A to Z of Business Storytelling -07

G — Glocal

Many a times speakers use alien examples, which never makes any connect with the audience. Umpteen number of times, I have seen leaders quoting Steve Jobs and his Apple products whenever they talk about Innovation. Steve Jobs being a celebrity, the audience may applaud the speaker, but seldom connects with the speaker’s message. The local audience may have huge respect for Steve Jobs kind of celebrities, but often feels that this may not work out for local companies like ours. Similarly for an overseas audience, citing a local example alone may not be sufficient. This is where the Glocal approach would work out in business storytelling.

Glocal is a Portmanteau of two words Global and Local. It is an adjective and by definition is “reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations”.

Whenever I conduct training programs, I use a global example to show the Scale or Volume. But I also make it a point to give a local example to showcase that the example is even possible in our local land. If I narrate this with examples to drive home a sample message, you can understand this better.

In my Design Thinking workshop, one of my key messages used to be “Innovation need not be costly”. To support this argument, my first story would be about Doug Dietz, who was instrumental in designing the MRI scan machine at GE.

Doug Dietz was happy about his machine, that can scan the humans in a non-invasive manner and diagnose many health related issues. Once Dough Dietz visited a hospital, he could see a young fragile girl was crying. She was scared to get into the MRI scan system. He was worried when he came to know that young girl was about to be sedated to complete the MRI scan process. Doug Dietz was upset seeing this and wanted to bring out improvements in the system. That is when Doug Dietz attended a week-long design thinking workshop and finally with the help of his team members, came up with a modification like this.

The idea was to make the MRI scan process, a more fun-filled adventure for the children. Under the Adventure Series there came more and more models.

The above example of Adventure Series is primarily used to showcase human centered design by the design thinking experts. If you would like to get a detailed account of this business story visit here.

My citing the above example in my training program is to drive home the message, “Innovation need not be costly”. The reason is Dough Dietz and his team did not make any revolutionary changes in the technology aspect of the MRI scan machine, but did little modification in the look and fee of the machine so that the machine is accepted by the children with joy.

If I had stopped with this example for the intended message, then it would be another Steve Jobs and Apple kind of story. Hence I used to tell a local story too.

Asha Muthy is the founder trustee and director of Aarambh, a NGO based out of Navi Mumbai. She was empathising the under-privilaged school children who lacked the basic infrastructure like a bench and a desk at schools. She felt that sitting for long hours while bent over to write on the floor amounts not just to bad handwriting but also various health hazards like poor eyesight and posture. She wanted to come out with an innovation that would solve the problem of the school children. With lot of brainstorming with her team, she decided to come out with an innovative desk for the children. The desks were not so costly since they were produced from used carboard boxes. The design team also ensured that the desks could be converted as school bags/boxes at the end of the day.

The final product named as “help desk” helped the school children to a great extent. All at a cost of Rs.10–12. So once again we have an example to show that innovation need not be costly. More details on this case study can be seen here. This local example gives a comfort feeling for the listeners as well make them think that cost-effective innovation can be implemented in our country too.

At this point of time, let me make it clear that we are not bringing one single Glocal example. That is practically not possible. I am only emphasizing the use of a global example along with a local example under this Glocal approach.

If you want to use the Glocal approach here are the specific tips:-

• In the very first edition of this newsletter under “Authenticity”, specific suggestions were given to collate your story file. Please have a look at this edition for recollection of the suggestions
• Tag each story under a theme say, Integrity, Team Building, Innovation, Perseverance etc.
• Also bucker the stories under two classifications namely global and local.
• When you want to do storytelling in your business meetings, ensure that you pick one global story and one local story on the same theme.
• Think about “Brevity” mentioned in the second edition of the newsletter. In the name telling two stories, you cannot afford to exceed the allocated time.

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