The power of storytelling in IT development, and how to build ownership in the team
She feels the strong wind in her face, and a small drop runs from her eye and back towards her ear. The vast blue fills her field of view and she becomes weightless for a moment. She feels it in her stomach as the vast blue leaves her field of view again. A feeling of delight mixed with a tiny bit of fear. She squeals.
“Daddy! Faster!”
Storytelling is one of the oldest and most influential forms of communication and learning. In the context of development teams, storytelling plays a key role in building ownership and cultivating a performance-oriented culture. By understanding how storytelling works in the human brain compared with other forms of expression, we can better understand how this practice can transform team dynamics and results.
Why is storytelling effective?
I want to highlight three things that make storytelling effective.
Emotional connection
Stories appeal to our emotions. When we hear a good story, we become emotionally invested. This leads to more engagement and better memory retention (the ability to recall information from memory). In a development team, this can mean that colleagues feel a deeper connection to the projects they work on.
Cognitive processing
Unlike dry facts or abstract data, stories present information in a way that is easier for the brain to process. Stories follow a logical sequence, with a beginning, a middle and an end, which helps us organise and understand information better.
Memory and learning
Research shows that stories can be powerful memory boosters. They help us remember information by tying it to a narrative structure. This is especially important in complex fields like IT development, where details and concepts can be hard to remember.
Using storytelling in development teams
I have gathered some areas of use where storytelling can be helpful when you work with teams and team development.
1. Building ownership through engaging stories
Personal stories: By sharing personal stories related to the projects, leaders and team members can create a deeper understanding of, and connection to, the work. This can include stories about past challenges, successes, or how the technology affects real people. When team members see the human side of technology work, their engagement and ownership of the project grow stronger.
Future scenarios: By using storytelling to paint a picture of the future, of how a finished product will look, work and affect its users, leaders can inspire the team and give them a sense of purpose.
2. Promoting collaboration and community
Sharing success stories: Stories about past successes can help build a strong team community. These can be stories about how the team has overcome difficult challenges or reached important milestones.
Learning stories: Sharing stories about mistakes, and what the team learned from them, promotes a culture of openness and continuous learning. This helps team members see the value of mistakes as learning opportunities.
3. Improving communication and understanding
Metaphors and analogies: Using metaphors and analogies in stories can make complex technical concepts easier to understand for people with different technical backgrounds.
Storytelling in meetings: Starting meetings with a short, relevant story can set the tone and engage the team. It can be a story that illustrates today's agenda or a current problem to be solved.
4. Strengthening creativity and innovation
Exploring alternative scenarios: Storytelling can be used to explore different future scenarios. This can include brainstorming about how different technology trends could affect the project or the industry.
Inspiring new ideas: By sharing stories about innovative solutions in other projects or industries, leaders can inspire team members to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions.
5. Connecting the work to bigger goals
Visionary stories: Leaders can use storytelling to convey a clear and compelling vision of where the organisation or project is heading. This helps team members see how their work contributes to a bigger picture.
Customer stories: Sharing stories about how products and services have affected customers positively can help the team understand and appreciate the users' perspective.
How I use storytelling
I have drawn a lot of inspiration for storytelling from Marty Cagan's books, and from Working Backwards, about the culture at Amazon.
Marty Cagan, a well-known thought leader in product development, recommends “The Written Narrative”, a technique where you write a document that thoroughly covers all aspects of an idea. A popular format for such a document is a press release followed by frequently asked questions (PRFAQ). The press release is an imagined future press release covering a milestone, typically the launch of a new product. This part is visionary, but it can well describe in detail which problems the product solves. The purpose is to inspire the people on the team or other stakeholders, and to set a direction.
The FAQ section that follows is meant to make the idea more robust, able to withstand criticism, and to think through which challenges and obstacles may arise. Hopefully this also has a unifying effect, so that sceptics are won over.
I became fascinated by Amazon and its practice of replacing all PowerPoint presentations with so-called “six pagers”. Studies show that the information density of a PowerPoint presentation is much lower than what you can fit into a narrative-driven text, and that these six-page documents give a much more thorough and efficient basis for making better decisions on complex topics. Instead of relying on short, often superficial slides, you stimulate deeper thinking and discussion, and promote a culture of thoroughness and attention to detail.
I often use storytelling as a tool when I work on developing my own products. Then I write Six Pagers to convey the idea to colleagues, partners or potential investors. I also like to use it in connection with coaching and mentoring, when I facilitate workshops, and in decision discussions.
My experience is that participants contribute better in such meetings if they let themselves be inspired by a good story text. Finally, I also use storytelling in consulting assignments, for example when you are working on a problem where the direction and purpose may not be clear. Then it can be useful to start on a press release, and invite the people around you to fill in, correct and elaborate.
Storytelling is not only useful for leadership roles, though. If you are not the one in a position to set the direction, it is wise to check the story with the person who has it. In such situations I make a point of getting the story validated and including elements that are missing or misunderstood. I am happy to let others take on the job of publishing it further, preferably as their own story.
In a world dominated by technology and information overload, storytelling is a powerful tool for technologists. It not only helps convey information in an engaging and memorable way, but also builds bridges between people, promotes ownership and drives a culture of performance. By embracing storytelling, leaders in the IT sector can create teams that are not only technically skilled, but also deeply invested in their solutions and the needs they solve!