The Ignored Art of Storytelling

In the age of 140 character tweets, Chat messages, MCQs , 3 minute videos and breaking news ticker headlines, a critical skill that is getting ignored and ill-acquired is Storytelling.
whether you are pitching to investors for funding your startup idea, asking the first customers to try out your product/service, getting customers to commit to a long term relationship, convincing a prospective employee to join, get people to consider your approach vs others, managing investor expectations.... the everyday slots where storytelling becomes critical are just too many.

It is much different from selling/marketing and one will understand it if one knows how the greatest storytellers operate. There are multiple approaches and here are a few:

Frederick Forsyth - Story is conveyed through intricate minute details that make the story credible and almost real

James Patterson - Story is conveyed direct, simple and crisp so you get the storyline development with little effort and attention

Steve Jobs - Story is conveyed through impressive metrics, core principles and 'see it yourself' demos

Agatha Christie - The climax is conceived first and then the story is laid out in reverse order to condition your mind along a journey , the writer wants you to take

Jeff Bezos - Powerpoints are banned and every business idea is written as a a 6 page writeup that needs preparation, delving into multiple aspects with their pros and cons and helping the audience make a 'deeply informed decision'

Economist - Story is explained through style guides that have perfected the art of communicating to the people who matter, in the shortest possible time

Indian epics - story is conveyed through multiple stories embedded one inside the other

Elon Musk - story is conveyed more through the long term vision and the big picture

Bill Clinton - story is communicated by first establishing a deep connect with the audience

Adi Shankara - story is conveyed through rational, logical argument line that answers unasked questions and by removing all the incorrect options

As you can see from the above real world approaches, there is no one single way. And each approach has its strengths and vantage. Another common thread you can see is that more words help the audience picture/imagine better . It is also possible that the picture imagined by each recipient could be different from the other.

A critical enabler for Storytelling is the lost habit of reading. Reading helps energise neurons that the image/video cannot.

Also you might need to change the storytelling approach based on the audience, objective and the content.

No standup comic gets the joke delivery first time right! Keep learning and fine tuning approaches that work and suitable for specific occasions.

It needs significant preparation/homework, judging the audience, right delivery and answering questions.

The results make this way more than worth it !

Qualifying Innovation

As much as I hate this topic, it still is worth exploring. When huge majority of the world is doers and the percentage of true innovators is in single digit percentages , we shouldn't be qualifying innovation, right? While that argument can't be beaten, one still needs this topic to figure out what kind of behaviours to inculcate/promote. So here it goes.

In many places, what is innovation is determined by what is common. For teams/organisations which are highly creative/innovative, the bar is high and many things come across as 'minor improvements'. In other places, slightest change in 'the usual' might get celebrated.

1. With this context, it might be better to use an 'outside in' approach to qualify innovation. What does market/industry consider as 'the usual'? What is the maturity of customer organisations (B2B) /customers (B2C) in process/technology? This would be a good threshold to filter out ideas
2. Is the innovation 'improving' an existing practice or 're-imagining' ?
3. Is the idea 'complex'? This is a more pragmatic filter since most world impacting innovations are much 'simpler' . Also to keep in mind is the fact that Complex is Costly.
4. Where does the anchor lie for the idea? Does it improve life for the customer? Is customer the anchor or something else?
5. Source of idea: If it has come from the marketplace ( customer or competition), the idea is probably dated and tried out already with known results. While iPod is not the first portable music player and neither Mac the first personal computer, fundamental original ideas are more powerful than trying to do things better than whats already out there.
6. Passion behind the idea: Contrary to what many think of this as a negative, its the passion that sees things through in execution and not necessarily the idea itself. So if you want the idea executed and deliver results in real world, look for this quality.
7. Last but not the least: There is no formula for innovation as to what works. Also at the end of the day the spirit of Day 1 ( in Amazon parlance) and curiosity that counts and that is a culture worth nurturing irrespective of the idea.

5 Steps to Disruptive Innovation

With handy tools like the new age technologies, every millennial is dreaming of disruptive innovation, killing a business category or atleast changing the rules of the game in an industry ( on the way to a unicorn valuation ! ) What is disruptive innovation? 5 steps below

1.    No tinkering and delta changes. Think of the industry cost structures and what could fundamentally alter the business model and cost structures. Biggest motivator for a business change is cost. Re-imagine the business model with a new cost structure thats radically different

2.    While the new model will not be attractive to all the current stakeholders ( because you are removing some of them in the process! ), for faster adoption, make sure your new model appeals to the end customer first and then as many others as possible

3.    Do not start with technology. Draw up the re-imagined business model and see how the technologies/tools will make that a reality

4.    Never undersell the new business model on the cheap!

5.    Be prepared for the long haul. Disruptive changes occur at the fringes first since there is a backlash by incumbents. Persevere!

