November 24, 2025 • 38 mins
Spill the tea - we want to hear from you!
Start with a bold idea: stories are data. Not the soft kind you file under “nice to have,” but structured, analysable insight that explains why people choose, stay, leave or change. We sit down with James Warren, founder of Share More Stories, to unpack how narrative plus AI can outclass dashboards built on clicks and demographics, and why the shift begins with designing for trust.
James walks us through SEEQ, a platform that invites customers and employees to share personal experiences in writing or audio, primed by sensory prompts that activate memory and emotion. Instead of over-engineered chatbots, a simple, humane flow draws out richer accounts and reduces performance pressure. Those stories are then segmented and analysed across 55 emotional signals, creating an emotional map leaders can act on. The payoff is clarity: not just what happened, but how it felt and what is likely to happen next.
We dive into privacy and ethics—anonymised identities, clear boundaries between “personal” and “private,” and reporting that avoids exposing individuals. Then we get practical about leadership. When trust is shaky, go first and model vulnerability; when trust exists, step back and listen before you speak. A recent energy-sector case shows how new hire and hiring leader stories revealed overlooked friction and emotional strain, guiding more humane fixes than another round of survey tweaks.
As AI-generated content floods every channel, authentic human voice becomes a competitive advantage. Real-time querying and emotion-aware analysis can scale insight, but meaning still starts with people willing to share. If you’re in HR, marketing, or internal comms, and you’re tired of numbers that don’t move behaviour, this conversation offers a cleaner path: fewer assumptions, deeper listening, and decisions anchored in emotion-driven truth. If it resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who cares about culture, and leave a review with one story you think leaders need to hear.
~~~
Share More Stories: https://sharemorestories.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stephen King (00:03):
And welcome back, and here we are for I think
episode 9 of the Incongruenti 5,which has been going so so
well.
I hope you've all been enjoyingit.
My name's Stephen King, andtoday I am joined once again by
Radhika Mathur.
Hello Rhadika.
Radhika Mathur (00:22):
Hi Stephen.
Stephen King (00:26):
So, Radhika, we've had a beautiful story today.
We had a beautiful story,that's a really good way of
saying it.
Who did we speak to?
Radhika Mathur (00:33):
We spoke to James Warren and we talked to
him about his latest venture,which is uh titled Share More
Stories, and it's all aboutlearning about customer and
employee experience through AI.
Stephen King (00:46):
It is, and it's a very very for those of you who
are doing research, whether it'sacademic or customer research,
there's a very good discussionhere about the strengths and
weaknesses of AI chatbots andwhether the old way of using uh
form-based collection is stilluh uh a useful uh methodology.
So that was really interestingfrom that perspective.
(01:08):
Uh we also looked at theimportance of the listening
organization uh using other datapoints rather than regular
surveys that just keep measuringpercentages on a light code
scale.
So this was a it was a really,really, really good
conversation.
Uh-code, was there a point thatreally stood out to you?
Radhika Mathur (01:30):
I really liked how we touched on the topics of
ethics and uh privacy and whathe had to say about that, and
how his platform is differentfrom many others out there.
Stephen King (01:42):
Ethics and privacy was key to making sure people
feel safe about sharing whattheir thoughts were, especially
from an employee's point ofview.
So, some really, reallyvaluable content here.
Uh if you're into HR or ifyou're into marketing or
internal communications or brandbuilding in general, this was a
fantastic story.
And uh if you're already, we'regoing to go here we go.
Radhika Mathur (02:11):
Welcome to another podcast of the
Informing.
A human experience insightsinnovator, strategist and
writer, James empowers peopleand brands to share their
stories with the world.
He believes the stories wecrave, the stories we learn the
most from, and the stories welong to share come from a place
of authenticity, courage, andcuriosity.
(02:32):
So we're proud to welcome JamesWarren to our podcast today.
Um, for nearly 30 years, Jameshas nurtured a passion for
storytelling andentrepreneurship.
During his time in ColumbiaUniversity's creative writing
program, James finally beganwriting in earnest.
In 2005, he started exploringthe space between publishing and
technology with the digitalbook project and experiment in
(02:54):
online novel writing.
