Should I buy the Storyteller Bundle by Pip Decks?
The Storyteller Bundle includes one Storyteller Tactics deck and one Workshop Tactics deck produced by Pip Decks.
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Should I buy the storyteller bundle by Pip Decks? For storytellers, especially those working on business pitches, brand stories, and rich marketing content, the Storyteller Tactics has become a tool at the ready for many creatives, but does the workshop tactics deck add value to your storytelling tool kit? Likewise, for managers, Workshop Tactics has created a valuable tool for managing change and innovation with cross-functional teams, but does adding Storyteller Tactics to the tool kit improve the process of workshopping products, processes, services, and ideas? Let’s dig in and see what we can discover.
The Value of Storyteller Tactics
The storyteller tactics deck is a valuable tool when you need to pitch an idea to get others on board, motivate people to engage or think in a new way, to tease out things that are going on with a group of people (such as an internal team or an external customer base), or to make something memorable so it sticks in the mind of your audience.
That’s an important skill for teams and team leaders, because they need to be able to describe their work, make meaning around the things they do and the results they have, and to stand out in a way that builds commitment and buy-in from management and customers.
The Value of Workshop Tactics
The Workshop Tactics deck helps teams set goals, dig for understanding, develop new ideas, and position or frame their work before moving on to making decisions and establishing pathways for project managing the production path.
Workshop Tactics helps managers build engagement and buy-in from teams by shifting the role of manager from ‘establisher of rules’ to ‘facilitator of teams.’ Rather than making decisions behind closed doors, teams participate in the winnowing and decision process so everyone gets to put in their ideas, have their say, and understand the process of working through to conclusion.
Each deck includes 54 recipe cards that are broken down into manageable story or project elements.
How to use Storyteller Tactics and Workshop Tactics together
If we describe Storyteller Tactics as a way to make meaning and Workshop Tactics as a way to create better outcomes, we can start to see the synergies between the two. If product teams are creating a range of products that extend the scope of the brand, storyteller tactics cards can help to evaluate the role of products and services in the story of the company and of the end user. If the marketing team is looking for processes to draw out stories within project teams or customers, the workshop tactics cards help to create team-driven processes to draw out and winnow down stories into meaningful content for the website and campaigns.
Should I buy the storyteller bundle by pip decks?
Spoiler alert – if you work in an organization that is focused on refining teamwork and to telling powerful stories, these two decks bring synergies that, when kept handy and applied judiciously, can create powerful results.
A Story Bank recipe using Workshop Tactics and Storyteller Tactics Pip Decks
A member of the Pip Decks Slack (pipdecks.slack.com) recently was looking for resources on building a story bank – a library of stories that your organization can draw from over time. Organizations like Microsoft and Nasa have joined the likes of National Geographic and The New York Times in understanding the value of collecting and presenting a range of stories about their work and its impact, but how do you really do it?
A simple Storyteller Tactics Workshop Tactics recipe could look like this:
Workshop tactics: Start with the “team time” card. This recipe helps get everyone on board and focused on the topic. You might have some engineers or programmers who prefer to work on technical details and might have some trepidation about how they might make stories that can communicate their work to a less technical audience. This card helps teams share skills and chart where they are headed.
During the session, from the Storyteller Tacics deck use Icebreaker Stories or Drive Stories recipe cards to help people get into the story mindset and to showcase what motivates them. Include a notetaker to capture plot lines that can go deeper.
Story Team members could take some ‘homework’ to create a journey map of a story that came up for them during the workshop. The “story bank facilitator” could follow up with each person on the team to figure out which story approach makes sense – are they fighting off internal and external threats to protect the company or client? Are they working through complex data to discover insights? The storyteller Tactics cards provide a shorthand the story bank facilitator can use with each team member.
When the story team reconvenes, they can utilize a Team Tactics technique card like T-Bar to create a simple theme and introduction to their story. The group can then use the Theme Sort technique to organize stories into categories. One goal of a story bank is to make the stories discoverable within a database so your organization can call them up when needed. Theme sorting can help you establish tags to make your database searchable.
Within two sessions and a little touch-base work, an organization can create an initial framework for storytelling. By including someone from each organizational vertical and workgroup, you’ll be off to a company-wide database of internal stories in very short order.
Check back for more on how to use the Storyteller Bundle by Pip Decks.
Should I buy the Storyteller Bundle by Pip Decks?
Yes.
The team at Pip Decks provide a bank of videos and Miro boards (a digital team white boarding platform) that help individuals or teams work through the discovery process to strengthen their work. In addition to purchasing a physical deck, you can get perpetual access to the Vault, an evolving set of tools you can come back to again and again.
What’s included?
- PDF version of each deck for offline access
- Drag and drop digital cards for digital whiteboards
- Miro / MURAL templates for each Tactic so you can get started fast.
- Video Tutorials, featuring 50+ coaching videos for each deck from the creators.
- Access to all future decks exclusive content, events and discounts.
Do you want to learn more about brand story development?
Take my online class The Brand Builder’s Workshop: The branding class for artists, small businesses and anyone who wants to make a big impact. It takes you from mission and vision through a comprehensive brand platform, and on to the implementation of a communications platform so you know what stories you want to tell, and to whom.
