Make case studies interesting to read, easy to recall and effortless to
retell by introducing elements of a good story
This article is about case studies. No, no…do
not stop reading.
I have always believed that case studies are
the second most boring documents produced in the entrepreneurial world after
admin manuals. They are cold, dry, formulaic documents extolling the virtues of
a process, product or company. Full of jargon, claims and assertions. Often
trying to oversell. As a result, they are difficult to read and impossible to
remember.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. After
all, in most business-to-business situations it is precisely these examples of
business problems that your customers have had and which your company’s product
or service helped solve, that subtly, yet very persuasively show off your
solutions.
A very good way of making case studies
interesting to read, easy to remember and effortless to retell is by
introducing elements of a good story when writing them.
As discussed in earlier articles, a story in
business is a fact wrapped in context and delivered with emotion. So we are not
talking about inventing or creating stories, but using the facts we already
have in our current case studies.
Now you may be wondering how can a case study
about your company’s integrated oilfield water management solution for a US gas
firm in a developed country have any emotion whatsoever.
Well, the person in the US gas firm who was
facing the problem surely had emotions about the problem he was facing. He may
have been frustrated, anxious, burned out, at his wits’ end about the problem.
Surely he had emotions about the issue.
When the team in your company, using your
product and services helped solve his problem, I am sure again he had emotions.
A different set of emotions—relief, satisfaction, excitement about the way
forward. And the success of having solved the problem, with your product’s
help, may have brought him recognition, accolades and rewards. Which, in turn,
would have given him emotions of pride and made him feel inspired.
When you introduce the person at the heart of
the story and tell us how he felt, you engage the listener and the listener
connects with the protagonist and wants to read on to see how this challenge
was solved and how it all ended happily. We all like happy endings. We like
resolutions.
When we create a connection between the
listener and the central character of the story and the listener resonates with
“yes, I have the same problem”, this is when the case study, or what we call a
success story, really hits home.
Here is an example of one of the success
stories I use in my consulting practice.
Ruchira is the national managing partner for
the tax practice of a major professional services firm. She has about 800
people in her team. The practice needed to change, but getting the partners on
board was like herding cats.
Additionally, employee survey feedback
indicated that the staff didn’t understand the strategy, didn’t know their role
in bringing it to life and thought it sounded like jargon. Ruchira felt like
the entire burden of communicating the strategy was being put on her shoulders.
She engaged StoryWorks
to help turn the strategy into a strategic story and engaged lots of partners
and staff in the process. The top 20 leaders of the practice were then taught
how to tell the strategic story.
A week or so after the workshop, Ruchira
called StoryWorks to give some feedback. The three strongest critics had spoken
to her to say how valuable the sessions had been and after some of the staff
had been told the story by their partners, they said they had completely
understood it. Ruchira then decided that every partner in the practice needs to
learn how to tell the strategic story.
As you would have noticed, the number of
words used to describe Ruchira’s emotions were less than 5% of the entire text.
This approach of using success stories not
only makes case studies interesting to read till the very end and easy to
understand, but also has another huge benefit—like any other story, these are
easy to remember and effortless to retell.
In a recent example, one of my clients
reported that they believe they had won a mandate because a success story they
had used in the pitch was retold during an internal decision-making meeting.
This story was very powerful in explaining how their product has helped other
similar clients.
When we pitch to clients, we don’t always get
to meet all decision-makers. When clients have their internal meetings to
choose products, services and vendors, often only features and benefits of
different offerings of different vendors are discussed, as the case studies we
have left behind are either never read, or if read, never retold. Using a story
structure makes it easy for these to be remembered and retold.
So go ahead and recast your case studies by
incorporating the client whose problem your product solved into the heart of
the story, tell us how the emotion arc changed from struggle to elation and
watch us want to read your success story to the very end.
Source
| Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 23 June 2015
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