Around the same time, Jamesalso led various CPG brand
management and businessdevelopment efforts at Ultra
Group, including a number of newbrands and new products in its
introductions.
Following a successfulcorporate marketing career,
James took the plunge andstarted Share More Stories in
the summer of 2014, uniting hispassion for stories and love for
(03:18):
entrepreneurship.
Share More Stories is a humanexperience research company and
through its AI-powered seekplatform, focuses on helping
companies understand employeeexperience and customer
experience with a focus onimproving them.
Welcome to the podcast, Jane.
James Warren (03:34):
Thank you so much for having me.
Looking forward to thisconversation.
Radhika Mathur (03:38):
We're excited to have you on and learn more
about Share More Stories.
So let's get right into it.
Our first question is (03:43):
could you share some of your career
history and explain what pushedyou to leave corporate marketing
and build Share More Stories?
James Warren (03:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think some of it you you touched
on a little bit, but um Istarted my corporate career in
communications and theneventually moved into brand
management.
And from that point, I got achance early in my career to
work on lots of like new things,new projects, new initiatives,
new brands, new business insidethe company.
(04:16):
And that for a while really,really sort of fueled my my
entrepreneurial drive.
And you know, I think when youhave that bug where you where
you're more of a builder and youlike building more than you do
managing, um, it's hard to letthat go.
And so as my career progressed,I kept opting in for or raising
my hand for more and more ofthose types of projects and
(04:38):
programs where I could beleading something that the
company hadn't really donebefore.
And I it kind of goes back tothis advice I got um early in my
career from uh a friend we hadworked on one of these really,
really big complicated newprojects on.
And I remember him saying tome, I was maybe three or four
years into my career, and he hadlike 25 years, and he said, you
(04:58):
know, whenever you can in yourcareer do something that's
first, first for the company orfirst in the industry.
Um, because you may, others maycome behind you and it's their
job to make it better or improveon it, but they'll never be
able to say they did it first.
And the amount you learn fromthat personally for the
organization is significant.
(05:19):
So I think that was really adriver for me.
I've always sought out umthings that maybe feel initially
maybe complex or really hard todo.
But then if you build the rightteam and you build the right
approach and you listen deeply,you can start to find a pathway
through it.
And I think when it was when itwas time to sort of transition
career, entrepreneurship was thebig, big thing that was calling
(05:41):
me and saying it's time to dothis.
If I didn't do it then, I Iknew I would regret it for the
rest of my life.
So that's that's why I took theplunge and I had a really um
supportive spouse who made thata relatively easy decision.
Um, because I had anotherfriend who told me, another
mentor who said, when you starta business, um, if you're
already married or you have along-term partner, it's like
(06:02):
having another child in thefamily because it's it's another
mouth to feed, it's it'sanother thing you care deeply
about and want to be successful,and it will also test your your
emotions from time to time.
And that has been absolutelytrue.
So that's kind of a little bitof the journey I've taken so far
and why I do what I do today.
Radhika Mathur (06:21):
That's uh really interesting.
Um, can you explain how yourSeek platform blends narrative
with data to uncover the whybehind behavior?
James Warren (06:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, one of the things Ilike to say is that stories are
data.
You know, so often people willsort of juxtapose, well, you
have the stories and you havethe data.
And I've probably been um partof that, you know, misconception
myself.
But the story, you know, if Iif I think of data as as
information, not justquantified, but qualitative
(06:52):
information that I can make adecision on or I can put some
data together, see what thepicture is and start to have a
point of view, then stories areabsolutely data.
And in fact, they they've beenour original data for millennia
because you know, before wecould do any any number of
things, we could share storiesin our most tribal and even um
(07:12):
pre-original states.
That's how we communicated withone another, that's how we knew
what was safe or what wasdangerous, that's how we
eventually moved past that stateof existence and started
sharing and passing wisdom.
And so that to us is really thepurpose of the story.
It's to learn from as much asit is to connect.
So in the SIG platform, whatwe're doing is we're asking
(07:32):
people who maybe are consumersof a brand or associates of a
company, or they live in aparticular community that's
navigating a certain issue ortopic or challenge.
