Who are you?- Storytelling

Date: 7/31/20

Challenge:

I work in a Technology and Data Company near Washington, DC.  To stay competitive the  company decided to change most of his Executive Team along with their Executive Assistants to bring  innovation to the organization. Which brought me to this company as an Executive Business Partner to  support two members of the Executive team. Within only few months apart other six Executive Business  Partners joined the team to support the remainder of the executives.  This role was upgraded to be a  role higher than an Executive Assistant. This role was intended for the executive assistants to be a  partner and work along the executives meeting more than calendar management and logistics. The aim  of this role is to fully and holistically support any business needs by anticipating and becoming a Chief of  Staff for the executives and their business units.

Within few months, the challenge was obvious as some Executives have different working styles,  expectations for the Business Partners were different depending on each business unit, some Executive  Partners had more work than others, and some Executive Business Partners had different levels of work  experience/work maturity and this created confusion and prevent us to move forward with different  projects.  The Goal was to become the right hand of the Executives while supporting each other in our  Executive Business Partner team.  Therefore, I decided it was time to take a step back, start with a clean  slate, and introduce some of the Design Thinking tools learned along workshops/ classes taken in the  past. Before, implementing any tool or process, we need it to understand who were all the Executive  Business Partners and who did we supported?

Selection:

Our team was new, coming from different industries, and having different working styles. In  addition, we knew little about the Executives other Executive Partners supported. We had seen them in  the office or in meetings. However, we did not know who they were either. Therefore, I decided to start  with the storytelling tool and to help through this process decided to implement the tool of personas. As  Chapter #2 in this course explains storytelling is a way to create empathy in a simple way and bring life  to a character. We need it to understand in a reliable way who were our executives. Each Executive  Business Partner had to complete the below persona card. After completion of the persona card we will  meet and have an open forum discussion among the Executive Business Partners.  Persona Card sample  below:

Application:

The moment came when we had to explain to the team how we viewed the executives we  supported. What were their attributes,  goals, concerns, and a quote that could best describe them. At  the beginning of the exercise it was confusing as this was the first time the Executive Business Partners  had used this concept of personas. Therefore, I decided to star and described my executive utilizing  storytelling rather than reading each bullet of my persona card. I gave my persona a title that best  described my executive. For mine was the “Speedy CFO” always moving, always in meetings and fuel by  Diet Coke. This resonated with my team members. They laughed because they knew it was true. The  little they saw of this executive passing by hallways or conference rooms they knew this executive  always had a diet coke on their hands. It created an emotional connection almost immediately. Now  they knew that my executive had a demanding schedule and therefore, I had a demanding schedule too.  Therefore, now going forward when we had last minute calendar request for my executive my team  knew the type of work style and urgency my executive had. Going forward my team understood the  expectation this executive had.

Other team members started implementing the storytelling aspect to this exercise. In the 45  minutes we had, we understood our team needs and each of their business units. Most importantly, it  created a sense of empathy within the team. Which, I believe it was the most valuable tool as this  allowed us to finally connect in a human level. In addition,  it allowed us to understand our audience:  The Executives and their support members. Now, we were one step closer to brainstorm solutions for  the different challenges that we had in the organization and in our Executive team. By learning about  the executive’s main concerns, we could see what were the tensions of each business units and  themselves. Also, it allowed us to see common themes and how we could align as a team to tackle these  issues together.

Insight:

By applying the storytelling tool and by utilizing the personas method we learned who our executives  were, their needs, concerns, and goals. Most importantly we learned about each other in a human level.  We now had a common understanding. We had empathy for each other and our jobs. Most importantly,  it allowed us to discover reoccurring themes within each business units as: Change Management  challenges, Innovation challenges, Logistics/processes issues, and Communication issues. We now were  in a position to see how each separate business unit could benefit from having an executive business  partner team that works together solving issues or trying to find solutions in a holistic way. Also,  storytelling was effective because it was fun, it took down the barrier of competition and we had an  environment of collaboration and a sense of purpose.  A deeper connection on how our Executive  Business Partner team was  going to attack the existing challenges in the organization.

Approach:

Although this was the first time, I  was incorporating  design thinking tools, storytelling, and personas. I  will say that it was successful for what we were trying to accomplish which was creating a sense of  empathy and understanding so we could tackle challenges together. However, next time what I would

do differently will be to allow more time for reflection and perhaps introduce the same personas activity  to the executives themselves. Since it is also a brand-new team. Perhaps they are going through the  same change management issues as we are. This exercise will also allow them to know each other,  develop empathy for each other and know their audience. As Chapter #2 of this course expressed.  Executives are tired of power points and meetings. They also have little to no time and their attention  window is limited to 20 seconds. This will be a great method in which they can have fun, where they can  come up with pros/cons, and create a cause which ultimately could ignite innovation.

