Storytelling

Challenge

This year I graduated from the Institute, getting a Bachelor's degree in Applied  Mathematics and Physics. I graduated from the Department of Biological and  Medical Physics; however I decided to get a Master's degree in management. But  the information on the website of the program was not enough clear for me, so I  wanted to learn more about program from students of this one. I found a few  people on social networks and sent them a message: "Hello. I saw your name in the  list of students on the program "Governance of Science, Technology and  Innovation" in the HSE. Can I ask you a couple questions about the program,  please? "

I was ignored once, I was ignored second… And then I realized that I need to  change my tactics.

Selection

I noticed that my actions and my goal are the same as in the surveys of the target  audience to answer the question "What is?". I decided to use the tools that we were  told about to solve my problem. In order to improve communication, I decided to  apply the storytelling tool. A more detailed story about me and about my intentions  could give to person some notion about me, and he would share information with  me more willingly.

Application

I changed the text of the message, telling about myself so that my future  interlocutor knew who he was dealing with, and felt sympathy for me. I told him  which institute I graduated from and why I decided to apply for this program. I told  how I found him through social networks, and also explained why I was looking  for a student, instead of writing to the program manager.

The answer came very quickly. I received a warm letter, and then a few more  letters with answers to my questions.

Insight

Thus, using the storytelling tool, I was able to improve communication with  interlocutor and find out the information that interests me. I saw that storytelling  works not only for entrepreneur's challenges but for ordinary life too. The gained

experience will allow me to quickly look for the necessary information from other  people in the future.

Approach

As an alternative approach, I could continue to send short uninformative messages  to different students and wait for at least one of them to answer me. In any case,  people are different and someone would be happy to write me an answer to this  strange letter too. However, I found only 4 students from this program on social  networks, so it was important for me not the number of messages that were sent,  but their effectiveness. Using the storytelling tool allowed me to increase the  effectiveness of my letters from 0% to 100%. I hope that knowledge of this method  will help me not only in student life, but also to solve more complex problems in  the future.

