Would like to have additional insights to your customers’ ACTIONS? Maybe, even additional insight to your organizations RE-ACTIONS? The benefits to visualizing your processes have been proven over and over again with the practices of Mindmaps, Value Stream Mapping, Process Charts, Charts, and other visual tools to include Powerpoint! Through the use of Storymapping, you can extend these tools and create a more graphical description. I believe this adds more insight to the process through a better understanding of space and time.
In the book, Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity
, author David Sibbet points out to some of the successful companies that utilize the Storymapping Process. We are not talking Disney or Pixlar but maybe less creative types.
Examples of organizations that have achieved great results this way include:
- National Semiconductor shared its turnaround vision worldwide in the early 1990s, and in tour years achieved 95% vision recognition throughout the company.
- Hewlett Packard Labs shared potential new business ideas to top management using plotter-generated murals instead or slides.
- Ralcy's top management shared its history, vision of the future, and strategy of their grocery store chain store with managers.
- Save the Redwoods League shared its vision, strategies, and goals with all its stakeholders in three different 5 year planning processes.
- VISA corporation orients all new employees with a large graphic history (updated three times so far).
- Adobe Systems created a graphic history of Adobe and Macromedia when the two organizations merged.
- The RE-AMP collaborative illustrated bow its system works to the 120 environmentally oriented non-govcrnmciit organizations and I5 foundations at its annual meeting in the upper midwest. They also used large charts to map progress toward their goal of cleaning up
global warming pollutants in the energy industry. - Nike communicated its visions for its Treasury function, and then later for its IT function using large Storymaps.
- National Academy Foundation designed large Storymaps to illustrate its process of establishing high school learning academies.
- The San Francisco Film Society used a large Storymap as a centerfold for its five-year business plan focused on growing this very successful, full-service film arts organization.
They went on to further explain the results of the National Semiconductor Vision Map in more detail stating:
Every top executive could tell this story, using this mural as a backdrop. It shows the overall vision to the far right, the history to the left, leading to the unassembled spaceship represented current realities. Critical business issues lie in front of the ship. Key values are the windows. Marketing messages are in the talk balloons. The top of the spaceship illustrates the new organization. The way forward has question marks intentionally; because Amelio wanted to enroll the rest of the organization in redesign. This vision got 95% recognition in employee surveys by 1994.
So how can you use Storymaps in your business? Use it as a communication tool. People learn through pictures and it directly engages people if designed correctly. A Storymap won’t do it all. You still have to show up and tell the story. However, having all the information visible allows a person to leave the story unfold as they tell it. I like the big visuals where everyone can soak in the entire picture as you are talking.
After the presentation, leave the Storyboard up or have small handouts. I thought the added question marks in Amelio’s Vision were an excellent way to stimulate additional thoughts. Welcoming and having additional post-it-notes lying around so that ideas can easily be added is the best form of suggestion box that you can have. They can be anonymous or not and I would encourage a different color so that you can tell that they were added at a glance.
The authors went on to suggest a few ideas that Storyboards could be used for…
- Orienting to histories and culture of an organization.
- Communicating the need for change.
- Understanding driving forces in an industry.
- Understanding customer needs.
- Sharing new visions and strategies.
- Sharing implementation plans.
- Communicating new process designs
The above picture may represent a persons experience in purchasing a car. What they consider: price, payments, usability, function, gas mileage, looks. Storyboarding the process out tells me a little more on how they look at it, what is important to them.and what the choice says about them. It is not much easier to develop your sales and marketing process from this description?
Lean has always relied on Value Stream Mapping as one of its core tools. Six Sigma Storyboards have also been popularized to document the project results. In my opinion, both of these seem to follow to rigorous of a process and don’t include some of the great visualizations tools that exist. The Agile, Kanban and Scrum contingencies have introduced a much more visual aspect to their boards. Even assigning cartoon characters to people to designate who is responsible for the task. The point is allowing a little fun in the process not only creates a better environment but also enhances and extends the learning experience.
Picture Credit: http://www.sketchartist.tv
Related Blogs:
Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service
The Disney Way
Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House
Lean Six Sigma Storyboard
Crafting your Storyboard
Converting Storyboarding to Marketing or Value Stream Mapping
Storyboarding for Business
on marketing and market research. Website: 
and presently employed at the Kentucky Manufacturing Assistance Center. Website: 
(A definitive guide for today’s multicultural, decentralized business environment)
.
(FT Press, 2008). 
, was a contributing author to 
, and has authored many articles including the ground-breaking article, Roots of Lean - Training Within Industry: The Origin of Kaizen.
