Course in Human Relations & Organizational Behavior Re-Framing My Thoughts on Storytelling

I’ve been on Winter Break for a few weeks now – it’s been glorious to sleep in, relax w/ family & friends and most of all, NO DEADLINES to worry about!

So steeped in relaxation since my last final (Accounting – aggggghhhh!), that it came as something of a surprise when, over happy hour with a girlfriend recently, I found myself with “business-school speak” quite naturally dripping off my tongue. My friend, Stephanie, recently started a new job where she manages the Programs department for a national non-profit. It had been a while since I had seen Steph (since just before the semester started to be exact – no surprise there), and, given my natural curiosity about people, I gave into my usual habit and ended up “interviewing” her about her new position.

A part of Steph’s role requires her to manage volunteers once they’ve been recruited and trained. One challenge for her is retention, and as I continued to interview her I learned that most of the turnover seems to be tied to volunteers who come in with unrealistic expectations.

As a media producer, my first thought was, of course, “Let’s make a training video to address this issue!” So we brainstormed on ways to frame a video that would help manage the expectation of a potential volunteer. But then our conversation went even deeper – and for this I give credit to the Human Relations & Organizational Behavior (HR/OB) class I took this past semester.

First, thinking from the Organizational Behavior perspective, I asked her questions that allowed us to identify a breakdown in communication between her department (Programs) and Marketing (who is responsible for recruiting volunteers). Then, by looking at the issue from an Human Resources perspective, I suggested that the video, through the means of telling a compelling story, needs to address the HR topics of on-boarding, organizational culture & cultural fit and training & development.

Suddenly I stopped myself – poor thing – it was a Saturday night and in my excitement, there I was grilling her about work. But she told me to fugggedaboutit – turns out she was super excited to think about these daily work issues from a fresh perspective.

Who knows what will happen with this idea (perhaps it could be my capstone project in my final semester), but regardless, Steph was very excited with how I was able to break down the issues and supply practical business solutions to an ongoing issue. And I am SUPER excited, that after just one HR/OB class (more to come in the Spring), that I was able to enrich my story-telling capabilities and include these additional facets of traditional business principles.