As a member of the newly formed centralised Business Analytics team at a large media organisation  our goal was to re-imagine the way that reporting, analytics and insights were delivered to a diverse  range of users. Our challenge was that for many of the user groups we were targeting analytics was  not a priority, they were not particularly technology savvy, and they were not accustomed to the  notion of data driven decision making and the benefits it could bring to the wider organisation. We  were also working in an organisation that had not invested in this area previously and were a long  way behind the industry leaders. We recognised that a key driver of our success would be  understanding the unique challenges that each team were dealing with and how access to better  data and tools for decision making could improve this situation. This applied to their actual job  function but also to broader organisational matters.

The Design Thinking tool we selected to assist us with this challenge was ‘Storytelling’. As was  highlighted in Video 4 from Week 2 (“Storytelling Tool”) storytelling has the potential to develop an  emotional connection, increase engagement and unite people around a new initiative. We needed  to give each team the opportunity to explain their role in detail, highlight what was going well and  what was not, and where they thought improvements could be made in their own words. We also  wanted to understand their personal experiences in the context of the broader organisational  changes that had been in motion for an extended period, including multiple restructures, downsizing  and shifts in core business strategy. We did not want to force a costly new technology platform on  them in a manner that had no perceived value for them individually and did not address any of the  difficulties that they were experiencing. Our team would also tell our ‘story’, expressing our vision  and aspirations for both our team and the teams we were looking to partner with.

We organised an offsite at a specially designed facility and invited a representative from each team  to speak and discuss the problems they were trying to resolve in their own words, without any  mention of business analytics. All teams were represented including finance, sales, marketing,  editorial, human resources and technology. There were a wide variety of revelations: editorial staff  were resentful of the new performance management frameworks that had been implemented, sales  teams were used to relying on gut instincts when making decisions, human resources staff were  experiencing fatigue due to the continued restructuring, and in general everyone felt that there  were far greater priorities than implementing a new IT system. As each person spoke we recorded  key findings on the white boards that covered all the walls for review before the head of our team  presented the next day.

Rather than focusing on technical jargon (single source of truth, data visualization, the analytics  maturity curve) he instead was able to speak to each team on a personal level with a far greater  degree of empathy, recognising their challenges and offering ways that we could work together to  overcome these without mentioning the actual technology solution at all. Through storytelling he  was able to generate genuine support for the program because people could see how their own  working lives could be improved and that by contributing their own stories they were shaping the  focus areas and priorities for our team. We had been able to understand they key problems, which  ones could be addressed by technology, and what the timeframes were for achieving the desired  outcomes. The other big positive was that all teams listened to each other and had a better  appreciation for each group’s responsibilities and concerns.

Overall, I felt this was a very worthwhile exercise and based on feedback the majority of participants  agreed. For many it was the first time that had been part of this sort of Design Thinking exercise and  it had been a very positive experience. We are already planning to have follow-up sessions with  these groups and next time I believe introducing ‘Mind Mapping’ will help us to define common  information requirements and agree on key decision-making metrics that can be used across the  organisation. As a compliment to storytelling this tool will allow us to capture key dependencies and  will also assist in defining the delivery roadmap for our team.