We bring them into theplatform, we give them a place
to share their story, a personalstory about that experience
that's usually, you know,considerably longer than they
would spend time thinking abouta quick Facebook post or a tweet
(07:56):
or what have you.
So it's it's a different levelof engagement for them.
Um, and when they share thatstory, we prompt them through
not only the topic, but how toget that story out of them.
So we talk about theiremotions, we talk about their
senses, we ask them to kind ofgo back in their memory and
recall that experience withdetail.
And that gives them a really umpowerful feeling.
(08:19):
Sometimes it's like catharsis,but a lot of the time it's just
this idea of like, oh wow, Ididn't I didn't realize I had
that in me.
So it's a little bit ofcuriosity and self-discovery.
For us, it becomes, you know,the playground for data because
you've got the story itself.
We process those stories foremotional scores and
predictions.
So each story actually getsbroken up into smaller segments,
(08:42):
and we run those against anumber of algorithms that we
built that predict 55 differentemotions.
That data, those emotions andthe stories themselves give us a
really rich picture of whothose consumers, our employees,
our community members are.
Stephen King (08:59):
So that's taken into some of this technology
side of the machine learning.
Uh so how do you uh capturethese stories?
Is it uh done through textprompts?
Are people talking to achatbot?
Is it done by video recordingsto people sent through voice uh
memos?
(09:20):
How is it that you'recollecting this uh these
stories?
James Warren (09:24):
Yeah, so typically in a like in a normal research
project where you would qualifyindividuals if they were going
through research or in any othermeans you would have a link to
a project, you'd bring them in.
Um most of the most of thecollection today, well, all the
collection to this point hasbeen written.
We've just rolled out audio umas a collection method.
So typewritten and audiostories are what we're
(09:46):
collecting.
That's because mainly thoseallow the participant to focus
on their response, whereas thevideo stories tend to have the
participant focus on how theylook.
Um, and and it's it's just adifferent um level of
authenticity or emotionaldetail.
When they write or when theytalk about their experience,
they're a lot closer in theirhow they're approaching the
(10:08):
content, but also how they'resharing their perspectives and
experiences.
And that makes it a lot easier,uh, a lot easier for us to
analyze those two methodsconsistently.
Um when they come to the seekplatform, if they've never been
there, they register and thenthey go right to their project.
They see a prompt, they seesome information about that
prompt, and then it just stepsthem through, um, getting them
(10:29):
to a place where they've got ascreen to type in, answer a few
questions and they're done, or ascreen where they hit the mic
and record their story, um,answer a few questions and
they're done.
So we try to keep the storyjourney um as clean and simple
as possible, while alsorecognizing that for some
people, if they don't thinkthey're a storyteller or they
(10:50):
don't think they're a writer,that may be a barrier for them.
So we want them to know likeyou don't have to be a
professional.
This isn't a matter of, youknow, do you have great grammar?
This is none of that isimportant.
What's most important is yousharing your authentic
experience in your voice in theplatform so we can analyze it.
Stephen King (11:06):
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
So is is this I'm assuming it'schatbot related, it's not uh a
form related, it's a it's aninteractive conversation that
the that they will have, or no,it's it's a it's a form.
James Warren (11:21):
So they get to the prompt gives them a high-level
prompt to think about.
They might say, tell me aboutor think about the most um
impactful travel experienceyou've ever had.
And then it'll give them somesubprompts.
When you think about this,think about who you are with,
where you went, maybe why youwent, what you took away from
that experience, and how it madeyou feel.
(11:41):
Um, then we actually they'llclick the next step of their
journey and we will show them aseries of visual cues that start
them to have their sensoryrecall.
Who do you remember being with?
What were you doing?
So they can click a couple oftiles that are standardized
across all of our projects.
Now they're a little bit moreemotionally invested, and also
they're bringing their memory upa little bit more.
(12:02):
Then they click a button to thenext section and they start to
go through and select what doyou remember tasting, smelling,
um, touching, hearing.
By that point, they're reallyactivated to share their story.
And so the last button thatthey push is I'm ready, and they
get to a form where they typein their story, their title,
etc.
So we we don't use and don'treally want to use a chat bot
(12:24):
for that experience.
