How do you convey your IT strategy through storytelling?

The story should never be an IT story, but an audience story. Technology alone has not been a differentiator for a long time, it is all in how technology can be leveraged to improve the needs of the audience.

In my experience, IT is no longer a function in most businesses. IT is now the way business is executed and one can not differentiate IT for business, and should not. This is the evolution of moving to a product centric business model. The conversation is about intent of the product and development/execution on that intent by business and IT. This is a change of narrative all together and recognizing this change is a pre-requisite to any conversation.

Your message should be centered on their pain point, otherwise you don't have a message at all. This is not a pitch to a VC. You are there to position yourself (products cum company) as the best partner to take them through their IT evolution and solve their pain points. You can give examples of how you solved other clients' similar pain points, but do not make it about you or your company. They don't care. When you finish telling your story, they should say, "that is my situation you just descrbied. You have solved it before. I can trust you to solve it for me"

IT is enablement of a business product. Positioning IT as a cost center/order takers would be disservice to the evolution of technology in business. The story should show the enablement of business through technology and allowing future flexibility by investing in the right technology.

Show how technology investments in context of business outcomes. It is imperative to accept that technology for technology sake is very different strategy than technology investments to ensure business outcomes. Additionally, almost all Tech investments are related to a component of business in production, including business continuity, availability and scalability. Often we talk in number of 9's and not hours of operations interruptions. One is relatable to business and the other is not.

Structure should be similar to a good book. Most of us buy a "story" book to be bought along a journey not to just be told the ending. There are always ups and downs, that builds suspense and braces for the change. If an IT strategy didn't involve the readers on the journey and simply dropped in an ERP system without telling anyone, many critical elements would be missing and the change would fail. So structure is critical for a successful IT strategy.

Make it mean something REAL and relatable. Real life examples of how technology and your organisations strategy will enable great change to health of people, the planet and/or society. That one boy who now has control of his lower arm due to advancements in A.I. That whole universities water system heated by the output of energy generated from the server rooms. That IOT medical device that has given responses to Health Care Professional in life saving time.

IT has to be invested in business outcomes. Each line of code executing successfully is enabling a business outcome. This should mean IT is as excited about the business outcomes as business is. This is not always the case, but should be.

Visuals are a must as they provide an opportunity to convey a clearer and richer message than text only, and serve as an anchor for your audience to visualise the message you are delivering. Having said this, carefully choose where to place them, tailor them to the audience and err on the side of simplicity. Positioning, relative sizes and colours will deliver implicit messages, ensure these are aligned with yours.

This should come with a disclaimer *but be very careful not to overstep the mark* Only add visuals where it adds value to your message, a meaningful, empathetic, direct, story is remembered by the presenter and associated in the mind with few images.

Pictures are worth a 1000 words, however, not all pictures are created the same. Relating the message to audience is key, and in light of that, nothing better then a relatable, simple graphic that allows the listener to comprehend the bigger picture. Nothing wrong with words to provide context either. The art is knowing which method to use to best represent your message.

If you’ve ever sat through a dry strategy presentation you know that this is an area that many leaders underinvest in. Very few people love presenting, and don’t develop the skills or prepare effectively. When I presented my first IT strategy I did dozens of dry runs. The deck was revised based on feedback from critical reviewers repeatedly. I got speaker coaching. There were “beta” presentations to critical stakeholders to ensure they not only supported the strategy, but how it was being communicated. Get your follow up elevator pitch down as well, because one presentation will not be enough, and you’ll need to keep selling your strategy until it’s time to refresh it.

Any pitch must be staged like a Movie Director. The scene must be rehearsed, blocked, and staged. All the participants must know their roles, lines, and cues. In today's mostly virtual selling environments, a 30 minute video call will only allow for about 15 minutes of content that follows a delay in getting everyone up-and-running on the video platform, while still leaving time for questions and the call to action. Meeting participants must plan contingencies and review all the potential objections in advance. Far too many Sellers leverage the stale pitch shared with them by Marketing and are then surprised when they don't make a sale. Measure twice and cut once remains my motto.

Practice story telling and find people who can give you honest feedback. Spend time observing the audience when you are telling a story to look for signs of interest, distraction, or boredom and develop techniques to engage your audience in your story. As an learning exercise, when people tell stories to audiences instead of observing the presenter, observe the audience. Stories are incredibly powerful tools when initiating and sustaining change because when internalized they help give the audience the internal compass to help drive towards the change.

There is a time and place to frame out the overall end to end strategy, but to make the message effective and heard more broadly, it can be effective to break up the story into chapters to showcase near term deliverables from the roadmap as features and future roadmap items teased in as part of the message.

Strategy and storytelling are quite unlike. Storytelling is a skill involving marketing. In this case it would mean selling your strategy internally to the organization.