A to Z of Business Storytelling -16

Perspective

Many a times, the takeaways from a story may be multifold. As an audience, one may get several messages at the end of the story. But as a storyteller one has to ensure what single message he/she wants to leave with the audience. In this context perspective of the storyteller is important.

Many people confuse perspective with point of view. Point of view impacts how you write the piece (first-person, second-person, third-person). Perspective includes the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the character. In other words, Perspective focuses on how this narrator perceives what’s happening within the story, while Point of view focuses on the type of narrator used to tell the story.

Let us take an example and explain the significance of perspective.

Dough Dietz from GE Healthcare was the engineer responsible for designing the MRI scan machine for the first time. Since it was non-invasive diagnostics system, it was not hurting the patients in any manner. However many patients were scared to get on to the MRI scan done, as the noises and the serene ambience of the scan room intimidated them. The patients have to remain silent and motionless for nearly 20–30 minutes. Nevertheless, the advent of MRI scan machine drastically reduced the treatment cycle of the patients for the doctors.

Dough Dietz being one of the key persons involved in the designing of the MRI scan machine was so proud of his invention and was keen in getting the feedback from the hospitals where the systems were installed. One day when he was passing thru the pediatric section of the hospital, he heard some crying noise.

Like the adults, the children were also scared of getting on to the MRI machine. Some of them were infants who were sedated to keep them immobile during the scanning process. Doug Dietz was upset on seeing this. He was so empathetic towards the children and determined to resolve the pain points. He had lengthy discussions with his team members, but no fruitful solutions could be thought of. Finally Doug Dietz went to Stanford University and attended the course on Design Thinking at their Design School. After this, his team came out with a modified version of the MRI scan machine for the children. All they have done was to change the look and feel of the machine and nothing else in the core engine.

After changing the look and feel of the system, the team also came out with a storyline for the children. The children were told that they would take an adventure trip of a marine journey and there is every possibility of getting attacked by the pirates. All they have to do is to keep quiet and maintain absolute silence for nearly 20 minutes till the pirates pass through them.

The children patients loved this. This was a win-win solution for the children patients as well the hospitals. On seeing the success, GE started coming out multiple versions of the MRI scan machine under the theme Adventure Series. The key metrics for the hospitals improved like anything. Some of them include Patients scanned per day (increased), Number of sedations per day (decreased), number of visits by anesthetists (decreased), patient satisfaction score (increased).

More than these positive improvement the quantitative KPIs for the hospitals, Dough Dietz was more happy he heard a qualitative feedback by a child. Actually, one of the children asked her parents.

“Mamma! Can we come here again?”

He felt that the above feedback made his day as the designer.

The above story has several takeaways for the audience. They are:-

• Even if you have come out with a best of the breed solution, never stop soliciting feedback for improvements.
• Empathize on target customers to understand the gravity of the problem.
• Innovation need not be costly and need not alter the basic framework. Innovation can be just incremental at low cost.
• Qualitative feedback has more weightage than quantitative feedback as it is more meaningful.

Each of the above takeaway is a different perspective of the same story. As a business storyteller, you may choose what perspective you want to share at the end of the day with the audience. Depending on your perspective, your articulation would vary.

Many a time, when a story is shared, leaders leverage the same old perspective what others use. For a change, why not look at the story from a different perspective and come out with a fresh message? That would make your speech / story memorable.

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