GreyHatBeardPrincess

Show 21 - Part 2: Telling Stories

November 02, 2020 Kevin McDonnell Episode 44
GreyHatBeardPrincess
Show 21 - Part 2: Telling Stories
Show Notes Transcript

Telling Stories - more than just a great album by the Charlatans, it is a way to share the benefits of tools like those in the Power Platform. This week we are joined by Clarissa Gillingham as she shares her experience of forming great stories and some great tips for creating your own.

If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.

We covered:

  • Why telling stories helps 
    • Relatability 
    • Turn something abstract into something understandable – a journey 
  • How to tell stories well 
    • Focus on the people 
    • Analogies 
    • Formulate a journey 
  • Sharing stories
  • User stories drive functionality
  • Power BI is visual storytelling

Related links:
Appalling slides and graphs at Prime Minister's last update! 

https://twitter.com/markwilsonit/status/1322624750011764736?s=20

https://twitter.com/DomKent/status/1322619110371590145?s=20



Photo by Robyn Budlender on Unsplash

The Grey Beard podcast. Hello and welcome to Part 2 of show 21 of Gray Hat Beard. If you haven't listened to part one, please do go back and listen to me talk certain shared lots of different news with power platform teams and all sorts stuff. But now we're going to tell a little story and we have Clarissa Gilliam here. I'm killing Gilliam God, you won't get that wrong. Need to talk about telling stories who power platform, but we chatting a bit for the show and we kind of thought why it was important on why you should tell stories. Why can't you just going through the data in there? And we had the perfect example for those who you outside the UK apologies, you may have seen this hit. Your Twitter feeds. Was it Sunday nights where the UK Prime Minister with two of his scientific cyantific advisors started talking about the lock down to this happening here and they shared some charts? Or at least we think they did because Hoffman didn't have access. Is there was different charts in different places or with slightly different annotations? You couldn't really see anything consistent. Then put some slides up on there and either the government or the BBC won't put the blame onto them were start to crop bit to the slides and justice, and as a story no one really knew what was going on. It didn't really help us to understand the situation because it jumped around all over the place as Boris is likely to do, but it really didn't help people understand, and it gave a good example and I'm going to hand over to Clarissa here of why you should tell stories. Yeah, so it's. It's really interesting actually, because the power platform, I think in particular more so than than any other kind of development platform, is really made an ingrained in the in this kind of storytelling fabric, right? Because you know, the first thing you do if a customer asks you to make a power app for them, the first thing you do is you go and you ask for user stories. You ask them. So, So what do you what do you do? Tell me, tell me, talk me through your day, your journey, what you do? With this application, what you would want to do with a solution? And and I think it being a business applications platform that that really. Drives home all user stories literally, are you know? I am a user an I want to press this down and I want to do this and that will help me do XY or Z so. It's it's. It's really strongly in there, in power apps, and then obviously power. Be I is all just about visualizing data and it is literally about turning the data into something that makes sense. Something that tells a story. And obviously as we were talking about earlier and laughing about the charts that they put up in the in the prime minister's talk like there's. There is so much that you can do with data to make it make sense, but if you just throw date in front of people then it's gobbledegook and it's abstract, and it's completely unrelatable, and that's a surefire way of making people either completely turn off from what you're saying because they just see something I don't understand. That doesn't make sense. I'm going to go and make a Cup of tea and pretend I'm listening. Oh, it can have an even worse effect of. Intimidating and frightening people, and they're like I I don't understand, so I'm I'm nervous. And of course in in this pretty in the case that is the last thing that you want because. Looking to hit pretty nervous already yeah yeah. Is it supposed to, you know, you don't really want to be giving people extra stress on top of the pandemic, so. It's really important to to kind of. Tell a story to Ton data or turn actions into something that is relatable. Everyone, can you know when, when you when you've read a book or you watch a film, the things that you kind of latch onto you like that there's there's a character main character. You follow that journey through a progression and you come to the end of you understand you've got this, you know really stereotypical, easy advice of beginning, middle and end. But you've got this context where the scene is set. You understand, OK? This is why we are where in a fantasy world. So I'm not going to be surprised when a dragon shows up, or you know, whatever kind of setting urine, and then you've got that journey, that progress is your character from one state to another state, and then you have that ending, which is then I saw a conclusion, or just wraps up. OK, this is the state that we're in now. This is the state the world is in now, and we've closed off for all happy. And this is something that. My my current knew part time role with Microsoft is technical storyteller and. What that? What that is is about taking things that people have have done with the power platform. But you know, success stories that organizations have had this beginning where