Successful Storytelling for Uniting People

Challenge

I am in a centralised logistics team that mobilises contracted maintenance personnel to various regional  site operations. On average 500 persons from possibly 15 different maintenance labour supply companies  are mobilised to one of the locations about every two weeks. The mobilisation incorporates Work  Schedules, Charter Flight Bookings, Accomodation, Bus Routing, and many other smaller but necessary  tasks. There are 5 main departments involved that must be successful in their process to “get the right  people, with the right skills, to the right place, at the right time.”

All departments have defined responsibilities to ensure correct maintenance personnel are mobilised to  undertake the work. However, mobilising is stressful, emotions are high, overtime is required and vast  amounts of finger pointing takes place across the departments. It doesn’t go smoothly and the contradiction  is, all departments are working hard to improve and applying some procedural improvements, yet it does  not alter the outcome.

Selection

Not having the answers myself and needing to resolve, I thought the real challenge was to get people to  collaborate around a table and open up to find the unknowns or ugly truths that enabled this chaos. I knew  getting everyone in the room would be easy, but building trust in the room for such honesty was another  matter [“know the audience”, ref Design Tool Storytelling Video]. I felt if connecting everyone emotionally  first, we could uncover the problems as a team and walk out the door as if we just built an unstoppable new  alliance. I decided I did not want anyone defaulting to a compliance and bureaucratic disposition. So rather  than working through PowerPoint and each department’s processes and documentation to find gaps, I  would tell a story to inspire them to share their own stories on how the day to day events affects their team  members and perhaps themselves. Further to that solve for the problems in the mobilisation process  together.

Application

So I have some good attendance as expected and my story on the day goes like this;

I had another great day at work yesterday because we had all these problems and I made it through and  got them fixed, albeit I had to stay back a bit. So I walk out of work on a bit of a high because I feel like I  accomplished something important, but by the time I’m opening my front door I feel like I have just dragged  very tired kids around a shopping centre all day long. I open the front door and there they are, big smiles  and all charged up because I am finally home. But how do I feel, I want to be there so I can push through  the sheer mental exhaustion. Its ok, but I have been doing this for a year now. I don’t know why it’s like this  in mobilisation, but you learn to live with it I guess. Can I ask, do you see this it in your team members  when we mobilising people to sites? I feel like if we solve for this I can be a lot more energetic and happier  at home and work…..

Insights

As my storytelling comes to an end, people then began stories of their team members and how their energy  levels were up and down throughout the week. Slowly grew a level of comfort and trust within the room,  and then a fundamental shift took place where the stories became their own. Their own frustrations about  the job as if they were on the job there and then. It was commented the highs and lows of their team  members made it difficult for them as leaders just to pick the right time to “interrupt” them to have a  conversation.

No-one in the room spoke to process or compliance, no finger pointing, just conversation like “I go to do  this but I haven’t got that, so I’ll call them up to get it, then I have it so then I can do it”. Stories continued  around the room and it was almost like they were role playing their day without the conflict and pressure.  The room was at ease. I sensed everyone could relate to similar scenarios. After many stories the room  was united to the fact the emotional impact on their people came from the timing between processes and  that made their team members jobs take longer than necessary and have to do rework. “It wasn’t as if they  couldn’t get the information, they just never had when they needed it and had to chase it up”.

Approach

There is no doubt in my mind that commencing this day with storytelling removed negative emotions and  conflict and afforded the empathy and understanding in the room to identify a cause - Lets make our team  members more energetic and happier. The day ignited people to rebuild trust, and strengthen relations  valued on empathy. “Storytelling creates a cause” and “a cause is something that ignites people, and unites  people” [ref Asad West, Chief Learning Officer at Mars - Design Tool Storytelling Video”].

I think knowing or researching your audience can be beneficial to help select the appropriate Design Tool.   Storytelling Tool certainly worked for this audience and also removed the analytical problem solving  conversation that in this case would not have picked up the human impact.

References

Storytelling: The New Strategic Imperative Of Business  https://www.forbes.com/sites/billeehoward/2016/04/04/storytelling-the-new-strategic-imperative-of- business/#701fa2714d79    The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains

http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to- activate-our-brains    The power of storytelling | Andrea Gibbs | TEDxPerth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh1-9xMZIfQ

Asad West, Chief Learning Officer at Mars - Design Tool Storytelling Video

