Day In The Life Of ...

This time, I won’t dive into what happened later on with Abbie. Instead, I will highlight a technique David, her boss, shared with her.

He told her about the Day In The Life Of technique, otherwise known as DILO, where you illustrate, often in cartoon format, the activities of a typical day for the stakeholder in question.

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DILO is a tool used to map out and document the daily routines, tasks, and interactions of a specific stakeholder within an organization. This could be anyone from a customer, employee, or manager to a supplier. The aim is to provide a clear and detailed picture of what a typical day looks like for them.

If we’re in a situation like Abbie, this could be a great way to overcome the difficulties we might face in gathering information from stakeholders, building trust, and showing them that you genuinely want to improve their work or business life.

Your first DILO draft might not be perfect, but as you share it with stakeholders, it will gradually help confirm or correct the assumptions you made in your draft.

I personally think this is a fantastic way to engage with stakeholders. Over time, they will start to describe their pain points in detail and suggest improvements. Through this method, you will get the information you need.

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Imagine creating a DILO for a customer service representative (CSR) at a call center. The cartoon might start with the CSR logging into their computer at the beginning of their shift, handling various customer queries, navigating multiple software systems, taking a lunch break, attending a team meeting, and wrapping up their day with end-of-shift reports. Each step would be visually depicted, showing the tasks, tools, and interactions involved.

This is all part of stakeholder management, and you never stop honing those skills.

How about we break now, and I come back another day to share another technique? In case you’re interested in the book, "Brainy Glue" the link is right here for you to download it: Brainy Glue : Making Change Stick by Ian Richards and Filip Hendrickx