We want them to feel umprompted, but also ready to
really go through their ownexperience versus a series of
QA's that build a story, if youwill.
We experimented with that kindof interaction early in our
process and just found that itit didn't really help the
participant think of theirexperience in a kind of complete
(12:45):
way.
It really just became a QA,which is not a bad thing.
That's just a different type ofcapture method than what we
were looking for.
Stephen King (12:53):
That's quite that's quite interesting because
there uh every single type ofdata capture has its own
strengths and weaknesses.
And I don't think we'veactually explored the weaknesses
of chatbots um uh as much asyou know it should be done.
I think they they've just beenrolled out everywhere.
That's that's that's reallyinteresting.
(13:13):
Uh Radically, do we have ohsorry, go ahead.
James Warren (13:15):
I was gonna say that's an interesting point
because in they are being rolledout in more and more use cases,
but obviously, the you know, upuntil recently, the vast
majority of their use cases werein a quote unquote customer
service um experience, which hasa lot of sort of collective
memory or frustration with it.
You know, like I don't have alot of good memories of using
(13:36):
chatbots when I wanted somethingdone.
Um, almost every chatbotexperience I've ever had has
frustrated the you know what outof me, the hell out of me,
because I'm like, no, that's notright.
No, that's the wrong question,that's all for the wrong answer,
and I don't have the time orenergy to fix it.
And some of that has carriedover into these chatbots as data
(13:57):
capture, um, where you see alittle bit of a too filtered,
too formulated, too framed of aconversation that makes it hard
to get what you really want toknow.
Stephen King (14:07):
And I would probably predict people are a
little bit scared of what isgoing on.
I think with its aesthetic QAform, people know what they're
doing.
They can they can also go backand download it and print it,
and there's there is that kindof familiarity with that kind of
uh with that kind of tool.
That's great.
Radica, do we have uh what'sthe what's the next question?
Radhika Mathur (14:29):
Yes, um so many see storytelling and AI as
opposites, one deeply human, theother mechanistic.
How do you see them workingtogether?
James Warren (14:41):
I love this question.
Um you know, in the in thethere is something fundamentally
and and we'll see howtransformative but clearly
transformative in AI in terms ofbig tech things that have
changed our lives over the last30, 40, 50 years.
And at least in today's, as faras we can see, as far as most
(15:03):
of us can see today, it is avery, very, very powerful tool.
So we're leaning hard intothat.
We're leaning hard into the itis a tool that can be used in a
lot of different ways.
Our focus on using the tool isin the analytic space to say,
well, some predictive and someanalytic to to predict what are
the emotions that are present inthese stories so that we can
(15:25):
zoom out and have an emotionalmap of that group of consumers
or employees.
Why does that matter?
Because our argument for theC-suite is demos don't really
tell you anything much anymore.
They they're useful in someplaces, but they really don't
predict behavior.
Even behavioral analytics arelimited because while two
(15:47):
customers or consumers mayexhibit the exact same
behaviors, if you don'tunderstand their underlying
motives and their contextchanges, one will continue to
behave that way and the otherperson will be different.
Like, what happened?
And if you and if you just say,oh, that's just the you know,
we didn't get it right X percentof the time, but you could get
it maybe right more times if youunderstood the motives and the
drivers.
(16:07):
And the emotions are a really,really good way to understand
that level of of drivingbehavior, the underlying
emotions, the underlyingfeelings and thoughts and needs
that are shaping our actions,both conscious and
semi-conscious.
There are certain things we doat a at a at a subconscious
unconscious level all the time.
We blink, we breathe.
(16:27):
Those things, there's not a tonof emotions that we can we can
you know attribute to them.
Although in times of high, highstress, we know that we might
blink faster, breathe deeper,breathe faster.
But those are still sort ofbodily responses to known things
that throughout the humangenome, basically, we know that
we know to be scared of, we knowto be anxious about, we know to
(16:47):
be frightened, and we have avery well documented response to
that.
But there's a gazillion otherthings that as humans we
experience that aren't in thatpretty clearly defined bucket of
normal human responses to thesame set of sort of triggers or
situations.
