6.1: Story Discussion

Think of a recent time when you overcame a big setback. Build your story by providing descriptions for each of the five elements of story:

• Background, character, and circumstance:
• Obstacles, challenges, opportunities, problems, and discomfort:
• Choices, alternatives, approaches, solution:
• Results, benefits:
• Key points, lessons learned, actions to be taken:

Scenario: Tom, your manager of operations, is leading a new initiative to increase everyone’s knowledge. The goal of the initiative is to provide all employees in the operations department with more knowledge of best practices and advanced features in the online tools they use in their work. The value to the department of increasing everyone’s skills and knowledge is huge, but you are concerned that the initiative will be interpreted by the employees as another corporate program that merely wastes people’s time.

You are meeting with Tom to guide him in how to announce the initiative so that people see the value to not only the organization but also to themselves. Outline the conversation you plan to have with Tom including your suggestions for how he could make the intended results believable.