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February 26, 2021

Enterprise Architecture Live - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT : Enterprise Architecture and The Power of Storytelling

Courtesy of 's Anu Senan, below is a transcript of his speaking session on '' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at Enterprise Architecture Live Virtual Conference.

4-Jan-13-2021-12-36-17-42-PM-1

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Session Information:

Enterprise Architecture and The Power of Storytelling

We forget faces, names or numbers. But a good story? We never forget it. Instead of listing several ideas on a PowerPoint slide, a story helps convey the message in a memorable way.

New communication techniques are needed to improve overall maturity of EA and technology innovation leaders.

Learn why storytelling is one of the best tools for effective communications and how EA is a perfect tool to narrate stories to business.

Using storytelling techniques, EA and technology innovation leaders can engage leadership teams to understand how EA helps leaders make better decisions aligned with desired business outcomes.

This presentation shows how one can master the basics of storytelling to become compelling and persuasive communicators of EA. 

Key Takeaways

1) The power of telling stories

2) The key components of a great story

3) How to apply the storytelling technique to EA concepts

4) How to convey complex and technical ideas to key stakeholders in a simple and engaging manner

Session Transcript:

New CNN Business Transformation Leader, who is going to be with us, and guide us through this journey of storytelling, and how we apply this to our enterprise architecture, initiatives, and journeys. So I knew hello, great to have you here. And there is coming to us from New York City to the World today. Really glad to have you here. A very short intro for, for our new here. She's a business transformation specialist with over 14 years of work experience in the private and public sectors. She's a storyteller by passion, and the host of the podcast heroes of New York, where she share stories of amazing individuals. I know what a gift to have you with us.

And on behalf of our audience, we're all very much looking forward to your presentation.

Thank you, Jesse, for that warm welcome. I look forward to this.

Hello, and welcome, everybody. I'm so glad that you're here for the Enterprise Architecture and the Power of Storytelling.

I believe that, most of you are seasoned Enterprise Architect or Technology specialists, and you might be curious to know, what does enterprise architecture got to do with the power of storytelling?

I think when you find out a lot, I'm sure you've heard many enriching sessions today. three, to be precise. That took you through strategy and technology.

Now, we'll see how to leverage that knowledge by bringing on one of the most important skills in a meeting room.

Communications.

Storytelling is about building compelling and persuasive presentations, And I'm sure this is something that you would love to whole and have lived on your own. So let's get into it directly.

The key takeaways from time immemorial from the time we've been cave men and women till date we're biologically programmed to tell stories when we talk to friends or colleagues. Family are always telling stories.

Screenshot (38)-1Guess what happened to me today morning.

That's how we begin stories.

Our kids are the best they have no filters, anecdotal entertainers.

So our personal voice is to narrate and engage through stories.

But somehow, when we done this corporate avatar, like I am right now, we turn off that personal voice and switch on a corporate one.

Facts and figures show up.

Gone are emotions and humor.

All those little nuances that make storytelling so compelling and engaging.

And that could be a reason why a lot of presentations are really try.

Today, we will see the power of stories.

The structure of a story, we're going to dissect the formula behind the world's best movies and books so that you can write your own story.

And how to apply storytelling to enterprise architecture.

And finally, because we love jargons and technical stuff, I'll also show you how to turn the complex into the simple, so that your audience can appreciate what you're saying.

Let's begin.

Let's talk about Enterprise architecture.

Everyone in this room understands it.

If you want to explain what is E to someone who's non technical or has never heard of it before, how would you explain it?

There are many ways I'm going to show you, too.

I'm going to introduce you to Enterprise Architecture, using an analogy.

In the year 2000 scientists and Biotechnology's, Biotechnologists around the world came together to sequence the human genes.

It was called The Human Genome Project. And when they were done, they sequenced around 30,000 genes in the human body.

Basically, the human genome.