you know they've been struggling and they've had a problem with their business and then it's taking those really focusing on those key individuals who decided to turn things around and the power platform is fantastic for this because. It can take just one person. To turn your entire system around. Because it the platform itself enables and empowers that individual to have an idea and to see it through right from the beginning to the end. Which I think is quite unique in development and a lot of more traditional areas. Of course you'll be part of a like a gear in the machine almost, and you don't have that kind of same sense of ownership of vision all the way through to the end. The power platform covers off a lot of those bases, though in terms of the story as a whole. As a single platform, it's involved in all of those steps, whereas historically we might said Oh well, we're going to. Do one thing at this point in the story, and then we're going to do something else, and we're going to move it all off to all the data somewhere else. And then we're going to present in a different way. But actually, when you're looking at the power platform as a as a holistic platform that actually provides those services, your story talks about those different areas, but it's still the same platform, yeah, so it's. It creates that kind of familiarity of setting, so if you were in, you know a story that's in a fantasy world and then all of a sudden next chapter they get on a spaceship and go to another planet. You're going to feel this like disjointed. This doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit together, but like you were saying, I would like because the platform itself is 1. Setting that can cover the whole thing. That's where it really kind of shines as being that platform that enables this this journey to be made by an individual on one platform. You've got a character, you've got a setting, and you've got that familiarity. It should go through that journey an it's just about watching and understanding how that individual uses the setting around the platform to create something at the end of the day, you're going from. Nothing too. Nation who the orders the audience for your stories. Yeah, see it's everything interesting mixture because partly the audience is Microsoft itself. Say this, these stories were started off as a way to kind of like internally promote the platform. 'cause obviously their huge company and the power platform is only like a small bit of what they do. Yeah, it was when it started. It was fun. Now it's like but you know, the people who are over there making you know the next new features for Microsoft Word might not know about the power platform. Or you know you've got all of these different people who are scattered across different departments and you want to say hey look, this is this is what this tech is actually. Doing and it's it's less. Actually that's that's incorrect. It's not. This is what this tech is doing, it's this is what people are doing with our tech. That's a really important differentiation because you can't tell a story about tech. You can tell a story about people. Yeah, and that's that's way you know how you can turn to making a good story is really focusing on those those individuals, those key players. These people who. Notice the problem came up with the solution. The people who lived through the problem and struggled through it, and then we're given a solution and we're like, wow, this is changing my work day 'cause? So much of our lives is spent at work that actually, you know, like being given a solution. That means that that annoying half hour task you have to do every day now is done in 5 minutes. That's. You know quite a significant impact on your life just because we spend so much time at work. I remember there was actually a time when I was at a customer site for for something else. Really, it was. I was supposed to be talking them through some power, automate stuff and. But they they were just mentioning like some kind of things that they wanted to do, and it turned out that they had these filing cabinets full of daily sheets that someone had filled out just a checklist about their foot lift truck before they got the cooker on and drive it. And if there was a mistake or an error, they'd have to literally go back all the way through these filing cabinets to try and fish out this one dog eared piece of paper that you know we got covered in mud and rain.'cause it's the forklift truck and it's outside. And you know, I, I just said to them, you know, have you heard of power apps? And I'm knocked them up something in like an hour and the forklift guy was that like using it on his phone was like wow, this is. This is game changing for for that individual and you know if you just tell someone, oh, you know this is an app that allows people to. Make checks about forklifts that you know it's perfectly accurate, but it doesn't sound very interesting, but you know it's. You you tell the story through the eyes of the person who has. Struggled through the issue and now is receiving the benefits. That's when suddenly it becomes relatable because we can't relate to tech. It's just an abstract concept. What we relate to is people. My user stories always relate to a persona. Exactly, I think it's interesting. We will talk about the kind of audiences that telling stories. I think I was thinking initially what you've just been talking about. Their Clarissa is taking great examples or whether power platform can be used. Thinking of different ways of. I don't want to be selling it to people, but getting people to to want to use it effectively. But then it is the other side of actually getting them to tell you stories as well to help you implement things. There's two sides. These stories it's and both should be relateable and people focused. It's gotta be about getting in place, making sure