One of the key challenges I have faced since joining The CAPTURE Project less than a year ago, other than learning to embrace risk, is figuring out how to tell our story.
Over the past year our description for The CAPTURE Project has evolved. Our initial documents and presentations spoke of the project as aiming “to build a platform to collect, share and support the use of qualitative and quantitative data obtained from existing chronic disease prevention policy and practice – or ‘real-world evidence’.” Our current articulation of The CAPTURE Project clearly describes the platform as “web-based” and emphasizes that its purpose is to enable the “evaluation” of programs and policies. We also speak of “continuous improvement” and how we envision the platform will “help” the chronic disease prevention community learn from real-world interventions.
We have in my view improved (note I do not say perfected) how we speak of this project by shifting away from an academic description to one that seeks to explain in simpler and clearer terms what we are all about.
Being someone who likes to get things “right” from the start, I thought that changing our description a few times over the course of the past year could be perceived as a bit wishy washy. But upon further reflection I came to conclude it’s not. Part of describing The CAPTURE Project is learning to tell our story in a meaningful and compelling way. As with oral storytelling traditions, the more we spoke of or wrote about the project, the more our description of it changed and adapted. Some of these adaptations emerged from comments we received about our being too abstract or our explanations of what we were trying to accomplish unclear, and part of the changes were the result of our own thinking maturing.
Like I said, by no means do I think we have perfected our story. With every opportunity we get to talk about the project we learn about what we got wrong or what needs more detailed explanation. We are continuing to improve our storytelling and it is the right time for us to keep exploring new and different ways of doing so. By the time we are ready to launch our platform, our story needs to be air tight if we want to ensure the project’s success. So now is the time to experiment and be creative!
For example, we just hired Switch Marketing to develop two short videos that describe The CAPTURE Project and our platform. Their expertise lies in taking complex topics and developing simple yet catchy two to three minute videos. When these videos are ready by the end of March, we hope to use them on our website, during poster presentations, as introductions to presentations or meetings with partners and collaborators, and during our ongoing consultations with the chronic disease prevention practitioner community. I am convinced we will learn new storytelling tactics, including the appeal of visual tools in getting one’s message across.
A good storyteller understands the audience, builds the story in accordance to the audience and presents it in a way that is compelling. I have learned to do this with my toddler who likes me to read The Lion King every night before she goes to bed. I know she seeks comfort before a long dark night all alone in her bed. Although she wants to hear the same story night after night, she is looking to have a different storytelling experience that responds to her mood on any given night. So, I have pushed myself to adapt The Lion King to her level of interest and to incorporate her daily experiences in order to make the story compelling and more personal.
I am learning to incorporate what I intuitively do as a parent during my daughter’s bedtime routine into my experiences with telling The CAPTURE Project story. I am learning that although our storyline remains relatively the same, it is how we tell it – the storytelling experience – that needs to adapt to the audience. I am starting to better understand the chronic disease practitioner perspective based on insights we obtained during our initial consultations, which included key informant interviews with practitioners and program managers. I am sure my understanding will improve as we continue our consultations throughout the development phase of the platform (more to come on this in future blogs). I hope the videos we are producing will enlighten us further on the chronic disease community’s receptivity to our project. At the end of the day, our audience reviews will clearly tell us if we put them to sleep or spark their interest!