And that's how we live, that'show we interact with our
families, that's how we go towork, that's how we buy what we
(17:10):
buy, um, or write what we writeor say what we say.
And for those types ofdecisions and actions, there's a
lot of emotion that is behindthem.
That's what we're trying toquantify, that's what we're
trying to decode.
And so when we present our ourcustomers back with, hey, these
consumers, these are theirexperiences, this is what
they're talking about, but thisis how it's making them feel,
(17:31):
and this is why they'reexpressing these stories.
It's a different conversationfor them in terms of what they
can do with it.
Stephen King (17:38):
Privacy becomes the next thing then, because
you're not just talking about uhpeople's cognitive uh
experiences and what theyactually see realize, you're
getting really deep into theirminds and into their into their
feelings and the emotions, asyou've said.
Uh how are you protecting thisinformation?
How are you assuring that kindof uh privacy for the people
(18:02):
that participate, whether it'semployees or customers?
James Warren (18:04):
Yeah, great question.
Um the first thing we do is youknow, some of this, of course,
at a system level, what do we doin our platform to keep it
secure?
How have we designed access tothe platform?
That's why you know people haveto register because we have to
verify that you're an individualwith an identity and you're an
adult.
And you have a you then youthen get an anonymized user ID.
(18:27):
Some users change their ID tofit some version of their
knowable identity, I guess, butmost users keep that anonymized
ID.
And so, unless you have, say,project admin or system admin
rights, you would never be ableto know the person behind the
ID.
Um, that's one step.
The second step is in how weprompt people, and the way we
(18:50):
prompt them is we say thingslike, you should feel
comfortable sharing, you know,this is a private and secure
platform, and your your data umis anonymized, and you have the
choice on how you want toexpress yourself.
Um, I often tell people, youshould feel comfortable saying
things that are deeply personal,but not necessarily private.
(19:10):
Not because we're worried aboutyour data leaking out, but
that's the kind that's the sortof security you want them to
feel, that it's not, you know,an open field on their
information because hardly everdo we give, do we willingly give
that level of permission tocompanies that we work with or
buy from.
And so we want them to feelthat same level of security that
(19:31):
if we were in a room and youwere worried about that person
over there who's a supervisorknowing what you're about to
say, we want you to know thatyou don't have to worry about
that in this platform, that youcan say what you need to say.
But we generally encouragethem, go personal, go deep.
But if this is a place wherethe information were like, you
know, confidentially HR-related,it's probably not the right
(19:53):
venue for it.
Or if this were a place whereyou needed to express something
you would observe that wouldotherwise involve the
authorities, probably not a goodplace for it.
Um, but a good place to exploreexperiences that matter deeply
to you, even personal ones, andwhy they impacted you the way
they did.
That's really what we try tofocus them on, and then just
reassure them in our process andour technology and our
(20:14):
practices that their informationis definitely secure.
So when we're doing analysesfor clients and partners, what
we're really focused on is hey,let's zoom out, let's look at
this group in a different way,which oftentimes really
dominates what they can canhandle and consume and absorb
because they've rarely looked attheir audiences or their teams
(20:34):
in this sort of emotionallysegmented way.
They've usually only looked atthem demographically and
behaviorally.
So that alone gives them plentyto chew on.
Um, and then of course, if ifcertain segments are too small,
you wouldn't be providing thattype of information anyway.
Stephen King (20:50):
Uh the next three questions sort of are very
interlinked.
I mean, you we spoke earlierand you mentioned earlier about
how this is like uh a new babyin the house.
And I feel you, I feel that uhstartup business, and you're
trying to tell everyone that youhave this fantastic new tool,
and people are not ready toreceive that information.
(21:11):
So, how do you convincecompanies that uh listening to
their employees, let's face it,okay, I think they're uh you uh
listening to customers, I thinkhas been grudgingly become uh a
norm, but listening to employeesis still uh is still quite a
novel concept, unfortunately.
So, how do you convince them todo though?
(21:33):
And have you got examples ofyou know uh how this has worked,
uh either to spot a blind spotor to prove uh something
effective?
James Warren (21:42):
Yeah, I mean you hit the nail on the head.