people understand that from the people, and then those people you understanding what their challenges real life people. It's those bits of paper. It's understanding that you've got to pull that data and make things from it. It's really interesting view into two sides through a similar story, so I think, yeah, I think the other thing is that if you if you present to somebody and you just present facts and you present alright. Well I've got numbers. I've got graphs, I've got all of this lovely information. It's very hard for anybody to repeat that it's very hard for them to actually narrate it back to somebody else who didn't see it, whereas if you tell a story. It it's naturally repeatable. It's naturally something that people remember, and they go. Actually, that resonated with me. So therefore I'm going to reuse that I may embellish it. I may become the hero of the story, but I'm going to repeat the story and I'm going to reuse it. And it's all the forklift truck driver. I love it, yeah. You got the right hat on foot. Model. But it's, but it's, but it's one of those things, isn't it? You can, if you, if you can take a story, how many people take stories, and then go well. I don't know where I heard it first, but they remember the facts through the story and through the medium of story rather than if it would just you could present it just as numbers. I think it's I was described as the difference between you know information and data. Information is answering a question. You've got a clear question that you're asking, and therefore you've got an answer. And you're not remembering necessarily all the numbers, but you remembering well when I asked that question, the answer was something, and that's why converting data into text into numbers into. Ways to convey it is much better than just using data raw data. I think Contacts the whole story, telling it just in, you know just in tech is just something that is is just needed, right?'cause you've got, you know people who are interested in attack and what it can do. But at the end of day, people who use it aren't necessarily bothered about that. The in terms of them about what it's going to do for them. How is this going to improve my life? That's the key focus, right? You know we could we have news and we talk about new frameworks and new platforms and everything. And Power platform is is one kind of platform that is just enabling that to happen and reducing that friction of being able to say look, I can actually show you something and talk you through it really quickly and get that story moving. And when people see that then ideas start to fire out and then it's like Oh well actually we can do this. Oh actually. This then opens up another Ave that I may not have mentioned until you done the first step, and that's really when you start to get the ball rolling. The you know that's where the story you know it helped move that along. I've done, you know, apps in the past with people who are on the ground and there's one app that build. Basically it was for scanning vehicles, right? You just the people would go around and just go right vehicle listed in our. And now a lot and it would be part of an audit. This audit would take months to do and it would take lots of paperwork and the guys on the ground have to basically. I log all of these these trucks and we did a power app and it was just. It was very simple but it enabled them to come up with so many different ideas that then I was able to implement. It had a direct impact on the way that they worked to the point that it kind of revolutionized their work for them and ideas were just flying left, right and center, which was brilliant. That's that's great when you're making things like this. Having someone who is really engaged and and that story really helps that engagement. Yeah, it's also the. I see it's there's there's so much about you know Imagination is is fantastic, but imagination is difficult without inspiration. So if you'd never, ever seen or heard of any colors, and I told you, imagine the color blue, you've got nothing to go on, just like it. Sounds be I don't know. And then if if you know if at least you've seen the colored green and I can and you've seen the color red and I could say, well it's like green but less red. If you can imagine something like that, at least you've got something to begin to go on. And I find that you know being able to actually put something in front of people. And even if it's not, you know it's not there. Business process an it's not their exact scenario, but there's something relateable in that so long as you've presented in the right way there's there's something relateable in that that can then inspire them to imagine what the platform could do for them, whereas without it they're kind of like what does this platform mean? I think the the relatable aspects is really important if I can see something, and I can imagine how I could use that and I can relate it to what I do then. That's really important, you know, and this is where you kind of get into industry specifics and you go well. We know that in your manufacturing, your forklift truck truck is going to be an excellent use. Your accident recording is going to be an excellent use, where as you know you might be doing something else and you're doing other types of inspections. You know there's all sorts of different scenarios that you can use, but if it's relatable, it's really important. About sorry don't come, just just figured out that I think the the other side. That's great with the power platform and telling those stories. I had a great client at a previous company that they wanted it similar. Sort things to the forklift. The forklift that a big piece of paper and they all got lost and moved around. The things that they wanted automate it was for flight simulators, great great clouds going work with these four giant flight simulators