated our effort and liked the new methodology. Because of the common and easily  understandable message, everyone was able to rally behind the same storyline.