It was called the Genetic Blueprint of the Human Body. And what it helped to do was help scientists and doctors and biotechnologists identify gaps, defects, illnesses that could potentially arise because of the mapping the salt because of what was coded in us from generations.

Its genetic blueprint is known as Human Genome Project.

Now, similar to a genetic blueprint in an organization, we can sequence together routers, firewalls, hosting devices, and servers to applications that run on these infrastructure components. And the data that is stored and processed in these applications to the business processes that the data enables.

And by sequencing all these different components together, we can build that digital blueprint of the organization.

This is known as Enterprise Architecture.

What it enables is for technical technology people like you and me, to take a look at it and identify gaps and redundancies.

Areas of potential growth, places where we can cut costs.

A genetic blueprint mapped to additional blueprint.

That's an analogy.

A second way to introduce enterprise architecture.

It's by using a definition, I picked this up from CIO dot com.

Enterprise architecture is a practice of analyzing, designing, planning, and implementing, and the price analysis to successfully.

Btog CTAExecute on business strategies, e-health business structures, businesses structure, IT projects, and policies to achieve the desired business results, and to stay on top of industry trends, and disruptions using architecture, principles, and practices, a process, also known as Enterprise Architecture Planning.

Question to you, Which one do you think is more effective?

Which one do you think the audience would be able to appreciate?

Which one do you think they can take away from the meeting with them, and relate to someone who was not there?

My guess is, it's the first.

And this, my friends is the power of storytelling.

The ability to relate to someone else using analogies or stories, or using everyday commonplace examples.

That brings me to the fact that we should not be using definitions like this.

Let's look at the power of storytelling.

My previous example illustrates the fact that we all think in images.

We can all see the human genome map.

We can all see a blue elephant.

I'm sure you saw blue elephant, and not the well it's blue.

That's because no matter how analytical, we think we are still thinking in images.

Storytelling helps to build connections behind every story.

There are some core human values that are hard to quantify, but can be conveyed to stories.

Pharma companies, so vaccines, what the other really selling.

Oh, justice and hope are similar values that cannot be quantified back, but can be conveyed through stories and stories help to build connections.

Letter that stories speak a universal language.

No matter your audience in the meeting room, no matter where they come from, their background, their culture, their races, they can all relate to a story.

If I tell you about a mother who's struggling to make ends meet to feed her child, you can relate.

Stories can also take us beyond our immediate work to the people that they actually affect Big Pharma companies. By the way, there's a disclaim I don't work for farm. I just used vaccines and pharma because it's such a hot topic to me.

Pharma companies produce medicines. They produce vaccines.

You might be working on the technology architecture layer, but, hey, your work, at the end of the day, affects the end consumers of those vaccines.

By seeing beyond our immediate scope of work, and bringing in the big picture, you can help your audience appreciate what you actually do in the organization.

And finally, storytelling helps to turn the abstract into the concrete.

Just like the analogy I used to explain E, take complex concepts and turn them into simple lucid, easy to understand facts, that is the power of storytelling.

So then, let us see, what is the structure of a story?

Now, almost all the best books, The best movies, The favorite ones that you have, have a very common structure.

Without it, a story falls and fails.

Without it, they cannot cook cute and that's why structure is important.

If you structure your presentation the way your story is structured, it's guaranteed that you're going to engage your audience. You'll have them hooked in and they will want more.

Sometimes being a presenter is also about being entertaining, but it's not hard and it's not a rocket science.

I've underlined toolbox your structure and story because they are really very important and we'll come back to see that again.

Let us begin.

There are different formulas that are used for writing and building movies, writing, stories, building movies. However, I'm going to choose one that's easy to follow. It's pretty universal, and you would have probably used it at some point in your life.

It's called a three act structure, simply because it's got three X in it, 1, 2, and three.

Alright, also known as the beginning, the middle, and the end, I'm sure I can hear someone say, Aha, I know that, because we use that in school to write essays, right? We use that in stories, and books, and movies.

