We don’t have any story telling for you today on account of Ganesh Chaturthi. Instead, we have a case study. But I’ll get to that shortly. I am Nida Sultana. I used to write stories for Mumbai Multimedia Studio, I started leading The MMS's Narrative Thinking vertical. It felt like a natural progression. I had pitched, reported for, and written over 1000 stories till date. Every story taught me something about storytelling, feedback, and interviews, among other things. The document named ‘Learnings’ in my Google Cloud Drive, the books on my desk, and the lists of sources were all growing. It felt like it was the right time to start a new chapter. Over this year, I have learned the importance of learning. I knew, in theory, that great teachers learn from their students. Now, I realise that listening to students is the most important quality of a teacher. This is where the case study I mentioned comes in. This case study captures the experience of some of our students from a company that enrolled in The MMS Narrative Thinking program. The emerging leaders from the data analytics, taught us the fundamental purpose of storytelling. Over Zoom calls, surveys, and private sessions, the participants taught us that stories connect people who speak different languages. They made us see how hard it is for a data professional who speaks technology to convince customers who speak business. We learned and grew a lot too. It strengthened our belief that storytelling might be the only way through which mostly emotional and partly rational beings who don’t have any shared experience can communicate with each other. Also, that learning storytelling is an eternal work in progress.
Along with my co-trainers and mentors, specially The MMS's chief executive officer Yusuf Bhandarkar and chief operating officer Avez, I have learned that Narrative Thinking works. Teaching others has taught me that storytellers can build businesses and communities and lead emphatically if they practice what they teach. Conversely, we fail when we don’t put our audiences first. That’s why we are committed to listening to other’s stories. So, we built the learning vertical for our subscriber at The MMS to showcase how the concepts of storytelling are applied to businesses = because the wants of the audience (and potential students) come first. However, modern business professionals need more than mental models, concepts, and applications. They want to learn to be an authentic and determined storyteller. In short, you told us that you wanted to know who we are as much as you wanted to learn how we think & operate. The result is a brand new course that we have curated on journalistic storytelling. Apply here to grab a spot for your team in the Narrative Thinking programmes that will be conducted in the last quarter of this year.
