In this workshop‑style discussion, the speakers explore how well‑crafted stories can be used to secure business decisions, sell work, and acquire resources. They critique the common misuse of case studies that merely list achievements, arguing that effective stories must follow a struggle‑search‑solution arc to be relatable and persuasive. The conversation then shifts to a concrete example from a large SAP implementation: as a change manager, the speaker framed a request for a full‑time change analyst in financial terms, highlighting a $1 million monthly burn rate and proposing a $100 k analyst to save that cost. By presenting the decision‑making process as a clear narrative—detailing the three components of a software‑fit assessment, the eight‑person decision room, and a timeline of 24 meetings—the speaker secured approval and accelerated the project. The key takeaway is that storytelling is not a soft skill but a strategic, dollar‑focused tool for influencing stakeholders.
Chapters
Think about a time, a personal story of where a well-crafted story activated a great business decision, a valuable business decision, an important one. What was a time where a story activated a decision? Take about 30 seconds. And well-crafted story activated a great business decision. The story, the story of, of sometimes the story helps make it a difficult decision. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We told a great story. Everyone loved the story. Everyone's bought in on the story and I was like, oh, you might not get the story.
You're not going to get the story. That's good. Yeah.
Some people get the story. Not for you. No good things for you.
One other way to think about that. Is when we do— when you sell work and you use case studies, those are stories. And sometimes a case study is like, oh, that did it. You know, that's just like us. Now, the problem I have with case studies is that people don't tell case studies as stories. So they tell case studies as like, we did this thing, we won, it was awesome, it was great, it was beautiful, it was duh, you know. And so they, they over— it's kind of what you said, Amber. They oversell the case study. And then it's all the benefits. That's not a good story because the story has a struggle, a search, and a solution. So, so part of it is, is that, you know, if you include it, it's like, that's— I had all these problems when we were at Accenture together and And people would talk about, oh, here's this case study we did at this client. And then you'd hear like, I want to hear where we're wrong. I want to hear the glitches. I've got glitches right now. My client, if everything went right, like you're just describing, I've never had a project like that. I can't identify with it. So sometimes those case studies are there, but it's like, give the struggle search solution and tell it as a story. So just to think about that, Nate, as another way to think about stories that we've used in the past. Okay. So you can use stories to reset direction, to sell work. One of my favorite stories is acquiring resources. So when I was at, and I'm gonna use this later on too, when I was at, we were implementing SAP and it was a 2.5-year implementation. We were in the beginning software fit assessment. So we were 2 years out from implementing anything. And I was the change manager. I was a manager at the time and senior manager at the time. And 2 years out and I was 3 days a week. And I asked the partner, I said, I need, I need a change analyst full-time. And they're like, We're 2 years out. We're not doing any training. Y'all know how that goes. It's like, I don't, I'm not doing training right now. They're like, well, what do we need this for? And it's like, okay, so, so this is great. So I said, so this is a software fit assessment project. And, and the, the, the partner was a technology partner. And so it was Oracle, PeopleSoft, or SAP. And I said, what do you kind of, what do you think this project is? And he said, it's a technology project. I was like, no, it's not. So what is it? I said, it's a decision-making project. He's like, okay, tell me more. I said, this is January. In May, there's gonna be 8 people in a room that you gather to make a decision on this software. And so between now and then, you're, you're gathering up information to build a case for 8 people to make a decision. He's like, okay, tracking, tracking. I said, um, after you, with, with the team that you have here, um, accumulated here, um, what's your burn rate per month? And the burn rate was a million. He had like 20 people or something on this project to do this thing. So he had a million a month burn rate. And I said, so if they don't make that decision in May and they have to hold the team and actually you have to hold the team an extra month because the client wants that same team back to start the next piece of work.
Yeah.
You're gonna burn a million a month, right? He's like, yeah, I hadn't thought about that that way. I was like, what if I told you if I brought on an analyst That's gonna cost you— I can't, I can't even, you know, $100,000 for this, this 6 months. If, for, if, if I could save you $1 million by bringing in a $100,000 resource, what do you say? And he's like, you're on. I said, here's what I wanna do. And then just to give you guys the, the background on that, I was like, there's 3 components of making a software fit assessment, which platform to use, what's the implementation plan look like? And how much is it gonna cost? So I had to put, I had 8 people, 3 elements. I had 24 meetings and I just, I just took the 20 and I just took each of those pieces and I, I, I put those 3 pieces in front of those 8 people over the course of the next 6 months. They made that decision on May 22nd and there was, and, and, and it was a rubber stamp. They were just like, and we, and we launched the next phase on Monday. And that partner was like, I've never seen that happen before. Okay, this is so for, for the folks there, you know, the change management folks here, it's like, it's not a soft skill. It's not a soft science. It's dollars, folks. It's dollars. So that was a great way to sell, you know, and to tell a story. I told a story of There's going to be a room on May 22nd with 8 people in a room, and they're going to sit around and they're going to make a decision. And here's the things they need to do. So I told a story that makes sense to folks.