Not: we know that there's three eyes to a beginning, middle, and end, but every story also has rising action, reaches a pinnacle, and then it drops drastically to the end.

To add to this, we need more layers. We need to build a story. We got the basic skeletal framework.

Every story has as its or the convex. This is act one.

You are drawing in your audience, You're telling them which, well, they're entering what's going on in that? Well, this is X one, you set up the context.

This is where you introduce your characters.

Generally, every book a movie, has a hero.

1 or two bad guys, and these are the who of your story.

It happens someday in some place and time, the when, when is this story happening, 20 20?

Where is it happening? So you're basically anchoring your audio some time and place.

There is a trigger a surprise, oh, sorry, a trigger or an inciting incident that forces the hero to take action.

It could be a hero getting a treasure map, it could be alive and finding a magic lamp, something that triggers and moves them, Aha, what the trigger is the one that moves him or her to go on a quest.

A quest to go there.

To the to be.

My apologies, I have some screens up yet. To the To be state. This is the why of the whole story.

The hero has been triggered to go on a quest, so A to B stage, but to get to that destination of hits.

He has to tackle some surprises.

This could be obstacles or conflicts.

Bad guys, bad weather, Go with 19, who knows their obstacles in its wake before he gets to a destination.

Now, conflicts can be of two kinds. There's internal conflict and external conflict.

Internal conflict is: I'm not sure if I can deliver this presentation.

External conflict is: I have very difficult stakeholders.

I don't know what they want, right? So there's always an internal conflict within the hero, and there's an external conflict in his environment.

When one conflict is resolved, it usually resolves the other.

Now, the hero has faced cornflakes, What should he do?

In every story, the hero is helped by someone.

Usually, a guide.

Like your doctor Luke Skywalker Oggi need to a lab and other fairy godmother to central.

The guy comes in to help the hero by showing him aha: what choices they have on the table and easy choice.

That leads to not so great results or a difficult hard choice that if he refuses to pursue would give him the destination, take him to its destination, getting mysteries and then the guide shows him how to get there.

Gives them a roadmap.

This is when the hero takes ship: The client might see it fights the bad guys to the ground, reverses all the bad on the obstacles and conflicts that he faced an active. So he reverses the circumstances and he arrives at has to be destination. This is that transformation happens.

The hero is happier richa wise, you name it.

This is the journey of the hero to three acts.

And this my friends is the formula for a P I married.

I know there's a lot of images on the screen, but if you notice in the gray boxes, I have highlighted the who, what, when, how, and why.

Guess what?

Zachman Framework uses these 4, 5, 6 questions and so storytelling is not too far away from E.

Copy of Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (3)Now, we're going to see how to apply the three act structure to your presentation.

But before we go there, I think it's important to point out your first few minutes of your presentation, of a movie of a book are the most important to hook your audience, And if they're not interested in the first few minutes, you've lost them, And so, we're going to focus on the as is for a few minutes, OK, we're going to set the context for your audience.

This is called establishing a setting.

For the longest time, enterprise architecture focused on the technical aspects.

The technical architecture, the firewalls, routers, hosting, makes sense, nothing runs without all of that, but typical architectures that, because of applications that run on them.

But, again, it makes me wonder, Why do we have applications because they store and process data, which, by the way, it has only value if business uses it.

So, business architecture is paramount.

However, to make business processes work, we have to account. You have to take into account people, processes, and tools in the organization that use these.

This is these applications and this data to achieve some strategic goals.

Now, people and processes run those strategic goals when they interact with their customers and their partners and transactions happen when they interact with their board and regulatory bodies outside in the wider enterprise.

You see there's a distinction between the organization and the enterprise. And what you're seeing on the screen right now is the environment in which any organization operates.

So when you are setting, when you establish in a setting, building the assets, the first few minutes should truly be focused on the big picture.

Where is your organization today, How do you stand in comparison to the rest of the market?

And then draw them right in to one of the layers of architecture that you're going to talk about today.

