Problem – 4 The “making story club better” project

What is story club? So as the name suggests, story club is a club/platform where we ( my father’s teammates and I ) share our stories based on a structure we have created for ourselves, so for a couple of months we have been focusing on a structure which involves establishing our values based on our work ethic. It’s been a year since the story club started and from the past few months I felt that it’s been taking a road downhill instead of growing more. Many people are not joining because of various reasons, the engagement and responses are less comparatively, the quality of stories is not improving etc. So I was not having a good feeling about it and I wanted to do something about that ( I felt accountable for it ) so I started brainstorming ideas! Here are my thoughts, views, theory, understanding etc.

The questions I asked myself and my views –

1. Why do I want to do it?

• So it is meaningful and there is some or the other takeaway.
• So that more people attend and stop skipping.

2. How will more people attend?
3. Should it be more interesting? But how? ( do we need to think about it as of now? )
4. Why is it not interesting now? Or if it is then what’s missing?
5. Why are less people attending?

• Do they have a lot of work?
• Do people need to leave the office by this time?
• What can we do about it? Change the time? ( is it really an issue? )
• What will be the suitable time for everyone?

6. Why are only few people giving feedback and getting involved in debates or discussions?
7. Do only a few people have ideas or opinions? Or are they the ones who are only paying attention?

• Why does it seem that some people are not paying attention?

Then I thought that there could be a possibility that people might have forgotten the aim that we established, so maybe a recall session would help? ( it was just a thought )

My thoughts on what was working before which is not now? –

1. What was working before? – In my opinion or what I think is that people found story club more engaging before because it was something new for everyone, it was something that had never been done before that is why majority of the people were attending that. ( this could be one reason, there could be more reasons as well ).
2. What is not working now? – I feel that it is not working now as I think people have started thinking that they know what is going to happen, they think it is one of the same things and because it has aged now people are losing interest.

• If this is the case what all can be done?
• We could do something, maybe like a grand re-opening.
• But the question is after the grand re-opening what changes should be made? What will be the difference?

Some other thoughts – What does the perfect story club look like?

• Why are Ted/Tedx working great? ( comparison )

• The perfect story club looks like where most of the people join and the engagement is 100 percent and everyone has their own perspective on things, people get some take away from each session, where people ask questions.
• And I feel that coming up with a story is not necessary, we can also come up with research or whatever our understanding about the certain topic is and we all can discuss that.

-> TED ( about that TED question )

• They started focusing only on a few fields ( and are doing the same now as well )
• Are we doing that? ( I am not sure )

• Is TED different from story club?
• Yes.

• What is the difference?
• TED is a talk show that happens every 2 years ( where famous people can and talk ) while story club is a storytelling platform which takes place every week.
• Are there any similarities?
• ( still researching and thinking )

• According to google, it says that TED is working great because TED speakers not only just talk and talk, they make an emotional connection with their audience and inspire them ( that is the reason they are called “professionals” )
• Then I thought, are we even doing these things?
• I do think that some people do implement it but some people do not.

• I asked myself what was the story club for me? Why am I attending it every week? ( Because I was also a participant ).
• So one of the reasons I was attending story club on a regular basis was because I was the one who got convinced with the idea of it and executed it, because someone asked for help to make a thing ( which I care, love and respect about ) better and I felt as if I was doing something meaningful ( I was involved ). And so I got emotionally connected to it, I felt accountable for it, I was in a way challenged by myself in a positive way to make it better.

1. Getting inspired.
2. Knowledge and different perspectives.
3. Emotional satisfaction/feeling great.
4. Getting a boost every week to keep going and not quitting.
5. Healthy feedback mechanism both positive and negative different from school and other places.
6. Learning was very much visible.
7. There was kind of very clean vision/mission that we needed to bring that hero out.
8. That was kind of a unique proposition and everyone believed in that.

• What can be the new establishment in the story club? Where is that challenging spark there in us?
• Or how can I bring that spark in us?
• How can I establish or re-establish that in us?
• There should be some challenge!

• What are the things that will excite us? What are the things that will urge us to do better? What conditions or what challenges? ( to bring that spark )

• The thing that might help us establish that spark in us, could be that we could invite someone from outside from ColoredCow ( my father’s company ) ( its a software/problem solving company – https://coloredcow.com/ ) ( maybe a professional ) who can come and kind of judge us on a basis of a few things like language command, story, how we dressed etc and write about us somewhere ( like publish it where people can read ), so to look good there people will put efforts to dress better, practice, research etc.
• But this is something that does not come under the category where we can do something with the resources we already have.
• What is the thing that we can do with the resources we already have?
• So every week there are 3 storytellers who come up with their story from each group ( there are 3 groups of 5-6 people in each ), So I was thinking what we could do is, we can announce that from now out of the 3 stories we are going to pick one story that is going to be the story of the week basis on some structure that we’ll prepare. So everyone wants to be the best so they’ll put more effort into their story in order to be titled as “The Story of the week”.

• But who will do all of this? Who will post the story of the week? Who will do all the things that are necessary to make this thing happen?
• So the answer is I will be experimenting on it and designing the idea ( bringing it into action )
• If you want you can check our story club page 🙂 https://storyclub.coloredcow.com/