The challenge in much ofbusiness in general, but
especially leadership, whetheryou're in the for-profit sector,
not for profit sector, orpublic sectors, you know, a lot
of our leaders who are inpositions of leadership today
are you know generally of asimilar generation or two, and
(22:05):
they've grown up under a certainmindset of what it means to
lead, which means I gotta haveall the answers.
And and as one executive oncesaid to me, um, I don't ask
questions, I don't know theanswer to.
And I was like, How the hell doyou learn anything?
Um, and and I was like, I makeit my business to know
everything.
I'm like, that's not possible.
And so our biggest challengehas been to really help leaders
(22:28):
who are willing to go down thisprocess to get a little bit more
vulnerable than they're they'retypically comfortable with.
And that vulnerability couldshow up in two ways.
One, if you have trust, butyour organization or a level of
trust, I should say, but sayyour organization doesn't
necessarily feel that you hearwhat they have to say, which by
the way, if that continues tohappen, you won't have trust.
(22:50):
But let's say you're you're inthat sort of place where there's
room to salvage it and fix it,then your job is not to dominate
the process by saying, Here'smy experience, now tell me
yours.
Your job is literally to startwith, tell me yours, because
that type of group is waiting totell you.
On the other hand, if you'vealready lost trust or you never
(23:11):
had it, they need to see you getvulnerable before you ask them
to get vulnerable.
And that leader needs to do theopposite.
They need to actually say, Iknow this is, I'm I know I'm
asking something that you mightnot feel comfortable with, or
you might not even trust me.
Let me demonstrate for you thatI'm willing to be vulnerable.
And they share out of anexperience themselves.
(23:32):
And so those are like twotactical approaches we take with
leaders, especially on theorganizational side.
To your point, there's a littlebit more supposed rational and
objective reasoning for sayingwe should listen to customers.
And yet, many, many leaders ofcompanies and brands don't,
(23:52):
because even still they have astrong belief that, you know, I
know better what the I knowbetter what this customer wants
and needs than they dothemselves.
It's kind of almost thisego-driven violation of people's
own agency.
No, the customer knows, theydefinitely know better than you
what they want and need.
They still may not know allthat they want and need, but I'm
pretty sure they know betterthan you because they know their
(24:14):
own lives, they know their ownexperiences.
So what we're trying to do isclose that gap by saying, look,
when you listen to people in acertain kind of way, they tell
you what you really need to knowrather than just what you want
to hear.
And that is the shift in sortof insight and leadership action
that we're trying to work with.
So has it been a challenge?
You bet, because we've beenearly for a long time.
(24:36):
But I but I do feel of latewe've started to find a really
good groove where we've beenable to identify our target
customer much more clearly inthe market and engage them.
And you know, you talk aboutsome of the success stories,
that's become part of thatconversation.
When you're building somethingthat's really different, it is
hard to collect cases.
(24:56):
So those cases take longer,they they're harder to validate,
but if you stay at it longenough, you get them.
And we've worked with, youknow, organizations as recently
as an energy company where theyengaged us to help solve a very
specific problem.
They were hiring lots ofpeople.
And they said, you know, wehave a feeling that our new hire
(25:17):
experience is not very good,not just for the people we're
hiring, but for the peoplehiring them.
And that was brilliant thatthey were at least open enough
to say that's a problem we thinkwe have.
So we engaged uh a significantpercentage of all of their new
hires in the past three yearsand all of the hiring leaders
through the Seek platform toshare their stories of that, you
(25:40):
know, brand new hire or hiringprocess experience.
On one hand, sort of not themost emotionally resonant topic,
and yet those participants wentto town on it.
They had a lot to say about notjust things like this system
works or doesn't work, or Iliked my cube or I didn't, but
really how the experience ofbeing recruited, hired,
(26:01):
onboarded, and set up forsuccess, how that experience
went for them.
And the hiring leaders equallywere saying things like, I want
to lead my team moreeffectively, but I'm stressed
and strained and pulled in thesedirections because of this
process.
And so when you think aboutthose kinds of insights, it
really helps those executiveleaders focus in on what do we
need to do to make thatparticular process, which is,
(26:24):
you know, only get one chance tomake a first impression.
How do we really go solve thatproblem with our with our new
talent?