So you set the acid feed, and from there, you take them to the to be state, which is the future state.

All that's to say, that the four layers of architecture really provide you the structure to tell the story about the enterprise.

The story is really about the enterprise, and not about E is a means to an end.

Now, with that, we will jump right into how you can use the three act structure, apply it to enterprise architecture.

All right.

So we know there are three X, X one.

Act two, actually.

I've divided into three, so it's easier to digest this information. as we saw, the as is, it's the first and most important step. This is where you draw your audience.

Before I go further, I want to clarify one more thing.

In my street, at story structure, I introduced a hero, and then I introduced a guide, but we need to clarify who the hero is.

In your case, the hero is generally your business, stakeholder or leader.

The role of the E, really, is to be an advisor, or a guide to them.

And this clarity is important.

E is not at the center of the universe, but he is enabling the heros to get across to achieve those business outcomes.

We need to clarify that, because it is the role of the EE to identify his heroes. They might be in the room one or more and understand what is the greatest fear and what is the greatest desire.

What do you understand?

Their greatest fear and the greatest desire.

The rest is as easy as applying.

Identifying your users, Understanding their personal understanding their challenges and their aspirations, is important to set the tone for the rest of your presentation.

There are a variety of E tools that you can use: Radar Maps, business capability mapping, where you map your current applications, to what capabilities they address, and see where there are gaps.

Gartner hype Cycle to see the basic period over which a new application is introduced and then it kind of, you know, phases out.

Now, as a heads up, I have also provided a reference document along with this presentation, which catalogs the different tools you can use at the different stages in this story, three X story structure.

So, rest assured, you will go with a bunch of tools that would definitely help you run through this presentation.

Now, you set the assets in the first few minutes, and then you show the trigger, what triggers this change.

To understand that, you have to list out the drivers for change. Again, a bunch of tools that you can look at as the enterprise, architect, the advisor in the room, and bringing in all stakeholders, Not just the people in the room.

When you're going into a deeper analysis of what causes the change, you need to bring in more people. People were affected by this change stakeholders, get them into the room, run a live discussion, so that you get a 360 degree feedback, 360 Degree. view of what impact this change will have.

Use different tools like, best, Looking at the environment, social, technology, political environment, factors. Then, that force you to make this change.

I guess then in 20 20, 19, would have been a big factor for many organizations.

Listing drivers for change and then identifying, what are your possible conflicts and obstacles?

The enterprise architect can again, help with tools like SWOT which is for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat understand the external environment, competence as new entrants, supplier and bio power.

I do define all of this helps you to eliminate any surprise down the road.

This will bring you to the point or a juncture where you have to help the business identify what options are good for them.

You can use of prioritization tool funnels. You're bringing the key, This decision makers will actually take the decision.

And then they take action on that.

Sure, you can help by providing them roadmaps, that practical milestones and related business outcomes. When and where it can be delivered, And when and how it can be delivered.

Which leads to a reversal of all of the challenges in front of the organization, leading for transformation, the to be state.

So this is basically the tree structure that has now been formulated for you to use for your next presentation.

Screenshot (4)But that, I move on to how you can tell the complex into the simple, We have all been down that rabbit hole of specialization, I mean, no us stuff.

But people outside of that rabbit hole have a hard time appreciating jargon, and it's important that we demystify it for them so they can relate to us.

By the way, that reminds me, that storytelling is all about being relatable.

If I hear your story of struggle, my friend, I can relate to you. But if you speak jargon to me, I'm lost.

And we lose that opportunity to build a real human connection.

So let's do uncomplex into symbol.

First rule, appeal to the census. Make it sensory. Make it visual. Make it visible. You don't have to put images on the screen. It's your language, too.

Imagine someone taking their fingernail and drawing down a Blackbaud, a blackboard.

I'm sure your skin crawled.

That's because it's visceral language.

Try to make your language as descriptive as your presentations, create characters. This need not be people. It could be objects.

