Writing Assignment-Business Writer

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The CAST acronym for the process, and the current format for the Visual Story Map, happened one day by looking at the grouping of notes on a page. Until this point the process had been represented by the image of a machine taking in the inputs for the story, with levers and controls to select the story and character combinations.

Today we use the Visual Story Map to capture key notes for a visual story, and as a reminder of the key elements that must be considered. We’ll look at how you can use the Visual Story Map in the next chapter.

With the CAST process, you now have real clarity on the content and the justi- fication for every element you include. We call this focus intentional design. Every part of the visual story is focused on getting to the core message; you don’t spend time creating content that you later realize is not relevant, or distracting.

Design is a skill that you continue to develop over a lifetime of practice. However, time after time, we’ve seen how using just a few of the right techniques can quickly make a fantastic impact on the quality of the result. The surprise to many people is that you get all the way to the fourth row before you start to create the visuals.

When Mark agreed to be a co-author it made a massive difference to our abil- ity to write the book and also to the advice we could provide on design tech- niques. Mark took the lead writing the design chapter (Chapter 14) to cover techniques for ideation, composition, and content coding to support the development of your story in formats from one-page posters to animations. Truly, seeing is believing. The design section includes guidance drawn from graphics designers and experts in the analysis of visual design, including Edward Tufte, who identifies many of the secrets to effective data visualiza- tion in his classic book, Beautiful Evidence.

Finally, we looked at the visual stories we have created and a wide range of examples we have seen over the last ten years to identify six tests that, while not a guarantee of success, at least help you to quickly spot the common problems. Testing your visual story includes the necessary steps to ensure you have included, and excluded, all the right things, and also includes examining the potential unintended consequences of your recommendations.

Testing is more than just rehearsal. A communication technique called “Active Listening” encourages the person listening to feed back to the speaker what they are hearing, by paraphrasing or re-wording what they have heard in their own terms. In this way the meaning of the conversation is actively confirmed by both parties. We think of testing as a similar active process, where you will ask your test audience to feed back to you what they heard in the story, how it made them feel, and what they would do as a result of hearing and seeing your visual story.

Sykes, Martin, et al. Stories That Move Mountains : Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=1040814. Created from capella on 2017-11-10 13:34:29.

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Long after the audience has forgotten your name and the title of your presentation, they will remember your stories, which is why Master Presenters are such apt storytellers. —Chip and Dan Heath. Best-selling authors on the subjects of change and how ideas survive.

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand. —Chinese proverb

Using CAST to Tell Stories

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Use the Visual Story Map The CAST process and the Visual Story Map evolved together. We found there was a need to have a simple visual format to help remember the di!erent activities, and to capture the key information and decisions about how to structure and design the story. The Visual Story Map has evolved into a simple table structure to make it easier to use in printed formats, and to recreate on whiteboards and #ipcharts in workshops. You can download a template for the Visual Story Map from our website at www.storiesthatmovemountains.com or from the book’s companion website at www.wiley.com/go/storiesthatmovemountains. We use the Visual Story Map in di!erent ways, and we assume that you will as well.

We have found ourselves many times with a deadline looming and a mass of content, ideas, audience information, and partly completed materials. When you’ve learned the CAST process you will realize it is possible to just grab everything you have and lay it out on a large version of the Visual Story Map, then start to iterate.

On other occasions, we have had groups of people involved in the development of a story, sometimes with key members of the audience taking part. Often, we suggest starting with a brainstorming workshop, and involve everyone interested in the creation of the story. In the brainstorming session, a facilitator draws an empty Visual Story Map on the whiteboard, issues a small pack of sticky notes to each participant, and lets them post anything, anywhere on the board. After $fteen minutes, the facilitator walks along the Visual Story Map, sharing the notes posted. After everyone has the seeds of ideas from their colleagues, a second round of brainstorming and clustering takes place. In just thirty minutes, this process can ensure that everyone’s ideas have been heard, and it builds a great data set to start a solid visual story.

Most visual stories are created over a period of weeks, rather than days or hours. The Visual Story Map is useful to keep track of progress and highlight key information as the story develops. Often we see people use an electronic version of the Visual Story Map to share notes across a team, or have a copy posted on the wall in a team room.