Stephen King (26:30):
That's that's fun because I've just seen on
LinkedIn a HR managercomplaining about his own HR
processes and how long it takes.
You're you're in charge, man.
I mean, seriously.
I don't think he was actuallyreferring to his own practice,
he was pointing fingerselsewhere.
But I'm pretty sure there wassomething in there.
(26:51):
Uh Radica, I think we're up toour last three questions.
Good.
Radhika Mathur (26:57):
Um, so how does your community of 8,000
storytellers shape or challengeyour work?
James Warren (27:05):
Yeah, you know, the the community we have, we we
have probably even much morethan that, because that's that's
almost thinking about thecommunity of people that engage
with us and on our channels.
And and you know, when westarted building the company, we
really we really had soughtout, when we started building
the company, we had reallysought out um people who valued
(27:27):
stories, period.
Like stories are what we'rebuilding, we believe in the
value of sharing them.
And so we were seeking peoplewho also had that value.
As we grew, we started toattract people who also were
leaning into where we weregoing, which is stories as
insight.
And so the curiosity of peoplestarted to emerge.
(27:47):
Um, the questions that theywere asking about their own
experiences, about where theyworked, about who they bought
from and where they lived, thosewere starting to percolate up.
And so I would say, you know,we've been able to engage our
own community often, especiallyaround new projects.
Um, some of our communitymembers are really passionate
about expressing themselves andbeing heard.
(28:08):
As we moved from doing thiswork in a largely kind of
facilitated session, think, youknow, focus group on steroids,
which is probably not a greatanalogy, but it's what one of
our customers once said, we usedto do it all in person and then
COVID hit, but we were stilldoing them all as sessions
online.
And then we said, no, we reallyneed to move forward to make
this a platform so that it'seasier for people to use.
(28:29):
My biggest fear was that wewould lose the um the emotional
intimacy of being in a roomtogether, being vulnerable
enough to share, and thenimmediately seeing that there
was somebody in that room acrossthe room or even next to you,
is like, and they'll say, I canrelate to that.
And I valued those moments inthe live sessions deeply because
(28:50):
they were so um justemotionally rich.
It was like we called it themagic moment.
Everybody would be quiet,they'd start writing, and when
they had time to share, they'dsay, Okay, I'll go ahead and
I'll share.
And then immediately the roomwould reinforce that.
So I was afraid we would losethat.
And we didn't.
In fact, when we went to theplatform, it shocked me in our
very first project that peoplewent deeper and they had more to
(29:11):
say.
And I think some of that wasbecause they weren't worried
about being on a schedule ando'clock in a session.
They weren't worried abouthaving to even think about
somebody next to them in theroom because it was them and the
tool.
And so that's why we believefor our partners, it really is
an opportunity to bring trulythe voice of your customer or
your employee as a leader, as anexecutive into your own, like
(29:35):
at your fingertips.
You know, with our with ourtool, we're using a GPT type
function as well for real timeanalysis.
So if you're the CEO or theanalyst, you can log in and ask
questions of your story set.
What are people feeling aboutthis?
How do people feel about that?
And you're getting a real timeanswer.
And so, you know, I just thinkthat the the way the community
(29:57):
has has grown with us, yes,people.
Who probably only thought wewould stay a writing platform
for frustrated writers becausethat was our first idea, because
that was the problem very closeto home that I wanted to solve.
As that faded quickly and webecame more focused on a story
sharing platform for everybody,and then a platform for really
(30:17):
making ourselves heard, and thena platform for really
developing insights so thatpeople can deliver better
experiences, the community'sevolved too, but I would say
they've been extremelysupportive and they've grown
along the way.
So it's it's just made our jobmore fun and more interesting
and even a little bit easier.
Radhika Mathur (30:36):
Yeah, that's really interesting because
people do want a safe spacewhere they can sort of share
what they're thinking, whatthey're feeling.
So having also the anonymity ofbeing able to share it without
you know being scrutinized ormaybe you know put on the spot
for what you've said.
Uh I'm sure that is also acomforting um aspect for the
(30:59):
people engaging in yourcommunity.