An app at Apple could use i-pod as a character to show the product life cycle.

Avoid jargon.

You understand cloud, you understand, API, but does your business Do they need to?

They'd probably care more about the end results, so maybe that's where you need to focus, put numbers on a human scale, 30,000 genes in the human body. Is that a lot or less?

I don't know.

India has a population of one point three billion, is that a lot or less?

I don't know, but if I will just say, India has the population of seventh of the world, That's putting numbers into perspective.

What numbers on a human scale Don would make? It absolutely would make it relative and make it relatable to them.

Use analogies, metaphors and comparisons.

Case in point, the analogy I used earlier in the presentation, using analogies and metaphors makes it relatable to them because you're using everyday commonplace, facts and figures.

And finally, my favorite slide, avoid long, wordy presentations.

A lot of your stakeholders are busy people and they're all multitasking. There are various things that are competing for their attention.

You don't want them to waste their precious processing power on reading through your slides.

Besides, you don't want them to read your slides, you want them to pay attention to you. You're the director of this movie and you'll want to control what figure C so take out those long wordy slide, and you run through that presentation and speak to each slide.

With that, I wanted to bring you to my final words.

This presentation helped us understand the power of stories, the structure of a story, applying storytelling to enterprise architecture, and turning the complex into simple.

I want to leave you with one parting thought.

From the time we'd been cave men and women listening to stories around a fire to the time we watched movies in the dark and P&L, well, at least in 20 19, just sitting around a table, a boardroom, meeting, listening to someone present, there's something that's common and hasn't changed.

That is the magic of building human connections through storytelling.

If you apply this three X structure and building all the components that I showed you in this presentation, I can guarantee you, you can bring the same magic in your next presentation.

With that, I want to thank you, and wish you a good day.

And Tastic, I know thank you so much for sharing the power of storytelling with us.

Screenshot (38)-1And I'm going to bring the audience back and let me change my background here, And I would like to bring our audience back and have you provide questions for, and what are the questions that you have about storytelling, and specifically in the context of enterprise architecture? So I'm going to be monitoring questions as they come in and go ahead and post them at any time that you want. So I know right off the bat, you know, I'll have confession to make for you, so right, I'm gonna, like, an engineer at heart in like, if you go deep into my DNA, my background is in engineering, and investment banking, right? So when I had to present to when I was younger and I had to present to more than two people, I'll have like a physical reaction. I will start getting blotchy on my face. I would I would be unable to speak. It was like a horror movie for me to put me in that situation.

Now, that is not, you know, certainly a broad generalization, but a lot of my colleagues were like that in the beginning of our careers and we had that the real difficulty and And not only putting stories together, but conveying those stories. So, what are some suggestions you have for people, especially very technically oriented crowd that we have here today, on on how to start this journey?

It's a bit like, I can totally relate to what you're saying, because I started off as a software engineer. It was only natural to speak a technical language in office.

But over time, I realized there is ... of storytelling. And as I mentioned, at the beginning of my presentation, we all have a personal voice.

Having that authentic personal voice is more powerful than all the technical knowledge we have.

But, somewhere along the line, we switch hats. It's like I take off my personal voice. And I wear this corporate avatar, and then I've switched.

It's a little bit about going back to how can I explain these very concepts to a friend right.

If this person sitting across from me is my friend and I know we have trouble seeing the light bath, it would make it so much easier. Storytelling is something we all do naturally.

but, if you feel that, you're nervous about taking this move way of presenting to your audience, you could do it in small, easy steps.

The tree structure that I show helps to build a watertight presentational story.

So the next time you have a presentation, use this as a checklist I've provided in the references and see, do I have jargons, how can I simplify, that, did answer the who, what, when, where, why?

Does this seem logical? I think those are the few questions you can ask to get, you started on this journey.

And as you become more and more comfortable, I think you'll see yourself turning into storytelling.