Its not the Tech, Stupid!

There is no shortage of tech buzz words ( Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Analytics, Chatbots, NLP....) that promise to end the world as we know it, change our lives for the better and so on.... But the reality is far more humbling. The reason? Choose the right problem where the appropriate tech is the right solution. Not the other way round : Have a solution and start looking for a problem!!!!

The long lead times between a technology riding the hype cycle and making life changing impact is precisely this. The lack of imagination in identifying the right use case for the right tech to make a business impact. This needs to be done keeping in mind that there may not be any solution today, current tools/instruments ( thats what technologies are) may not be the solutions, current technologies still are up the maturity cycle before they become useful/applicable.

Also to keep in mind are the aspects of current insecurities and mind blocks in accepting disruptive business models and the enabling technologies. Long lasting changes happen at fringes initially, take longer to become mainstream and come across many roadblocks on the way. Conviction, Perseverance, dollops of luck....drivers of change.

The Power of Curiosity

World over as rule baed processes get automated /done more efficiently by bots, new skills are coming to fore that make impact. The one skill that all of us had as kids is sorely missing now a days as people get older and get into rote roles or fixed silos - Curiosity

The sheer interest/enthusiasm to know why something is happening, what if something different is tried out, think outside box for traditional problems, the will to try something new and see what happens! Why is this critical?

As futurists like Mark Stevenson travel world over to see the innovations that are making world changing impact, its the fundamental trait of curiosity and not being bogged by traditional routines imposed by time/ commercial organisations that is coming to fore as the winning skill. Be it simulating bacteria through crowdsourcing to cut the new drug discovery costs to a fraction in India, voters deciding how government spends its revenues and so on, the common trait of these innovators is curiosity.

Curiosity and resulting Innovation may perhaps never get done by a BOT or an algorithm. How prevalent is this skill in and around you?

Idea worth pursuing?

How do you know which idea is worth pursuing as a business/ initiative/ project? Which idea will make money and which one will just become a wasted effort? Here are some anchors to help you decide:

Any accountant /MBA text book will tell you see what is the Return on investment ( ROI) ?   Wrong.  You might know by now that no great world changing ideas/businesses have come out of a spreadsheet. In fact the other way around. Once creatives are taken over by spreadsheet folks in a firm, innovation dies a quick death, products become mediocre and generally there is business atrophy.

Why does this happen?

When you start with money making in mind, you tend to lose out/deprioritize many things such as 

-      Am I solving a critical problem significantly better than others are doing today?

-      Is the customer experience top notch in what I am building? Am I taking out all the friction that exists today?

-      Have I switched off all conventional rules of this business ? Am I really disrupting/re-imagining the business model to make things better for the customer along the entire journey?

-      Am I aware that I might not have all the answers today? Do I understand that my ability to pivot down the road is more important than I get it right on paper right now?

-      Do I have the best possible team that thinks similarly? 

-      Do I have conviction/passion around this idea that it might change the world ?

It is difficult in today’s world to have an idea that none had before. iPhone wasn’t the first smart phone nor ipod was the first portable music player. Google wasn’t the first search engine and neither was facebook the first social platform. Look up any idea like hotel booking and you will find 1000s of apps that do similar things.

It is more important to be following the above approach than looking for a ‘First in the world’ idea. 

How do you then validate your idea? Should you ask your friends/loved ones or ask some accountants? Should you check online? Do they ‘see’ what you see ? Do they share your passion/conviction on changing the world?

Ultimately let your conviction/passion be the guide to that ‘world changing idea!’ . Do not worry about money. You will realize that its one of the consequences and not the core driver.

Gamified Life

As proportion of digital natives in the population increase , every aspect of life is getting crowdsourced, gamified and peer measured. Ideas get better with contributions from everyone, technology is built jointly and feedback is built into the DNA of enhancing the product automatically. 

Products and services are bought through reviews, ratings on sellers determine the sales volume, participation in product development is incentivised and encouraged. These have profound implications for businesses as they create new products/services. Customers need to come in early in the product life cycle, continuously evaluate/suggest /enhance the product as it develops and then help sell it in the market place through first set of usage reviews. Amazon switches features on and off everyday purely based on customer feedback and business outcome metrics it collects. Human judgement and subjectivity is supported/dominated by customer actions and related metrics. 

No wonder startups focus on user adoption first as the users then literally ' build/enhance' the product from thereon. While this today applies to a small portion of products/services available in the market place today, this would pretty much be the norm in the near future. 

While the above would be de rigueur in B2C, what would be interesting to know is how does this apply in a B2B context? The number of customers/size of ecosystem is smaller and less public. I would presume that the digital natives in B2B will still look to a gamified environment that S/he is so familiar with in many facets of his/her life!