A to Z of Business Storytelling -21

U — Urgency

Today startups are transforming the work culture in the corporate world. They have an edge over the traditional organization on several aspects. One of the prime aspects is taking quick decisions across the organization. In the traditional organization, people work in silo; the decision making happens in a lethargic manner. The traditional organization try to ape the fast decision-making like a startup. In this context if leaders want to kindle the sense of urgency amongst stakeholders, business storytelling is one sure way to succeed. Let us try to understand more about “sense of urgency” in the corporate world.

Inciting urgency is difficult. Unfortunately, a lot of salespeople and businesses attempt to close deals by cutting corners or using gimmicks. The usage of urgency in sales is a strategy used by experts to convince their audience and potential consumers that they must move quickly if they want to buy your product or get it for the best price. Making clients feel pressured into making a purchase immediately rather than later can assist.

Business decisions if not taken in the right moment have a greater impact on the business. Business storytelling is a vital tool to create the sense of urgency among stakeholders. Talking about sense of urgency is not limited to team members, but is applicable while handling customers, suppliers and contractors. Let me narrate a story to highlight the importance of urgency, while I was in the Operator Training Simulator (OTS) industry.

Operator Training Simulators are widely used in petroleum refineries, petro-chemical and fertilizer plants and power plants. All these plants are classic examples of continuous process industry. Any short and major shut-down of the plant may impact on the profitability of the organization to a great extent. Also any unsafe act can result in the damage of equipment, injury and loss of life. Hence most of the above plants use an OTS for training their operators for the safe operations. The operators get trained in the safe startup and safe shutdown of the plant apart from managing emergency operations in the OTS. Today any new plant would expect an OTS before the plant is made ready. The plant operators get rigorous exposure even the actual plants are ready.

“In 1999, a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) was planning to construct a new refinery at Assam. Our company bagged the order to supply the OTS. The PSU engaged another govt organization, (say XYZ Ltd) to define the scope for the project. When we were at the scope definition meeting, XYZ Ltd insisted that we need to use a real Distributed Control System (DCS) as the operator interface. Typically these DCS systems are from plant automation companies like Honeywell, Yokogawa, ABB, Emerson etc. The operators get a simulated environment similar to a control room.

Though the control room operators are trained in an OTS, the actual system need not be in a control room. The system is normally in the training centre. Basically it is an off-line training system. Based on our experience, we suggested the customer that there is no need to buy a DCS system for the sake of an OTS. The DCS functionality can be managed by powerful PCs, which would have the same look and feel of a DCS system. But XYZ Limited did not approve this and strongly suggested to go for the actual DCS as an interface. We highlighted the drawbacks of the approach as it would involve cost, effort and complex logistics. XYZ Limited said that they could come back on this after few weeks. But they cam back after a month, but with their same stand on the DCS.

Though considerable portion of the development work happened in India, the actual Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) of the whole system (Software and hardware) was supposed to happen at our principal office at New Jersey, USA. The DCS hardware for this project got procured from Japan. It was staged at New Jersey Office. The system was supposed to train operators from multiple units of a refinery say, Crude Distillation Unit, Hydrocracker Unit, Delayed Coker Unit etc. Simulation models for each of these units were. Though the simulation models were ready to be tested, the system had only one DCS system. So, the entire Factory Acceptance Test had to happen in shifts in turns. This change in the schedule put the customers as well us in deep trouble.

After the successful tests, the hardware has to come back to the refinery at Assam. The hardware was airlifted from NJ to Kolkatta and from there to the refinery site. Of course with few weeks delay in customs clearance etc. Just a week before the refinery process units were commissioned, the OTS was installed at the training centre. The customer didn’t have time to plan for the OTS training, but proceeded with the commissioning of the plants. Of course, with several hardships as none of them got trained in the OTS. At the end of the day, the multi-crore system did not serve the purpose. All this, because, some of the key stakeholders did not understood the sense of urgency and took timely decisions.

There is also another story from the same industry. This time it was Reliance industry from Jamnagar. They were planning to commission the most complex and sophisticated refinery at Jamnagar. They too insisted that the operator interface shall be the actual DCS instead of the emulated one. In this case too, the OTS system landed few weeks before commissioning the plants, because of the logistics issues. In few weeks, it was not possible to train all the operators in the OTS. But the management decided to do the OTS training program in all the three shifts. Since the process operators generally work in shifts, there were no big issue in doing the training in shifts. Management was very clear that no one would get into the plant without adequate training in the OTS. This is a classic case of understanding the sense of urgency.

When we persuade people to act on specifics, we think people use logic and ration. But in reality people take decisions emotionally, but use logic to justify their decisions. If that is the case, why not we use stories and arouse emotions to persuade people? Stories change the way we think, act & respond.

You can influence a prospect more effectively by incorporating anecdotes into your presentation. Stories in particular produce urgency. When we learn about other people’s experiences that were comparable to our own, we may identify with them and feel less isolated in the choices we must make. “If it worked for them, chances are it will work for me too,” is the next step in the thought process.

If you want to persuade your stakeholders and expect them to take quick decisions, try the following techniques:-

• By this time as a business storyteller or a potential business storyteller, you would have come out a story file. Tag each story with relevant corporate attributes such as honesty, integrity, innovation, passion etc. One of them would be “Sense of Urgency”. At lease couple of stories in your story file should come under this category.
• Ensure that the above stories that highlight the sense of urgency as well the impact of not taking timely decisions in the corporate world.
• Use all relevant techniques mentioned in the previous editions of this newsletter like Characters, Dialogues, Emotions, Five Senses, Humor, Logics, Metaphors to make your story engaging with the audience.

Kindly follow the hashtag #atozofbusinessstorytelling for others posts on this thread.