Very, well, I also notice for your background, that you have a background Toastmasters. And and that's, and you got to the highest level of Toastmasters and a lot of people who first go to Toastmasters. They are very fearful, that's why even they're going there, because they don't feel like, you know I can do this, and now you have reached the highest levels, if you will, on that. Is that something that would suggest, that that's one path, that allows people to develop the skill set?

I think Toastmasters is perfectly suited for professionals.

Toastmasters teaches you a lot about leadership, as well as how to present yourself. Well, how to articulate yourself. So you learn about communications and you'll also learn about leadership, which I think is common for enterprise architects. You have to balance both of this. I would definitely and highly recommend.

Very, very well.

Oh, there are some themes are emerging here on people asking questions about this. Let me blow up the screen so I can see all the questions coming in and then I want to share them with you.

Second got it. And Diana ... or ...

Leon she asked, Do you get designer support for your slides and artifacts?

Very, very specific question, story, As good question, No, I did not. Though I wanted to, you know, it's always helpful to see from a designer's point of view, and guess why design thinking is also about storytelling?

I think I missed this point, so let me re-iterate, it's a good place to bring it in. Design thinking storytelling puts the user, the audience, the listener, the reader at the center of their work.

Like EA is a means to an end. Your your presentations and slides are a means to convey something to your audience and when you start thinking like that, and that's basically what design thinking is.

You try to remove that, which doesn't help.

Copy of Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (3)I could have put words on my slide. Instead, I use visuals because I'm trying to practice what I'm preaching.

Very good, Very good. You know, I have had the privilege of leading excellence and innovation acceleration programs for very large organizations and smaller ones as well, and the part of special on the larger ones when? one of the things that I learned is that when we have very disciplined, structural approaches to the business, like Enterprise Architecture or things like Lean, six Sigma is a great way of a great analogy. I remember that we spent. We had to interview like 100 Lean 6 Sigma Master Black Belts to find 1 or 2 who actually could communicate effectively with the business.

And the, and then if you look at, you know, for those of you who are into Lean six Sigma, if you understand the mayor and the man's V as a structure, it's actually, it's a framework that fits very well into storytelling. As you said, most of the audience into the, as, is kind of a bit of a tragedy that sometimes and then, you know, find a solution, and the hero emerges? to a certain extent, when you put solutions in place.

So, but, so number one is that it's really hard, two, even for people who are highly qualified, very experienced multiple industries over 20 plus years, subject matter experts, it is actually was the hardest portion of their leadership development training, is to learn how to do the storytelling piece, because people tend to confuse a storytelling with kind of like high level marketing, that, you know, I'm telling you things to get you excited, but there's no depth and content to what I'm talking about. Can you tell me a little bit about that? About this balance of no rigorous content, and The ability to communicate it effectively? That's not one or the other, But both, how do you find the right balance on your message? You, you, you summed it up perfectly. It's not one or the other, it's it's, it's one of the same thing and it's not high and marketing for show.

I think we tell stories and we sell ourselves every single day whether you do it effectively or not is a question.

So, you know, anyone's going to take the presentation to your audience. Why not make it easier and fun for them? Why not make it memorable?

When I took the blueprint genetic blueprint analogy to my office, I think nobody expected that and people spoke about it long later like, you know, that thing sticks. So why not use a technique that is more effective? So, that's one way of looking at it.

The other question, I'm sorry, did I miss something, Joseph?

Know, it's really about the how do you find that, the, that balance and that I wouldn't call it, a bad intelligent bland off the content versus a storytelling. Because, let's be honest, There are some issues and items are very complex, and the, it's hard in the end, and that you have to delve into the complexity, to a certain extent, to have an understanding of it. So, how do you find the right level of depth in coverage, and, yet, be able to communicate effectively through storytelling?

I don't think it's impossible. It's about finding the right battle.

That your audience can relate to, and it will also depend on your industry.