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INTEGRATE We created the CAST process and the Visual Story Map to provide a structure that we know works. One of the strengths is the integration of all the parts to develop a compelling story and visual design that together are focused on exactly what the audience needs to know. If you $nd yourself skipping a part of the process, or with content in one part of the Visual Story Map that is not integrated with the rest of your content, you should stop and work out what is missing.

In each of the chapters you will see the evolution of two example visual stories. These examples have a consistently colored edge to the pages to allow you to quickly move through the book, following the development of the example content. We have tried to show how the integration works through these examples.

Learn From Our Experience

ITERATE Looking back at the visual stories we have been creating for the last decade, we have never got it right $rst time. Not once. Not even close. Sometimes it just takes a few days, sometimes months, of working with people, telling the stories, and iterating to get them right. There’s a lot of testing to be done, a lot of listening to feedback from others, and iteration of your design.

Each of the sections of the Visual Story Map corresponds to a chapter in this book. At the end of each chapter, you will $nd a checklist of key things to remember and perform as you go through that part of the CAST process. All of the checklists are laid out the same way to allow you to $nd them quickly and jump from checklist to checklist to get a simple view of all of the steps. As you iterate over development of your visual story, keep going back to the checklists to help you stay on track.

INNOVATE The CAST process brings together a wide range of very powerful techniques, but these are not the only techniques you might use. In some chapters we point to alternative techniques that you could use, and many of you will have experience with other techniques that achieve the same goals as the ones we recommend here. Our recommendation is to $rst understand what the desired outcome is for each step in the CAST process, and then add your own experience and skills to the techniques we have identi$ed.

Ultimately you should have your own variation of CAST, adapted for the way you work and for the culture of the organization you work in.

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On the following two pages we introduce each of the example visual stories and explain a little about the situations Marina and Tom are facing.

There is a third $ctional example in Chapter 16, built by combining factors from a number of visual stories we’ve created over the years for organizations and interest groups. You have already seen the start of this with the two-page visual story in Chapter 1. In Chapter 16 we develop the last two days of this story into an example of how to use the CAST process in a very short timescale to prepare for important presentations. By contrast, the Personal Trainer and City University Hospital examples each span a number of weeks over which the content is being developed, tested, and delivered.

Build Your Own Example The worked examples will help you understand the CAST process and many of the individual techniques. We recommend you try creating your own example to test the ideas as you read through each chapter, rather than waiting until you’re at the end of the book.

If you work through the sequence with your own example while reading the book, we believe you will have a much clearer idea of where you need to focus when you need to create a visual story in a hurry.

Examples of Using CAST When we decided to write about CAST we looked at many other books to help us decide on a style. Most books use examples to illustrate each point, but we found the examples are either all independent of each other, theoretical, over-simpli$ed, or just show the end result. We decided to be di!erent and create two examples that build up, piece by piece, in each chapter to show what you really have to do to create a good visual story. These examples are built on real situations, with just a few names and details changed to allow us to demonstrate as much as possible from the di!erent techniques. By the end of the book, we will have completed each of the examples, and you will have seen how to use the CAST process.

The $rst story is about Marina, who wants to start a business to support personal trainers. The challenges and approach in Marina’s story could be applied to anyone wanting to in#uence a small group of people with similar backgrounds or issues. Marina’s story also represents a situation where the CAST process is used to help develop the ideas and content used in the story.

The second story is about Tom, the leader of an IT group in a major hospital who wants to gain the support for a signi$cant transformation project. Tom’s situation will feel very familiar to many people who have to deal with complex business projects, with many di!erent stakeholders and a range of business objectives. This situation also demonstrates how to build a story into an existing program, and how to plan for the complex delivery process often required in large organizations.

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So with my husband, I started to consider a radical new idea: Why not create a service that allows personal trainers to set up their own training studio as part of a network? Clients could $nd the service online and sign up for a nearby training studio, learn about their trainer’s philosophy, and share their feedback with other clients in an online social forum.

