Communications Thinking: Believing transcript

We can tell the best stories in the world, but if nobody believes them, nothing else

matters. You know, we can make people feel things, but if they don't believe us, they're not going to

do things. And belief, unfortunately, is the one part of many people’s stories that gets left out. And

they leave it out, kind of at their peril, because I would argue it is by far the most important piece.

Talk about SMUBA: Seeing, Mapping, Understanding, Believing, and Acting. People often don't act

on things if they don't believe them.

The IBMer is IBM's greatest invention. We create all sorts of incredible, wonderful things. So

many patents, and the six Nobel Prize winners, and incredible things have come out of our labs. But

we not about products and offerings. It looks like it, perhaps, when we look at our balance sheet.

The majority of our revenue comes from products and offerings, not from services, not from people.

But the goal in business is not to sell to people who need what you have. Sometimes, it feels

like it is. And many of the decks and the narratives and the stories, even some of the training, it

sounds like that's what we're here to do. We're here to sell to people who need what we have.

I don't think that's true. I think it's to work with people who believe what you believe. If

you're connected, if you have some sort of a joint vision, if you want to cause together, you know,

this is a movement that you feel you're engaged in. And I know I’m using very grand language, but I

think it's true. If you want to be an IBMer that makes a difference within your role, no matter your

level of experience (you're brand new into the business, you’re one of the more junior bands, or

whether you're the most senior SVP, board-level exec), the goal is to work with people who believe

what you believe.

Think about the delivery gap. I mentioned before, some of the biggest challenges that

companies like ours have. The vast majority of people within the organization often feel like they are
differentiated and special and unique. But often, it's only a fraction of the customers that agree. And

there is a disconnect. And it's not that it's not even true. A lot of the time it is true. You know, we

may have the biggest quantum fleet of computers in the world, but either if somebody doesn't care

or they don't believe it, it really doesn't matter. So, that's why problem solving by putting yourself in

the customer shoes and seeing things from the audiences’ perspective is really what's at the heart

of all great storytelling.

Thomas J. Watson, son of our founder, Junior, he said, called them wild ducks. He said every

business, we believe, needs its wild ducks. But I think that's what you are. Certainly, what I am. I

like to think of myself as a wild duck. The crazy ones; we’re the misfits. Here's what Thomas J.

Watson Junior actually said, “The Wild Ducks are the creative ones. They’re the restless explorers

always looking for a new angle on a big problem.” They’re the creative ones. They’re the restless

explorers, with the new angles on big problems. We’re explorers. We have our maps. We're trying to

find new angles on big problems.

We talked about the six most important things at the start, that we have with the stories. We

don't just inform. we inspire. We don't just educate, we entertain. We don't just solve the problem,

we’re here to challenge. We create heat and light, with a unique point of view. So, how do we do

that? How do we generate belief? Because that's huge. How do you start a movement, [right?] from a

small group of people?

That's why I put together the Conversation Strategy. It's been built many times as a one

pager. I've seen many versions of this as a slide, and it absolutely does work, if you do it

properly. That was never what I intended to do. Really, what I wanted to do was to try and have a

map. Really that you try to build out of, “how do we communicate our strategy?” with these previous

phases that we have. All the things that we've collected, the maps that we've created: the Hero’s
Journey. [We've] now got empathy; we've got an idea of where our obstacles, heroes, and villains

are, intention, obstacle. Now we need to communicate that.

Now, chances are you're not going to be giving a TED talk or making a movie or a trailer. But if

you are, that’s awesome [and] I’m incredibly jealous. But more often than not, you're going to be in

the commercial world. You're going to be either talking about offerings. You're going to be talking

about architecture. You're going to have a lot of density, which isn't always a Hero's Journey. So,

how do you do that in a way that you got to try and collectively piece that together with emotion in

some sort of a format that works in the commercial or industrial world?

Well, that's what the Conversation Strategy is. It was originally built for our senior executives.