If you walk in, If there's a bunch of scientists, I mean, they're technical, too. But how would you sell it to them? What is it that interests them? Can you draw a parallel in that language for them?

It takes a little bit of research and homework, but it can definitely be done.

Yeah, I think you pointed out that it's not, it's not, it's not easy to make the complex simple. It's, it's a requires a tremendous amount of work to create a good story. Would you agree with that?

I think so, I mean, yes to make something look simple and effortless. Takes a lot of effort.

one of my favorite quote from Mark Twain is, and I'm going to paraphrase here, is the one where he writes to a friend and says, I apologize for. I apologize for the length of my ladder. I would have written a shorter one, if I had the time, because it's, it's so much more difficult to summarize our thoughts. You know, in simplification is the ultimate level of sophistication, and it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's hard to do.

Now, in organizations, within organizations.

What do you think is the best way for professionals to start developing the skill set? To start practicing this skill set? You know, any any tips on how you would suggest them practically to start doing the swings?

It could help if you have creative people around you.

So when you build your presentations, you can take it to them and seek their feedback. Do you like this, that this? Did you know, Where did I use the audience? This, engage them? Did they have more questions on the spot?

I mean, that's the kind of preparation you could do for any presentation.
33:11
Now, to know, if it's really less technical, you might want to take it to someone outside of your team. You know, someone who has never seen that concept and try explaining it to them, Ask them to relate it back to you and see if the idea stuck.

When you let's just the challenge with no conveying something that's really complex, you don't know what the audience took away.

So it's always good to run, let's do a dry run with someone who's non technical, who has never had that concept, and hear what they have to say.

That's a great point. I was going, and there was some, there was a question here that relates to what you're just saying, that I'll do, you know, if this stuff isn't working for me, how? And I think you may have just answered this, and on getting that feedback. So doing a dry run, getting feedback from someone else, or any other suggestions you have about that, on, on testing, and seeing how things are working for you. I think, you know, the fastest is to run it on yourself.

If you go through it, Essentially, when you're building a presentation, when you're going to, you know, meeting, we want to take your audience through something, What is it that you want to achieve?

The why, and the what. what is it that you want to achieve, and why we're doing it. If that is still clear, at the end of the presentation, I think you're good, because eventually, that's what they want to hear.

The rest is just fancy, good stuff, right? And I think, related to the question, Jose, that you had on content was this structure.

The storytelling structure doesn't take away from content. If anything, it says, if you follow this structure, you'll make your content more watertight.

There will be no further questions left, because you would have answered all the questions you'd have brought in the right characters. You would have address conflicts, surprises, etcetera.

So if anything, it will strengthen your presentation, even if you cannot avoid jargons at the very beginning, because you're used to speaking like that.

Yeah, I think this concept of less is more, is it is very difficult because people sometimes interpret, less is more, as, Oh, so you just wanted me to dilute my presentation, do some high level thing. And can you confirm for me that that's not the case that we actually want, less is more is, about getting to the essence of what needs to be communicated, is. Is that correct?

Yeah, I think it's at the core of storytelling and design, thinking that you have to eliminate anything any distraction, and only what is required is left back.

And that means you have to sometimes kill your babies. That's a term we use very often in storytelling. Kill your babies. You'll love it.

But the audience might say, so what?

So, you'll have to identify what is extraneous and remove it. Clean it out, until you have only the core, which, by the way, becomes easier to for the audience to understand it from.

That is that that's such a great insight, you know, this search for perfection in a very complex world. We have a tendency to wrap complex solutions around complex problems. And then perfection is not obtained by adding things. It's typically obtained by, by removing things until you have nothing left to take out.

And but you still that essence, the core is the content that is still robust and, and conveys the, the, the right message.

It's very counter-intuitive because people tend to be fearful of missing important details, right, In the And it's very common that those details, as you said for the audience, they are a bit of a distraction. They don't, they don't really add to the communication. That's true. And, Jose, I wanted to clarify. We're not talking about the length of the presentation here.