moving around, but they having had the conversation with them and my bosses weren't too happy. But what they loved about the power platform once we had a chat and that they got introduced to it. Bench wooden created themselves and the guy who been there who actually designed these pieces of paper and then record them into a spreadsheet of those expressed she and had a bit of access in there actually, then recreated it and he was. It wasn't the guy he was. The personnel on the ground who felt the pain and he could actually go and change it himself so he didn't even need to tell a story. Almost you could tell a story about it afterwards was a great one, but he could actually go in there and make that difference directly, and I think we've seen so many great bits from the power platform come out of that. Summit huge example where he made that change himself and got on stage with. Such a Nadella off the back of it and all sorts there that you can actually take that inspiration. You know the inside out of what the pain you face what you want to change and you don't have to learn very very complex tools to do it. I'm not going to say there and absolutely simple and any Tom, **** or Harry can pick it up, but it's not impossible. It's not years of development experience you can get on and make that difference yourself. And I think that that is a really powerful story to be told. Reason why summer is always for up. He has become the story he is. He is the story. He is the main character in the story of the success of the power platform. Like. But I think that there are many others like that who hasn't even been as successful but have been very successful in their in their companies and things like that at being able to do that. And it's it's fantastic. I think. I think it's actually really important 'cause when we talk about the power platform we talk about people like Summit and Keith and people have actually lived the journey. From actually feeling the pain of a problem and actually solving it. I was when I'm thinking about storytelling. Think about the the Toy Story style of storytelling, which is that put in the. The different layers in. You know you put the story in for the kids, but you put the jokes in for the parents, yeah? Do that with the with the power platform is actually quite a challenge at times, because inevitably you'll get the well, I'm the end user. This is a really fantastic tool. I can see how it's going to help me. Oh but I'm the CFO and I want to understand the price. So where you looking at your forklift truck? You know, being able to layer up ago, and that equates to 17,000 hours a year, which equates to approximately this March. You don't need the full story, you just need the little joke at the end that goes up that much savings. Wow, yeah. Some of the layering is quite interesting with the power platform because you were disappointed. I thought you were going to say to Infinity and beyond. Oh, that's when I put the Infinity form onto the CD. S that sweater because to finish him. Yeah, that'll be impressive to see it's coming. Yeah, I've actually been putting it into customer stuff, so yeah, it will hopefully be being released next year. I guess when I have some time. Look forward to that. I think that the you know what we just talked about there. It's all about empowerment and inspiration, isn't it? When it comes down to it, it's the, you know, we know that there's lots of people who have problems in their daily work. And you know, by making your daily work better, it has a net effect of everything. Just gets a bit better, right? People are happier going to work the have not got that job that they've got to do. That takes them three or four hours a week or even longer and it gives them the tools to. Go and you know resolve that themselves and and they've got that knowledge rather than you know I need to help and someone else is gonna build this for me. You know, it's easy to pick up and I think you know all these stories. Like we said about Sumiton and more you need that kind of storytelling within the organization. It's very easy for us to talk about go. Oh yeah, we know all these people. You know there's lots of people who are in organizations that don't care about the power platform. They don't care about Microsoft 365, they just use it right? And they at it. It's the stories job really to help inspire those people to use it to help them help their situations. So think, yeah, that's the kind of thing that I was taken away from the stories. So yeah, definitely getting getting me to the end and think about wrapping up, but I think we've we've covered Chris. You talked about making sure that the stories people tell her relateable focused on people getting that sort of owl. You gave that lovely tip of having it multilayered, so you realize that there's going to be different audiences to your story in target different elements to keep everyone kind of going through what? What other tips do people have? Because quite frankly, doing this in PowerPoint, you've got consultants. Maybe their first time, or people in companies. You've gotta try and. Persuade people to do something and they want to tell a story to make. It's an impressive. How can you tell a story in a better way? What do you think about to get a journey across? So I heard of a great. A great description of how people tell stories. Some people are in the moment and they will just jump straight into the right and this is what I'm doing. And This is why I'm doing it and other people will live through the moments and they'll. Talk up and you know. Maybe they'll take 5 minutes to get to the point where actually this is the key and they put the context in and then you mentioned earlier Clarissa talking through the moment means that you could put that context in and then you can follow on afterwards rather than just focusing on. Well, I've got a power app and