The Power of Story
What I learned about myself, after interviewing my co-workers.
A few months ago, I was tasked with creating new bios for the J5 team. These would sit on the website, next to their picture (perhaps you have seen this before). However, I just couldn’t get excited about writing work-appropriate Tinder profiles. Thankfully, J5’s Creative Lead Kristofer, had some encouraging ideas, and pushed me to take it further. In the end I decided to create a podcast, video trailer (scroll to the bottom), and write-up for every one of of my colleagues. A nice big container to capture peoples’ stories.
The next day I started by scheduling video calls with each of them and given that J5 is a service design company, we started every conversation with the simple question, “What is Service Design?”
The answers I got back were unique and universal. The unique aspect was in the words chosen, that some could lay out parameters, and concepts that guided their work, while others saw it as more of a mindset, or an existential goal. What was universal was that Service Design takes a human-centred design approach.
I had selfish motivations for asking this question. I had only recently started working as a “Service Designer”, (I’d purely been a filmmaker before this) and wasn’t entirely sure what Service Design was, or if I had a place alongside my talented colleagues. My investigation proved fruitful, because they gave me the perfect definition of service design. They gave me a multifaceted, complex, diverse explanation. More importantly, I heard their motivations, beliefs, experiences, failures, and successes. I heard their story and it made me realize this work held so much more potential than a definable set of tasks or goals. This invitation to be a service designer now felt more like a call to go on the hero’s journey and I was inspired.
I also heard emerging themes: wholistic, empathetic, and kindness. These words, placed in the context of each of their personal experiences, began to form the edges of my understanding. This work can’t be defined neatly in a textbook because the lives of the people we serve can’t be confined there, but these stories started to give me a path to follow.
J5 has two amazing blogs about the principles stated above and the definition of Service Design, for those interested.
-How We Created Our J5 Design Principles
-What is Service Design
So, I made a bunch of short podcast episodes and videos, then we shared them internally to celebrate our unique values and culture. They gave us a better understanding of what we do and why we do it, and improved our ability to collaborate and create a kinder more beautiful future. I was fundamentally changed as a person through the process, bolstered by J5’s openness and vulnerability which has allowed me to wrestle with my own insecurities and finally come to the realization that these insecurities are actually strengths. So what? What now?
It’s repeatable!
This isn’t a one-off. This isn’t luck. This is what story does. This is why after the series finale of Mash everyone choked up and wanted to be better people, or why after reading Life of Pi in High School you had to reorganize your understanding of spirituality to be more understanding and loving. A well-told story with its peaks, valleys, and compelling representation of the human experience, becomes a window that gives us a glimpse into ourselves and the entire universe all at once.
We see this with every project at J5. Story is what inspires and creates the catalyst for change, be it big or small. Maybe one doctor needed to hear the story of one patient to adopt a more trauma-informed practice, or the board needed to hear about the day in the life of their IT department to reconsider investing in updated software, but it’s through story that we get clarity about these decisions.
My colleague, Krista Rondeau, taught me during one of these interviews a quote by designer Bruce Mau - “the first step towards massive change is to first inspire.” We are here to create positive (hopefully massive) change, so I guess that means we need to inspire, and there is nothing more inspiring than a good story.
*There is also one more benefit to a good story. You have to sit and listen. You have to lift your fingers off the keys and open yourself up. Before hearing the stories of my colleagues, I was just trying to keep my head down and power through to a solution to the question “Am I a Service Designer?” It was only when I stopped, listened, and gave myself permission to reflect, that I could hear the answer. If you have some time, you can do a little reflection of your own, while watching and listening to a little bit of the J5 story below.
Here are some of the trailers collected into a single video. You can also see all the bio content laid out in its intended form at jfive.com/people. Our hope is that these short-form stories become the catalysts for an ongoing form of reflection and a way of sharing our insights with those interested in making a kinder more beautiful future.
Reach out to Eric for any questions about J5’s story-telling capacity!