A to Z of Business Storytelling -23

W — Wisdom

One of the main tasks for leaders in a corporate organization is to nurture wisdom. Generally it is believed that wisdom is considered to come along with experience and it can never be taught. Let us break this myth through this post and also share some key aspects of wisdom and how business storytelling can be used as a tool to nurture this vital element.

Let us first understand the meaning of wisdom as well the key attributes of wise people.

Wisdom is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment and virtues such as ethics and benevolence. (Courtesy — Wikipedia)

The actual antonym for wise men is amateur. But this gives an impression that all non-amateurs are wise men. In reality it is not so. Hence probably the best antonym for wise men may be fools. In order to be polite, let me use the word ‘others’ in the following differentiation exercise.

• Speed of Decision Making — Wise men make decisions quickly, efficiently without going thru the basic facts. Whereas others need to review all the facts after which they have to chose the best alternative.
• Ability to extrapolate — Wise men are able to extrapolate from an unique situation to figure out a solution, while others find it difficult to do such extrapolation.
• Judgement to apply rules — Wise men know when rules apply as well when rules don’t apply. Others blindly follow rules.
• Ability to use pattern recognition — Wise men leverage their rich experience to recognize patterns. Others have limited experience or don’t know how to leverage their experience to do pattern recognition.

Having understood the difference between wise men and others, now let us see if leaders can inculcate wisdom among team members? If so, how to use business storytelling as a tool? Coming to the aspect that ‘wisdom can be never taught, but has to come thru experience’, it is a myth. Like any other soft skill, wisdom can also be taught provided the giver uses all out efforts to keep the audience engaged (using business storytelling) and the listeners are in an active listening mood.

This is where leaders can share “learning from mistake” kind of anecdotes, that can help cultivate wisdom amongst their team members. If I share an example story, you may probably understand how this happens in real. Please listen to me.

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It was an Indian IT company that was supporting a large IT portfolio of a Japanese automobile manufacturer. The relationship between them was decade long. Every year, the customer’s team used to visit India to participate in the strategy meetings as well to understand the latest capabilities of this IT company.

But now they are visiting India to finalize a large transformation deal. The usual 3–4 days long visits used to have several presentations. But now the customer was not very keen in watching the overwhelming power point presentations and hence asked the vendor to avoid power point presentations during their visit. After seeing the mail, Ashok, the delivery head told his team members that the customer is not comfortable due to the presentations fatigue and they have to do something different.

Considering the significance of the customer visit, the team was very particular in ensuring the customer’s expectations. So, instead of having day long power point presentations in a closed door meeting, the team decided to put up display booths. They printed posters and displayed on the walls.

Just a week before the customer visit Ashok, invited Dr.Rajan, the leading automobile consultant to witness the dry run. When Dr.Rajan visited the booths, the team simply walked thru the posters. At the end of the visit Dr.Rajan said,

“Ashok, you and your team have taken extra effort in putting up these booths. Good! But what I saw on these booths were simply the print outs of the usual slides. Also I had to stand in there for long ours. Though the customer has not clearly spelt out their expectations, what they really want in place of the power point presentations were your digital products, demonstrable prototypes, cyber-physical labs, your partner’s capabilities etc. Please see to that this can be made possible in the next five days”

After listening to Dr.Rajan, Ashok’s team started working from a different perspective. They talked to their digital partners and invited them to come and demonstrate during the customer visit. Quick prototypes were developed and showcased. That helped the customer to know that the vendor has understood the customer’s pain areas and also they know how to technically solve those issues. They also brought in the expert faculty from the reputed academic institutions from where they regularly recruit the automobile engineers. Some of the digital assets of other customers were also sanitized and demonstrated in front of the customer.

During the visit, the customers were excited to see different kind of artefacts in place of the usual boring presentations. They were also happy that their message was seriously taken by Ashok’s team and due efforts were taken care. It goes without saying that Ashok’s team were able to close the mega deal and win the new contract, which can run for the next five years. At the end of the day it was a win-win for all.

But for Dr.Rajan’s visit and his subsequent suggestions, the team would have failed to apply the wisdom since they could not comprehend what the customer was looking for. They simply failed to use their judgment when the customer sent the mail. In spite of extensive, decade long knowledge on the customer’s IT portfolio, they could not apply wisdom. It is a clear case of how knowledge can be of little help, unless it is applied appropriately.

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Now after listening to the above business story, if one day you have receive a similar mail from your customer, would you do the same mistake? or would you leverage the learnings from the above business story?

When people say that wisdom is accrued over experience, it means that people learn from mistakes. But doing a mistake again and again and expecting a different result would be insane. If one aspire to be wiser, he /she shall learn from their first mistake and never repeat it like a wise men. Or simple they can learn from other’s mistakes too.

If leaders are capable of collating appropriate business anecdotes and articulate in front of their teams in a storytelling genre, wisdom can be enhanced in a shortest span of time. People need not have to wait for several years to gain the traditional wisdom.

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