this is what I'm going to do with it, so you're not actually just thinking in the moment you're thinking through the moment, and I think that's that's something that for every story is a really useful tip. Yeah, definitely. Don't just jump in at the fall of the Senate. You've gotta have all of the like. Everything building up beforehand and then suddenly Palpatine being like man. We gotta remember that one. I guess some kind of for that kind of leads in a little bit to it, depending on your audience. Obviously I'm not going to put like snippets like that into into the work that I'm doing with Microsoft, but you know, for things like. Spice up like for things with especially community events. Well, partly storytelling is definitely as we've been talking about about inspiring and everything, but it's also about understanding. There's a lot that you can do in the way of analogies, so I was I was quite surprised actually because I gave a talk for less code, more power about. How the power platform is likewise the power platform has a place in the development world and pretty much the first half of the talk is just about Mario. But people have asked me to to do that talk again and again and again because it's it's that analogy that is relatable to them and they go. I get it now. It was something that when it was just tech I you know, I kind of knew that there was something there and I couldn't quite put exactly put my finger on it. But then as soon as you put the analogy in front of them and say hey, book, this is Mario Maker and you can make make your own levels and and it's fantastic. And then people get hype lines. What I can do with? Sorry, that disappoint planes joke in there somewhere in there with Mary, yeah. Um, so see analogies are definitely again, obviously depending on on your your audience. But analogies can be an amazing tool to just really bring to life something that is quite lifeless by its nature. The other thing is, analogies are really good for conveying really complicated ideas exactly. Yeah, security and compliance. Analogies said yeah, but never talk tech. Just talking allergies. Lots of dogs and keys and locks and. Sure, you get appropriate ones though. My favorite band analogy is far worse than no analogy. I guess that is true. My favorite one for I'm compliance and governance is the pizza 'cause you've got all your like yummy yummy toppings on top that everyone wants and everyone raves about the toppings. No one goes oh you know I really want a pizza that's that's a pizza base that's my favorite bit of the pizza is the face, but it's the hottest fit to get right. It, actually, you know, takes the most skill, all the elements on your pizza and without the pizza base, you've just got a mess on a plate and you cannot eat. All of your toppings without getting them all over your face and just having a bad time of things so compliance is the pizza base for the pizza and then people go. Oh, it sounds important. South Sound so easy when you put it like that as well. So not only do I want a pizza, it's also reminded me of the pizza as a service which is used to understand you know the cloud and all the different services and you know, yeah, it's it's. It helps helps you understand. It's it was it the film road trip where they're doing philosophers through but. Basically, teaching someone about philosophy but through the meet the wrestles wrestlers. Sorry, but it's it's relatable, right? It's like if you can find something that relates to someone in your audience doesn't matter who it is, as long as they understand that at the end you're talking their language, then you helping them understand. Look at scrum. It's a it's a complete analogy. For the whole methodology and the pics and chickens. So I think we probably should wrap up. So top tips make it relatable. Get some good analogies in there, make it multi layered and multi targeted on there and I think Clarissa just reset you sort of talked about making the tail make it build up to a point and shot that we might have a few drops. Think of a rollercoaster going analogies, but you have your rhythm, have your flow and try make it consistent like it like a book if you're jumping around all over the place, it's not very comfortable. You want a nice simple. Tale for the most part, they're telling that let's put in there. But yeah, I think some some great examples, and I were going to some good storytellers going out there now and constructing their constructing ideas and thinking back to other great examples. They've got weather with the power platform and other things as well. Thank you very much, Clarissa. Thank you for giving quite hefty chunk hefty chunk of your evening. So and for bringing some great guy code to us all with the the tops going on. Will will wrap up. There will be back in a couple of weeks time talking about something that we will workout in next couple of days. As soon as we got some people lined up. Now when you were going to give us a surprise as to what we're going to talk about, I just realized I forgot to contact the person I was going to try and get for it. So we are going to have some more guests coming along for it. I'll be honest, I started trying to contact people. I thought why need is to have an Oakdale app that I can keep track of all these and then I can type with shows and I spent about 3 hours over the weekend playing with that instead of actually doing the organizing of it as is the proper storytelling way and being distracted there so that that is the honest, honest answer that otherwise I think it's time we go to bed before we start babbling too much. Thank you very much or I've been great. I've been hacked. I forbid. Thanks very much and see you in 2 weeks. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to Gray Hat Beard podcast. The song drink up Metis was brought to you by Blackbones under a noncommercial Attribution License.