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The storytelling experiment of BIF-4

BIF-4 at Trinity Rep, Providence, R.I.

Image by Business Innovation Factory via Flickr

Because the story Steve Bendt and I told at BIF-4 is kind of a blur, I'm reposting a recap written by Braden Kelly . I'm also posting the pre-story notes Steve and I put together as a way of comparing what we wanted to say with what we actually said. I'll also be posting the video of our schpiel in the near future.

So, how'd we do?

Our notes:

BIF4 Notes

We should not be here. We are here as a result of a series of fortuitous mistakes. The very fact that we are here is due to the same forces that shaped the storey we’re going to tell you.

It’s a story about the displacement of authority with passion. The discovery of shared social objects rather than the manufacture and dispensation of directives. It’s a story about how small tools can create great changes. But it’s mostly a story about two words - friend me .

Here’s how it happened: The BSN story ...(tell the story)

  • This changes the first assumption from you must be a professional or I can’t trust you to if you’re an amateur with skills we should work together. Now our interactions are predicated on or at least flavored with Trust where before there was Power
  • This has a direct effect on how we organize to do work from command and control to communicate and cocreate
  • This not only unlocks value where there was none but it also helps retain value where it would have been lost in normal cost of business.
  • Once other members of the company discover the cost of these tools and these methods its a jailbreak - everything or almost everthing is on the table.
  • These tools will change how we organize. When we change our organize we change how we create value - and what we value.

 

Braden Kelly's post:

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BiF-4 Insights - Blue Shirt Nation

Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling both came from an advertising background and so we went out and started pitching this idea we had of a social network for employees (Blue Shirt Nation)

  • Everyone we talked to was supportive and referred us to someone else, until we went in a big circle

  • But nobody wanted to put up any money

  • So we just went and built it on the open source Drupal and got two years of hosting for $100

  • Lawyers and HR said it looked fine

  • But we got a lot of feedback from the stores that said it sucked

  • Not unexpected because we didn't know what we were doing

  • People also came in and were trying to sort out what the power arrangement was in this community (Is this still top-down corporate?)

So we asked people "What would we have to change to make you tell other people to use it?"

  • We also discovered that the users are going to have to be in charge or we're screwed

  • People are going to have to volunteer to use it

  • Gradually we grew from 1,000 members to 2k to 12k to 15k to 24,000 members today

  • One of the key catalysts ended up being corporate making a change to the employee discount policy

  • People had no other place to voice their opposition so they came to Blue Shirt Nation

    • Change was announced on a Tuesday

    • But the story broke on Blue Shirt Nation the day before the announcement (Monday)

    • People voiced the business reasons why it shouldn't change (employee trial, improved product knowledge, improved advocacy, recruiting tool, etc.)

The employee discount controversy not only helped to make Blue Shirt Nation a success, but it also spawned an outburst of Wikis and Idea Marketplaces.

The controversy also helped people understand the additional sources of value from things like the employee discount and why they should view them as more of an investment than as a pure cost.

 

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