Leaders are Good Story Tellers

I attended a small personal party with a few friends and family. With children of mixed age groups, they were all discussing a range of movie superheroes. I saw some children narrate their versions of the story on why the hero succeeded or the villain failed! I saw another group of young children who had their own thoughts that they could never articulate or complete. Finally, although everyone had their own story to tell, the one that had the strongest appeal among the children was the one that delivered a compelling story. The End! 

Yes, Leaders are Good Story Tellers. Every iteration, release, or phase in a project and every major milestone or minor milestone in a project or program has a story! Every technical design, prototype, or experiment also has a story. The product owners and the project managers are the leaders that tell the story of the benefits delivered and value realized in each such timed event! The project manager's ability to build the story highlights the team's accomplishment in delivery as well as the impact on the customer. So, how can we tell a better compelling story? 

I had organized and attended many PMI Professional Development Days as the Vice President and Board Member of PMI Mass Bay, Marketing and Communication. Two different speakers that I had the opportunity to engage with were Dr. Barbara Trautlein and Mr. Joseph Raynus. Dr. Trautlein (2016) started the story telling approach from the powerful questions to ask focusing on why, what, and how. This approach is analogous to the Golden Circle Snek (2009). She continued to see have the responses to these questions would correlate with everyone in the team and how each member should work on supporting the team so that collectively all the members in the team worked towards the final story delivered!

Raynus approached the story emphasizing that it is not just the topic of the story as BLUF (bottom line up front) that interests the stakeholders but relating emotionally to the benefits in a way it connects with the customers! Every artifact we create should support that story and help people realize the efforts. If managers are not structured focusing on what the story is in a dashboard, EVM report, burndown or burnup charts, or governance meeting, then, they not only risk playing the role of a spokesperson for the team but also losing their own credibility in front of the leadership team. 

Both approached are correct and appropriate. But the best approach leveraging the same thoughts came from my son in his middle school working on an essay he needed to write. While asking what he learned in school, he said he learned about 'Hero's Journey' technique to write his essay. He showed his handouts from Elementary and Secondary education that mentioned that a story should have a setting, characters, central idea or statement of the problem, primary evidence, secondary or supporting evidence, explanation, and conclusion. I began connecting with the way some of the movie trailers were made. I didn't realize this technique to storytelling which is what the others are telling appealing to logic more than emotion!

"In a world where dinosaurs roamed the earth and monstrous kings slayed their subjects for personal glory, where food was reserved for the rich and everyone suffered, one man raised from nowhere going to places no man has visited and rescue the people."  

Now, can we tell such a story in the prototype we designed? can we tell a compelling narrative of our story at the end of a phase, release, iteration or sprint? Not just cost-performance index, schedule performance index, estimate to complete, burn rate or a velocity chart but the story from these metrics compiled? Can we associate the emotions connected with the work effort that went to build the story? As I reasoned with this Hero's journey technique, I came up with four E's that can be woven into our product management (development and marketing) and project management delivery frameworks. 

So, don't just use prototype or experiments in single/multiple cadences focusing on testing and acceptance but relate to how these experiments deepened the understanding (empathy) of users and the subsequent technical design, how more than one solution were piloted, evaluated, and presented (exploration), what level of details were gathered (evidence) to accept alternatives, and how these were reasoned in the end (explanation).

References

Elementary and Secondary Education (Handout) (n.d). (Treasures of Parenting Exercise)   

Raynus, J. (2016). How to present a business case in five slides (Handout). Distributed in PMI MassBay Professional Development day 2016. 

Snek, S. (2009). Golden Circle. https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

Trautlein, B. (2016). Communicating Change: Tell your story (Handout). Distributed in the PMI MassBay Professional Development day 2016.