Screenshot (4)We've talked about the quality of the presentation. So, you might have 20 slides or 50 slides. But if the quality is good, I don't think the audience would mind either.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I know.

So let's wrap up with a, with a, with keeping in mind that we have a very kind of leaning towards a very technical audience. Though, there were talking with today, who understands the importance of communicating effectively with the business side, of course, because enterprise architecture would not work without that effective communication. Final, final suggestions, if you will, for them, on this journey of developing storytelling skills, What would be some of your suggestions for them?

The first one is that we're all naturally doing it at all times, whether we realize it or not.

And storytelling, if you may, is less technical than enterprise architecture.

And I don't think it would be difficult for enterprise architects to understand it by breaking it down into a simple structure. I think it becomes consumable and usable in your everyday presentations. So go with it. Give it a try this, Nothing to lose, good luck.

Fantastic, a new center business transformation leader storyteller, what a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for sharing your insights, the first, terrific to learn more about the power of storytelling, on the context of enterprise architecture.

Thank you, it was a pleasure being here.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this wraps up our first day for Enterprise Architecture Live.

It's being a real honor to be with such great speakers today and, we went from, capability is on enterprise architecture to a full, from beginning to end deployment of Enterprise architecture. In very large corporations, like Deutsche, Bank and in Johnson and Johnson. And we wrap up, they won, with a, talk on, the power of storytelling for Enterprise Architecture. Now, let's take a quick look before we leave about what expects, what's waiting for us tomorrow.

We're gonna kick off the day tomorrow on with the Chief Strategy Officer for mega international, then have those going to talk about how to become indispensable as an enterprise architect, how you strengthen your enterprise architecture practice by producing valuable business outcomes.

Immediately after that, we have doctor Orange Calyx from Senior Vice-president of Product Management for Software AG.

And he's going to talk about a strategy execution for the ad drive enterprise, Be a digital business faster, know, this blinding of speed with Agile, but yet, having clear directional guidance in the strategy on your strategy execution. It's going to be a fascinating coverage from a world, leading an expert in this area. We're gonna wrap.

We're gonna follow that up with a presentation from S&P. And specifically in the sap Artificial Intelligence area, Raoul ... Senior director of sap be artificial intelligence is going to be communicating to us about the top trends on AI and the approach to AI adoption at an enterprise level. So I have had a chance to participate in those presentations.

In the past, and the fantastic combination of technical insights and business insights on, on artificial intelligence, certainly an exponential technology that's that it's seen some widespread use now in, in many organizations. And then tomorrow we wrap up the day with the Lead Enterprise Architect and Senior Data Scientist for Biogen, and are looking at A.

Our Biogen, their intertwining that the nature of digital transfer, digital transformation, and enterprise Architecture into secure Business Operations. So fascinating view from from digital transformation on the biotechnology world and and and and given by one of its leading experts. So again, Thank you for more than 2000 global participants who joined us today, and I hope to see you back tomorrow for another day of great insights on enterprise architecture. So you can follow up with discussions that we have on LinkedIn. Just follow our discussions that we provided the links for during the during this chat, or you can look up. My name's Josie Paris on LinkedIn and see the posting related to this conference and follow.

We're gonna, I'm going to post an update later today and then for those of you who asked where I met, I am broadcasting from San Antonio, Texas and and I'm very honored to be with a tremendous global audience of business transformation excellence and innovation leaders and enterprise architecture leaders. So, thank you very much. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.

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About the Author

more (68)Anu Senan,
Business Transformation Specialist,
UNICEF.

Anu is a seasoned Business Transformation Specialist who has over 14 years of work experience in the private and public sector.
 
Currently, she leads the Enterprise Architecture exercise for a major non-profit organization. Anu is a seasoned storyteller and the podcast host of 'Heroes of New York', where she shares stories of amazing individuals. She has won several awards including The Moth StorySLAM in New York City. 

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