REFLECTION – STORYTELLING

CHALLENGE & SELECTION

Storytelling is a great tool that I use all the time. I work in an industry where  most of the people become a reason for the loss of productivity because of lack  of concentration in their work. Speaking of the IT industry most employees  have no idea about why they are here? The only thing that keep them going is  Salary Day. Most of them want to switch their jobs, change their career, do  further studies, etc. but fails to do so due to the fear they have that if the plan  doesn’t work out then what they will do. I think the condition will become same  after few years if they do what they want to. The only and most important thing  that keeps you going is Motivation. I use this technique to help the employees  as much as I can.

APPLICATION

Storytelling has its own benefits in many ways. I have been using this for a long  period of time and was convincing to the policy makers to slightly change their  policies in terms of the incentive distributions. I was telling them that every  employee has its own uniqueness and talents and it is not fair to judge them  only on the basis of the nominal targets. I told a story about a time where me  any my colleague was pitching an idea to a potential client where the product  and services that we were providing were really god and the client was also  satisfied with that, but he was little resistant due to the only reason that the two  companies are very different in terms of their culture. The client’s company was  more of employees centric and ours was more of customer. In order to close the  client, we did a little study about him and the company and realized that they  gave employees chances to pursue their dreams. We also do follow that  tradition but not on that level and to show that how we are now encouraging this  culture, we invited him to our Company’s event. The event was going on from  the last month having sports, cultural and academics events and that was the last  day. The client was happy to see that and placed the order.

INSIGHT AND APPROACH

Although we were following the same culture on different levels maybe; the  resistance shifts when the client sees the motivation in the employees to pursue  what they like. In this situation it was the company’s effort to close the client  where in the situation al were motivated enough to reach the company’s goal.  That was the power of motivation. As soon as this story was told to the policy  makers, they were able to relate all their success stories where motivation  played an important role and led to changes in the policies. The new policies  focus on targets achievements and dreams achievement. The dreams  achievement was more of a bonus to the employees where they were getting  paid to fulfil their dreams. For example, one of the employees travelled  2000kms in just 3 days on bike just to visit a temple. The company not only  gave incentives but also created a culture where employees are happy and  motivated enough to complete the target before deadlines so that they can use  the rest of the time to pursue their dreams.