The service would handle the administration of collecting membership and training fees through electronic subscription payments and then pay the trainers directly via their bank accounts. The service would also handle legal fees, hide banking complexity, provide online marketing, and provide simple step-by-step directions for trainers to set themselves up.

To achieve my goals, I need trainers, especially ones who already own a studio, to become interested in joining the network. We created a name and brand identity for the business, “Optimal Balance,” and we have started to create some of the services, along with a website, so we can work with our investors. The visual story has to convince studio owners and personal trainers that this is a viable business. It might take a number of presentations to get enough studio owners signed up, but all I need are ten paying customers to be viable. This story needs to be tuned to the very speci$c needs of these key people, to excite them to make the decision to be a part of something new.

Example 1: Personal Trainer My name is Marina. After spending years as a pharmacy technician and medical administrator, I wanted a new lease on life. I looked around to $nd something I could be passionate about and decided to go back to college for a two-year degree as a certi$ed personal trainer. As I found out though, the problem with passion is that it might not pay too well. I talked with a number of di!erent gyms but found that working for them was really only a last resort. While the gym would collect $50 for an hour of my time, I would earn only about $15 of that, and then still have to cover my travel costs, other business costs, and pay taxes.

So I decided to look into opening my own small training studio, where customers would come just for personal training. I had a good knowledge of how to run a business, and a husband with great business experience who could help. There is a lot of complexity to opening a studio. Setting up accounts, doing marketing and sales, online and o&ine advertising, and renewing the billings every month was daunting.

Many times, I wondered aloud if there was just some company that would do some of this grunt work for me. Every day I was spending trying to set up a studio was another day when I couldn’t focus on the reason I was doing all this — to be a personal $tness trainer.

You can follow the Personal

Trainer example by flipping

to the pages with yellow bor-

ders throughout the book.

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how IT really should work. It is great to have this chance, but at the same time, we have to convince a lot of people that we can do this.

Patient data is currently in a mix of systems and on paper. We have islands of information across the hospital and complex processes that have evolved over years to get around the problems this causes. To bring in the IT changes needed to make the new critical-care building a success, we need to get a lot of support from the clinical team, nursing sta! and administrators, as well as the $nancial support from the transformation program’s governance board.

Everyone is supportive of the goals for the expansion and transformation plan, but there is a lot of work to do to convince the management and sta! of the importance of the IT transformation. They have been working around the existing issues for years and don’t realize how much that is compromising their ability to improve in the future. I need a visual story to describe the change we’re going to make. This needs to explain the vision we have for the future, how we are going to get there, and how success will depend on widespread participation. I have been through enough big change programs to know this is going to be a team e!ort across all the departments, and clarity of communication is vital to bring the team together.

Example 2: City

University Hospital City University Hospital is one of the top $ve hospitals in the country. It’s a leading research center and training hospital that serves as the major area hospital with more than half a million patients each year. This is a great place to work, where I can be very proud of what we do. My name is Tom. I lead the IT group that provides systems to run everything from patient information to room scheduling.

The hospital trustees recently approved a three- year expansion and transformation plan. This will include a new critical care building at the side of the existing Accident and Emergency unit. Capable of handling 70,000 patient visits per year, this facility will lead the way in adopting new technology and processes to improve patient care.

Unfortunately the IT systems have not had the coordination or investment over the past $ve years to support this plan. I joined the hospital team when the management board decided to bring IT services back under their control, after a long period of being run by an outside company.

The transformation plan is the $rst big chance my new team has to make a di!erence and show

You can follow the City

University Hospital example

by flipping to the pages with

blue borders throughout

the book.

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“Would you tell me, please, which

way I ought to go from here?”

“!at depends a good deal on where

you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—” said

Alice.

“!en it doesn’t matter which way

you go,” said the Cat.

“— so long as I get somewhere,” Alice

added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the

Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Makari. Male Amur Tiger. Taken in 2009 at Wildlife Heritage Foundation, UK.

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He who fails to plan is planning to fail.

—Winston Churchill

Tell the Story Right The second most common problem is the creation of a visual story without a clear plan for how it’s going to be delivered to the audience that needs to support the change.

