Vivid Presentation – By Adapting “Story Telling”

Ahmad Kumar

ABSTRACT  The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success:  Concentration,  Discrimination,  Organization,

Innovation and Communication.

Ahmad Ahmad

VIVID PRESENTATION – BY ADAPTING “STORY TELLING”

Challenge : The story is about me and my name is Jose Kumar . A short brief about Jose is required  as it carries relevance to challenge . He is working as “Data Scientist” in a reputed ACPS  and carrying three years of experience in Analytics . Analytics as a subject requires in depth knowledge in  Mathematics and Statistics . Very recently , he has been given a new responsibility of teaching or grooming   associates/employees in same subject “Analytics” . Hence he was supposed to teach core Mathematics  and Statistics  as part of his subject and also part of training curriculum. Participants in his class were more  business people and they showed more interest in business implication and not in core mathematics /  statistics .This caused him to lac in gaining interest of people in his subject and definitely impacted as he  always failed getting minimum satisfactory score .

So , it’s known to him the main challenge was in his presentation / communication which failed to mitigate  the gap between training curriculum , which carried core mathematics and statistics as it’s subject and  participant’s need or requirement which was more on business implication .

Selection : Jose had taken help of tool called “Story Telling” from Design Thinking to address his  challenge .From his perspective “Story Telling” is a unique tool to convey message by being in other man  shoes .The stories are meant for audience / participants , so the process can grab attention of audience  and also orator has control on the stories . Hence , using “Story Telling” tool orator can share moral or  message he wanted to convey in controlled manner but in way audience wants to hear . So , the process  of conveying lesson to participants become very interesting by grapping all attention participants .The  process of story telling seems cream of crop . He was inspired by fact how Grand Mother feed their grand  kids . Usually Grand Mother are seen to gather attention of kid towards her by telling stories which usually  carries Moral and at same time she also completes her job of feeding the kid happily . So , this activity of  story telling carried two good things as follows

i.  Grand Mother could complete her job peacefully even not letting other person (here the person  is kid) know the fact that they are in job (here job is getting feed ).

ii.  Grand Mother shares Moral .

The above strategy of story telling came as big Idea for Jose and he felt in similar way job can be  resumed by not letting other person know fact that they are learning core Mathematics and Statistics and  as part of moral with all facts showing how Mathematics and Statistics theorems helped in earning  Business revenue . He also believed  Indian Sage Vishnu Sharma (approx. in 3rd century BCE) had  adapted this theory while teaching his students and that birth to “Panchatantra” . Apart from Coursera  course he also followed few links as follows which also motivated him

i.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zuq92PUr5E

ii.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al3-Kl4BDUQ

Application : “Story Telling” skill is not tough as it doesn’t required c system brain to work much and x  system of brain works much in the process . Jose , could convert all theorems and algorithms of  mathematics and statistics in the form stories which can be part of any bodies life . Usually he used to take  examples of his family , his son , his spouse . Taking an example on high level how he made business  people understand “Hypothesis testing” in Statistics as follows.

Earlier he used to describe what is Alpha and how it is getting derived from confusion matrix , he also used  to discuss on “p” value and other related subject on Hypothesis Testing . Traditional way of teaching used  to make business people (who used to be his participants) defocused .Now he shared the same in different  way taking instances of his family ,  where he had challenged his son if brings 95 above out of 100 in  Mathematics in present monthly exam he  will present him bicycle else he will give nothing . Saying this  what it means Jose has given his son liberty to commit 5 or less mistakes . This threshold of 5 is called  Significance figure . Audience by this time was enough interested , what next going happen to Jose’s  son . Jose continued , saying his son scored 96 out of 100 which means he committed 4 mistakes which

VIVID PRESENTATION – BY ADAPTING “STORY TELLING”

is less than significance figure hence he wins bet . This part in statistics is called “Alternate Hypothesis” as  a change has occurred and what is change ….it’s bi-cycle . If his son would have scored 93 out of 100 , it  means he would have committed 7 mistakes which more than decided threshold which is also called  Significance value . Hence no change occurs , which means Jose’s son will not get bi-cycle . This  process is called “Null Hypothesis” in statistics . Audience not only learnt these concepts very easily and  also tried simulating the same with their life and also with business problems .

Insight : It is when Jose used to think “minimum satisfactory score” is big and main concern , he never  could come up with new or creative idea . It’s only when he got to know root cause for getting low score is  “Participant’s Satisfaction” he could come up with Innovation and could help himself and also participants  by doing justice of sharing lessons in acceptable way . He learnt the fact , that it’s only when he tried to  understand the crisis based on Human centric / human need and not based on self need , it gave birth to  INNOVATION / CREATIVITY .

Below picture depicts how Innovation is created . In Jose’s scenario , “Participant’s Expectation” was  part of Desirability , “Satisfaction Score” was part of Viability and “Story Telling” is the technology adapted.

Reference : https://www.ideo.com/about/

Approach : Jose has plan of taking the same tool in client’s negotiation . This is unique and effective  tool for communication which buys client / observer / audience confidence by being in their shoes . It helps  to develop deeper empathy in the present, and create more vivid images about the kind of new future .  Clients/Audience feels confidence when they see Orator or Host is speaking something addressing their  need . It wins trust of audience .

Hence , Jose “Story telling” is unique and perfect tool to propagate the potential and capability of Host  Organization to client .

Conclusion :  The “story telling” tool is flexible to be used in various challenges and one instance was  taken and described in “Application” session and the other future application plan is described in “Approach”  session . There is a very right saying by Dale Carnegie , “The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him  about the things he treasures most”,.

