Why tech chiefs must master the art of storytelling

By their very nature, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions tend to be large and com­plex under­tak­ings that aren’t wide­ly under­stood out­side the IT func­tion. This has oblig­ed many CIOs to artic­u­late a con­vinc­ing vision of the future to win the sup­port of their boards and ral­ly the whole organ­i­sa­tion around ideas that may be hard for the lay per­son to grasp. It’s no mean feat. 

Excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are vital – non-tech­ni­cal employ­ees must first under­stand a large­ly tech-led strat­e­gy if they are going to buy into it. But the impor­tant task of explain­ing the plan in the most relat­able and com­pelling terms is often over­looked.

“This can be a dry and com­plex sub­ject, of which rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple have a deep knowl­edge,” says Haig Tyler, CIO at glob­al law firm Her­bert Smith Free­hills. “But, with tech­nol­o­gy affect­ing all aspects of our lives, this knowl­edge gap needs to be addressed – hence the need for sto­ry­telling.” 

He con­tin­ues: “Good CIOs have recog­nised the impor­tance of their role as ‘chief trans­la­tion offi­cers’ for a while. Change is a par­tic­i­pa­tion sport. If peo­ple are to par­tic­i­pate, they first need to buy into their part in the sto­ry. Plain lan­guage and an empa­thy for the lis­ten­er are essen­tial for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the ratio­nale for, and means of, change.” 

A com­pelling nar­ra­tive needn’t come in the form of a tub-thump­ing TED Talk with a fan­cy slide deck. But a CIO must explain clear­ly why the change is required – includ­ing the key com­mer­cial advan­tages of doing so – and how its most tan­gi­ble aspects will affect employ­ees’ work. 

“The pow­er of sto­ry­telling is that it cre­ates an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to oth­er­wise dry facts and fig­ures. CIOs have to mas­ter this art, as they are key in lead­ing their organ­i­sa­tions through such changes. They must align peo­ple towards a com­mon goal and bring them along to achieve it,” says Ravi Mayu­ram, CTO at soft­ware devel­op­er Couch­base. “We accom­plish all this by inspir­ing them. The most direct way to achieve that is to tell sto­ries of why the busi­ness needs to take on the project and what it means to employ­ees, their organ­i­sa­tion and its cus­tomers.”

Trail­blaz­ing CIOs are doing this by pro­vid­ing ‘fire­side chats’ on video for all staff to view, relay­ing rel­e­vant case stud­ies and encour­ag­ing cham­pi­ons of change from out­side the IT team to tell their sto­ries on the cor­po­rate intranet. In these busi­ness­es there’s a real­i­sa­tion that tech­nol­o­gy is no longer some­thing ‘those peo­ple in the IT depart­ment over there do’ in a silo. It affects every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion.

“A mod­ern CIO is in the busi­ness of chang­ing the cul­ture of their organ­i­sa­tion,” Mayu­ram argues. “For that to hap­pen, their sto­ries need to be car­ried through word of mouth and repeat­ed in hall­ways, around water­cool­ers or in any oth­er places where the CIO is not present. Only when this hap­pens will a sto­ry become organ­i­sa­tion­al knowl­edge and stay in the col­lec­tive cor­po­rate mem­o­ry.” 

But he adds a note of cau­tion: “While sto­ry­telling is impor­tant and pow­er­ful, it has to be authen­tic. An audi­ence can quick­ly smell whether a sto­ry­teller is being gen­uine or not. A strong nar­ra­tive is based on the integri­ty of both the sto­ry and the teller. Results will fol­low only if every­thing is authen­tic.” 

It helps CIOs that the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects is becom­ing more wide­ly under­stood beyond the IT func­tion. This is cru­cial, accord­ing to Tyler, who says: “Let’s just call out dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for what it is: this is about busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion.”

Giv­en the impact that dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing on real cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and actu­al cor­po­rate prof­its, the dry, jar­gon-filled lan­guage of the IT pro­fes­sion­al needs a makeover, he argues. 

“Do you say that you ‘have a data strat­e­gy focus­ing on improv­ing infor­ma­tion gov­er­nance and con­trol, ensur­ing that the busi­ness is an effec­tive stew­ard of the mate­r­i­al it holds, where the tax­on­o­my is sound and each activ­i­ty deliv­ers usable data’? Or do you sim­ply describe a vision of the future in which ‘sound data informs bet­ter deci­sions’? The lat­ter is not only eas­i­er to say; it’s also eas­i­er to hear and under­stand,” Tyler says.

Non-IT staff who are evan­ge­lists for the cause, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they’re part of the lead­er­ship team, can prove key allies to the CIO in com­mu­ni­cat­ing the case for the trans­for­ma­tion. With this in mind, wise IT chiefs are engag­ing with poten­tial inter­nal cham­pi­ons and encour­ag­ing them to help spread the word in layman’s terms.

Cor­po­rate nar­ra­tives have acquired a more per­son­al touch in many com­pa­nies that have had to adopt remote work­ing over the past two years, as C‑suite mem­bers con­verse with their staff on video from their liv­ing rooms to a back­ground sound­track of chil­dren play­ing and dogs bark­ing. 

As Michael Smets, pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s Saïd Busi­ness School, has dis­cov­ered, “many busi­ness lead­ers have report­ed form­ing a more human con­nec­tion with their teams” since the first Covid lock­down was imposed in the UK in 2020.  

The need for new com­pelling cor­po­rate nar­ra­tives won’t be dimin­ish­ing any time soon. As the tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers more and more ben­e­fits, our expec­ta­tions of it only tend to increase. This indi­cates that sto­ry­telling will have to evolve over time into a con­tin­u­al con­ver­sa­tion. 

When Tyler says “change is a par­tic­i­pa­tion sport”, he means that the process must engage the hearts and minds of as many stake­hold­ers as pos­si­ble. And ongo­ing dia­logue will be key to ensur­ing that this hap­pens.