We’ve seen great stories and visuals developed, but never seen by the people who should see them because the authors didn’t work out how to get the message to the audience. The Story and Tell rows are designed to ensure that the visual story reaches members of the intended audience, enabling them to act on it.

Tell the Right Story The most common problem we $nd, the one that wastes the most time in the process for creating a visual story, is a lack of clarity on the reason for the story.

Many times, we’ve seen people put in a lot of e!ort to create a story only to communicate background information or miss the point. If you’re not 100 percent sure you have the purpose for the story clearly de$ned, spend the time required to work through the Content and Audience rows to get clarity.

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.

—Christopher Robin, in A.A. Milne’s, Winnie the Pooh

Imagine how di!erent the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s adventures would seem if he had been represented as a tiger.

Makari is a beautiful tiger, but he does not have the characteristics we expect for the Cheshire Cat. #ink about

this as you develop your visual story. Good visual stories balance all the di!erent parts to ensure they $t together.

It’s worth the e!ort because doing so can signi$cantly, and positively, a!ect audience perception and expectation.

If you have elements of the visual story that are out of alignment with the rest then the message your audience

receives may be that you don’t really know where you are going.

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Go to www.stor iesthatmovemoun

tains.com/ and download the V

isual

Story Map temp late now. Use th

is to create your first visual stor

y as

you work through the book.

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START➲ Sykes, Martin, et al. Stories That Move Mountains : Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=1040814. Created from capella on 2017-11-10 13:34:29.

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CONTENT

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Why

If we have our

own why in

life, we shall

get along

with almost

any how. —Friedrich Nietzsche, noted German philosopher

and author of Twilight of the Idols in 1888

!e best way to predict the future is to create it. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

and ‘Father of management theory’

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The Three Big Whys It is not easy to step away from your own motivation entirely. We will give you some tools to examine motivations in a neutral way. In this chapter, our aim is to help you answer the question that matters the most: Why does your audience need to move this mountain?

Although each story will have a unique set of factors, we suggest three main reasons why people propose a change:

To improve an existing situation. If this is the type of story you are telling, you need to understand and catalog the pain that the current situation is causing, and show how your solution will diminish it. By pain, we mean any inconvenience, ine*ciency, loss of potential gain, or physical, emotional, or $nancial discomfort. (You will $nd more about the concept of the pain chain and techniques for dealing with the pains later in the chapter.)

To bring about something new and useful. Maybe there’s no existing problem to be solved, but your proposal will lead to a new product, event, or process that will increase e*ciency, improve revenue, or add excitement. Motivating your audience may be di*cult because there’s no sense of urgency to draw upon, either from any kind of pain or from a well- understood personal bene$t. If this is your story, you have to convince your audience that your proposal will improve their lives, possibly in a way that’s never occurred to them. Did anyone ask for the VCR? For the iPad?

To ful"ll some personal desire or motivation. This kind of story may be for your own use, or maybe it’s meant to appeal to some personal desire shared by many individuals. Personal stories could be about self- improvement, getting a new job, or losing weight.

The $rst step in the CAST process is to make clear the reasons why there’s a need to change at all. Simon Sinek manages to $ll a whole book, Start with Why, writing about how the greatest in#uencers and leaders in the world all start with “Why” before going on to the “How” and “What.” The people you want to in#uence will accept change more readily if they understand why they need to change.

You can use the techniques in this chapter to start $lling in your Visual Story Map. The $rst step is to work out the core reasons for the change you are proposing. Your visual story must successfully communicate those reasons.

In our training sessions, we have found that most people already have a change that they would like to propose, and the visual story becomes a way to describe that change. Assuming that you have a change that you would like to see in your life, your company, or your neighborhood, we would like to start with a simple caution.

It is likely that you have a reason that you want the change to occur… but we are going to ask you to go beyond your personal reasons. This chapter will help you to $nd the reason that your audience will recognize and identify with. We will help you to $nd the reason that they will make the change, and to remove yourself from the story.

Associated with your reason for making the change, you may feel that the change is urgent. In a later chapter, we will share techniques for $nding the sense of urgency that motivates your audience. The same caution applies in that case as well: you cannot assume that your audience will want to make the change as urgently as you do.

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