This blog is for you if you, as leader, have these questions running through your mind 1.How can I motivate my team to Innovate? 2.Shall I focus on global business growth or connection with our employees? Before I start I want to thank my client Uen Li Chia for inspiring this blog. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog Storytelling Passes the Productivity Test 3 of 10 in which the key message was...
If you are a bit sick of reciting your CV when asked "Tell us about yourself" and you are ready to find a remarkable way of answering this question, this blog is for you. A few months ago I wrote one of my most read blogs of 2015 Storytelling : And why say a hello like this? The point I was trying to make via this blog was First Impressions count and you have to carefully select the content of...
This blog is for you if you are in sales. What we are focussing on in this blog is the most overlooked, but the most important part of the sales process. No, its not the sales presentation. Let's find out what exactly it is. Over the last one month I have worked with senior sales teams of a few organisation where the task was to spot stories that could be told in an upcoming sales activity. These...
This blog is for you if you wonder, How can I best answer consumers question, " What exactly can your product do for me?" Recently I worked with a leading global telecommunications company that makes several different types of products. My job was to work with the Product Heads and build a narrative around each product. After a few days of work we all agreed with the Product narrative built...
If you are interested in knowing which stories resonate most with us then this blog is for you. Earlier this week I was working with senior management of a gateway services company ( companies that specialise in ground handling, cargo, travel and catering services). The day was focussed on getting stories from senior management which could be used in project plans roll out in 2016. Due to the...
If I tell a story I am almost certain my boss will say, " Get to the point". If this is you. Then, this blog is for you. In one of my previous blog Storytelling: Get to the point ! I have covered 3 tips on communicating with bosses. Here is one more tip on getting to the point with stories Firstly, you need to be very clear about what exactly is the point of your communication with your boss...
I have been writing a blog series on productivity and one of the blog readers asked me" So, what are you doing to be productive this year?" Here is my response. 2016 is a lot about learning to be productive for me. Why? Simply because I struggled with it last year. A lot of how productive we are is dependant on being able to decide what not to do versus what to do. I have tried a lot of things...
This blog focuses on the key reason why most productivity tools never make organisations as productive as they should. I have a vivid memory of being in the middle of a busy working day and an Outlook invite landed in my inbox with a Subject line : Salesforce Training. I opened the invite. There was long paragraph in the notes that seemed like a cut and paste from somewhere. I was super busy. So...
This is blog is about the frustration of working in large teams where we all do our own assigned task and aspire to achieve the results with efficiency. Quite often, we never achieve the efficiency we aim for even though we are very clear about who is doing what. I have personally been in several such roles and hated them because I have not been productive or efficient. However, recently I...
Recently I asked a Product Manager of a Telecommunications Organisation " What about your job is most frustrating"? His answer, " Taking a new product to market because we always go to market under resourced. The argument we face from other teams is, There is no guarantee that this product would succeed and we are not willing to put resources towards it. Its a risk". With this mindset the product...
One of the tools that Product Sales People use to sell a product is called Product Matrix. Lets say my product is Office 2010 suites.It looks something like the table below This is a bad example of product storytelling but we think we have it all covered in this table Why is this a bad example of product storytelling ? By showing this matrix to the customer I am showing a bunch of features to the...
This blog is about a fascinating story of *Alex ( a telecommunication product manager ) who makes a product successful by not selling it to the big boys ( the most powerful organisations) Alex joined a telecommunication company as a product manager. In his new role he was tasked to manage a new product and his boss said, " Alex, wouldn't it be great if we sold this to the big boys in the...
This blog is for those people who have tried telling a business story which is practical and logical but still got told, " Can you please get to the point". We can avoid falling in such a situation. How ? Lets understand this with an example. Last week I was working with a senior business leader from the oil and gas sector who had come up with an amazing idea to save costs. He will be presenting...
Last year after I had finished presenting at an event, an audience member came up to me and said, " So, storytelling is like putting lipstick on a pig" I looked at him and calmly asked" what do you mean?" He replied, " No, I don't mean it like its a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of something, but what I mean is that when people who struggle to become good presenters, after learning...
Last week I published a blog titled Storytelling : I had dinner and I read a report. Soon after I published it I had a chat to one of our regular blog reader who said, " You make mention of Tacit Knowledge in your blog but you don't explain what it is ". My response was" but I had a Wiki link. So, those who don't know can look it up". However, the reader disagreed that it was enough to provide a...
I couldn't remember, so, I did not say is what leads to wasted sales opportunities. I learnt this at Paul Smith's Book Club on SPI and I am so glad that I attended this book club. Why am I glad? Well, its simple. When you want to learn something you look for information but the problem we face is in finding relevant information that makes you say, " I am so glad I found this". The book club with...
I recently started informing the estimated reading time on Narrative Blogs. Yesterday, I had a question( screen shot below ) And I wanted to answer this by first answering why did I even start informing our readers about the estimated reading time ? Imagine you have 2 hours left to go to dinner party and you have promised to bring a cake. You are contemplating shall I bake or shall I buy? You...
In my corporate life whenever we finished a project we were damn happy. To celebrate the completion of the project, the team would have a celebratory dinner. And what formed majority of our dinner conversations was all the joys and sorrows that came along with the execution of the project. Having worked together on a project for a while, the team had developed camaraderie which added to free flow...
Last week I shared an update on Linkedin (screen shot below ) A reader requested an example and I am most thrilled when I am asked more questions because in finding answers to these questions I learn. So, thank you for asking. This is a great example of how Beyond war made 5,000 ( a statistic ) meaningful. I got this example from Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath Who is Beyond War? Beyond War is...
Going to meet a client for a presentation and wondering -What am I going to say when I see the client? Your sales storytelling is focussed on what you want to say. Move the spotlight to your client from yourself and think - WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SAY? Abraham Lincoln once said, "When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to...
Couple of weeks ago I received an email which told a story about someone who found ways to improve productivity, lift profits, and better manage remote resources using something called 15five. The email also had a audio in which Ken Everett (N2N Hub, Australia ) is having a conversation with Iain Chalmers (Holst Group, UK) who is using 15five and being productive. The conversation was insightful...
If I said to you, "Garden." Do you see a garden or do you see the alphabets - G A R D E N S? This is a no brainer. We see a garden and not the alphabets. Because we think in images not in words. Our natural ability to think in images allows us to be great visual storytellers. Especially when doing power point presentations. But the key is to choose the right image. So, how do we choose images for...
When it comes to Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) which promises to increase an enterprise's productivity, my experience has been pretty bad. As a result, I didn't believe they added value but Elena Luk'yanenko who is a Customer Success Manager, APAC,Microsoft,Productivity Cloud Solutions proves me wrong in this cafe chat. Before we begin.. What is Enterprise Social Network (ESN)? "ESN, is like...
If the question is, why must I say Maria who is a business development manager for an IT firm was finding it hard to work with the increasing client demands and why can't I say Business development Managers of IT firms are challenged with customer demands because the reality is that its not just Maria, its all of the Business Development Managers who are challenged. Yes, true all of them are...
Could a simple story led interaction with another person dramatically increase your productivity? Let's answer this question Maria and Sue work for a technology company. Maria works as a Business Development Manager and Sue is the software engineer. Maria meets a new client finds out what they need, writes a proposal in conjunction with other team members and if the clients likes the proposal the...