And if you look at it, it's very deliberately got six segments. You see the six segments? Three for the

left, three for the right. Left brain, right brain. Neocortex, limbic part the brain. One's about words

and numbers. One's going to be communicating the feelings and emotions.

So, you can take the Hero's Journey that we just had on the previous slide, and if you wanted

to build upon that, this could be your script. Think about it like that. Think about it like it's like

hyperlinks and little scripts. You've got six mini scripts, one each hidden behind each one of these

segments. So, just like the left brain and the right brain. Maybe the first segment in the Hero’s

Journey, your hero. Maybe this is about trying to inspire your audience. Maybe the next piece,

“What's their problem but, that's the obstacle?” That's going to be around, how do we engage or

excite? And then we've got to try and understand how do we challenge them with our unique point

of view? They’ve got to be wondering, “Why should I trust you?”, “Why should I care?” It's moving

over from the right brain to the left brain. So, now we've got the emotional stuff sorted out. Now, we

look at what's the safe plan for a journey. What does success look like? And what's our

transformation vision? We solve a problem, we educate our audience, and then we inform. If you get
all six of those and you've got a good script behind each one, it actually doesn't matter which order

you go in.

It looks like it should be clockwise because it’s the Hero's Journey. And, if it's a traditional

speech, it works perfectly for doing that. But, I've seen many instances where you had a meeting

when it may be that we're building out for a pitch, whether it's a promotion panel, or whether it's just

explaining, "This is what my project is and this is how it worked, here’s how we delivered it, and

everything that I learned". Often, Band 7s, 8s, and 9s are doing lots of work like that, but it may be

that you want to see success to the start. "This is what we did." So, we start with success first. "The

success was based upon a problem." So, now we're going back over to the far side. The problem is

to try and solve for the things that our hero was looking at. "And then I came in with empathy and

authority so that they trust and cared." So now I'm in the bottom corner. "When I gave them my

plan, it looked like this, and here's the vision for what we’re about to do next." You see what I mean,

how you can go backwards and forwards?

You've got the reminder in the middle. The power of three. There's often three things that

your audience to wants to do. There's a name for your project. So, it's a great map. But there is still

one piece missing, and it's one piece that's been consistent on each of the stages of

Communications Thinking that we've been looking at across SMUBA. What’s your mission? Why you?

What's your purpose? We mentioned "ikigai" before. It's to do something so that something else

happens. If you're not sure what to put in the mission, you know, keep it as short as possible, ideally

less than 8 or 10 words. Many great management consultants say if you can't describe what you're

doing, either in the process or in eight words or less, you don't know what you’re doing. Simplify it

down, the complexity down, into the one sentence that you want to do. “I want to do this, so that

this happens.” The purpose.

 People like Simon Sinek have made a whole career out of that. I think about my purpose. It's

to inspire other people to do what inspires them, so that together we can change our world. That's

my mission. "To …" that's my contribution, "so that …" this is my impact.

If you're wanted to be really strategic about it, you might want to say, “I want to do this, so

that this happens. Because if I don't …” And the bit about "because if I don't …” creates a sense of

urgency, which creates Kairos, which might accelerate urgent action. But it's entirely up to you how

you want to skin it.

I've seen many people use this framework in completely different ways. But it's great for

notes. It's great for speeches. It's great for prompts. It might even be great to put it on a nice one

pager to simplify the complexity of that big project you're working on. So, when you turn up to your

next meeting and someone says, “Look, I don't need to have more than 20 slides, if you could keep

it to 15, that would be great.” And you're the person that says, “I’ve got one. That's all I need.” Mike

drop; walk off.

The goal in business is not to sell to people who need what you have. It’s to create a bond

with your audience and work with people who believe what you believe. And if you do that properly,

you're going to reach our final destination, the "A" in SMUBA. The fifth piece, and the most important

piece, Action. Let's take a look at what that looks like.