Speaker: Jin Chua
Tell us about a time when storytelling had a positive impact on your work.
Jin Chua: Um Honestly, all the time, uh In fact, my current manager will tell you that one of the reasons they hired me was because of my ability to story tell. So let me think of a specific time that this happened. Um Yeah, I gave a presentation yesterday and it was a pretty fuzzy concept. We were trying to understand what drives value for the customer. And it took combing through a lot of different open ended data to extract themes and uh come up with generalities. And um what I was able to do was really uh in a very concise and succinct way express the differences between a high value customer or really a customer who feels like they're getting a lot of value, a medium value and a low value customer. And to me this was impactful because it had communicated the idea clearly, but also sparked further conversation about how we can, what we can do research wise to better understand what value means for a customer. But then also what this means for the business. How can we based on the different drivers? We found help to create more value for the customer. So uh Yes.
Is there anything you want to add about the previous story that you were not able to answer in the five-minute limit?
Jin Chua: I don't.
Now, tell us another story. Tell us about a time when storytelling did not work as you planned/hoped.
Jin Chua: So this was a time when I thought I had a pretty solid story about what the customer journey was as you're going through um acquiring this new product and beginning to use it. Uh And, you know, I had a really fancy visual with that customer journey and their, and their feelings during that process. So there was like an up down sort of curve. Um I think that this presentation did not work because our uh audience, the stakeholder that presented this to really was not receptive to what we had to say from the customer's perspective. Um One of the complaints that the customer had was that uh oh, so this is a software company. And so one of the customer complaints is that we have uh upgrades that are too frequent and they feel like uh their products, what they had bought before is becoming obsolete. Um And our stakeholder was just like, well, that's just the nature of being in the tech business. Um things change and uh you know, move on or like get off the program. And I think another reason driving uh why he was not receptive was because this presentation that I had created actually was not sponsored by him. It was something that we wanted to investigate on our own. Uh And so really, he was going into it completely blind. And honestly, I think, um, having that relationship with the stakeholder matters probably more than storytelling. If someone doesn't want to listen, they don't want to listen.
Is there anything you want to add about the previous story that you were not able to answer in the five-minute limit?
Jin Chua: No.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
Jin Chua: So I work in a team with a lot of researchers who come from academia and something that I've noticed is that instead of storytelling, they are a lot more inclined to, um, I guess data pile, if you wanna, if you wanna call it that, uh I, I was trained in the consulting tradition where ideally you want to communicate the big idea, the big takeaway right at the very start and then add in your supporting arguments after that. Whereas a lot of the researchers I work with, they're inclined to provide as much evidence and lead up to the big thing. And, you know, I've learned that that's not something that people have the patience for uh in a business setting. So, um yeah, I think storytelling can be counterintuitive for the researcher because it necessarily means omitting data to make a point. Um And, you know, some people have, are less comfortable with that.
