Design thinking tool: Storytelling

Challenge:

The company I work for is a service provider (electricity savings) to the biggest retailer in South Africa,  Teetly. I was recently promoted to manager of the company and attended the monthly meeting with  Teetly. In the meeting two things became apparent to me:

1. We had allowed competitors in our industry to gain traction within Teetly.  2. Our complacency over the past 24month period led to a loss in confidence in our services.

The challenge, in short, is restoring our image within Teetly and rethinking the way we go about  providing our service.

Selection:

The first tool I opted for out of the design thinking repertoire was Storytelling. I feel that Storytelling as a  tool can go hand in hand with visualization, but for the purpose of this assignment I will focus on only  storytelling.

Storytelling, to me, is one of the most important skills touched on in this course. It allows you to colour  in the space between a challenge and data. Storytelling allows you to “sell” the obstacle, the solution,  the idea. It gives you the chance to provide your colleagues with a lens through which they can view a  challenge. It translates business strategy to a language every employee can understand.

I opted to use storytelling because of the size of the challenge. I knew addressing it would require  company buy in.

Application:

The first step for me was to get all the relevant parties together in one place. This took place in the form  of a company meeting. In this meeting I started painting the picture of how our image within Teetly  has deteriorated. I brought in the fact that our competition was gaining on us. I stressed the magnitude  of the problem. This lead to a discussion of the problem and the actual definition thereof.

I then proposed a solution to the problem. The storytelling approach however allowed me to give my  colleagues a taste of what things could be like if we succeed in meeting our challenge. I could feel the  excitement, it was a great feeling.

This meeting led to the month of May being dubbed Teetly month. This involves rethinking our whole  approach to providing a service, from official company documentation to solving client related queries  and problems.

Insight:

I think the main insight I got from applying storytelling to solving a currently company problem is that  there is more to business than numbers and data. People are seldomly excited by raw figures. They need  something more, something greater than a NPV calculation or another budget. People want purpose,  storytelling allows you to take company strategy and turn it into company culture and purpose.  Storytelling helps taking the company from its current situation (what is) to its future (what wows)  position. It truly is a powerful tool.

Approach:

Being my first time trying it, I would definitely change a few things. Firstly, I would spend more time  analysing the current position. I would try and understand the current situation a little better.  I think a  better grip of the “what is” phase will lead to a better end product.

Secondly, I would use a bit of visualization to help carry across the message. I think storytelling and  visualization go well together.

Lastly, I would be more confident in the process. Very few problems don’t have solutions.