James Warren (31:01):
I think that's exactly right because even if
I'm in a room, you know, we'dhave sessions as small as eight
people, which felt like, okay,if I if I like to write or I
like to share stories, beingaround five, six, seven other
people is not that big of adeal.
But some of our sessions wouldbe with 70 people in the room.
And they'd all write and they'dall submit, but you could tell
there was we had to get themover a hump of fear of being
(31:24):
vulnerable.
And they went right to wherethey needed to go in the
platform-based experience.
Because I think you're ontosomething there when you talk
about this idea of I don't wantto be not even just on spot, I
don't want to be maybe observedbecause not a lot of people like
writing in front of a lot ofother people that I'm aware of.
Um, so I think there'ssomething interesting to that
for sure.
Radhika Mathur (31:44):
Yeah.
So um as AI tools become morecommon, how do you think the
role of story will evolve inbusiness and society?
James Warren (31:53):
Yeah, you know, some of these things we've
already started to see, and yousee it all over places like
LinkedIn.
Um, and then you see like theentertainment version of it on
places like, you know, X andFacebook and TikTok.
The amount of AI generatedcontent that people publish as
user-generated content is in ina year and a half become
(32:15):
overwhelming.
I mean, people aren't evenbothering to put the little
disclaimers on anymore becausethey don't care, and the
platforms probably can't catchthem.
So the stuff that sort of justwe have to wade through.
I our bet, our belief, our ourplatform is built on this notion
that humans still matter andhuman experiences still matter,
(32:39):
and humans' abilities to expressthose experiences still
matters.
So if those things are true, umstories in one form or another
are going to continue to bereally, really crucial for
humankind because they are afundamental way we communicate
with each other and learn fromeach other.
The tool will change.
I'm sure, you know, back in theday when the printing press
(33:00):
first emerged, you know, peoplewere like, you can't put that
control in the in the hands ofpeople who who aren't literate.
That's a shame.
And then as as other toolscame, you know, my goodness,
this computer is is making mewrite easier.
Am I cheating that I don't haveto think as hard and make, you
know, have error-free thoughtsbefore I write them down in long
hand with this quill and thisink?
(33:22):
You know, when people had moreand more tools, people who were
used to the previous toolsquestioned whether or not those
tools gave them an unfairadvantage, or even more changed
the essence of what they weregoing to express.
And I think tools always changehow we express or do a thing.
The question is whether or notthey change it in small,
incremental, in other words,tolerable ways, or whether
(33:44):
they're changing them intransformative ways that we
can't fully appreciate orunderstand.
We might be it at that momentwith the way AI content creation
is at the fingertips ofanybody.
Um, but I also believe we'reoversaturating our channels and
markets with that amount ofcontent that we won't soon be
able to consume.
We're racing to the bottom, andthat's going to give an
(34:05):
opportunity for people todifferentiate more meaningful
expressions and like stories.
Stephen King (34:10):
I've seen a lot of stuff coming for the
podcasting.
Uh, just on the tool that weuse, it creates lovely.
If we were doing video, itwould create lovely little video
shorts for me.
I've got a number of emailsfrom people saying, Oh, we'll go
through the whole transcriptand we will come up with uh
summaries.
Um there's there's a lot ofstuff which will then transport
(34:33):
transform that into some sort ofanimated news function that's
going down.
So and then they'll take uhkeywords, and then over the
course of your series, they willbuild up a notebook and showing
all the different terms thatkeep repeating, gives you
analysis.
So there's there's there's athere's an enormous number of
people who are coming up withreally, really interesting ways
(34:56):
to use all of this uh generateddata.
Uh uh, how do you see thefuture?
I mean, this is I think is ourlast one.
Uh how do you see the future ofworkplace listening?
I mean, we've got so muchcontent out there, we're we're
we're identifying new ways of ofcapturing it and evaluating it.
(35:17):
Three, four, five, ten years.
We said ten years.
I don't know whether it'spossible to go there.
But how how far ahead are youlooking and on what do you think
it's gonna come to in terms ofworkplace listening?
Rather than customer listening,but workplace listening.
James Warren (35:31):
Yeah.
I mean companies aren'tsuffering for a lack of data.
They they've got plenty ofdata.
The real the real challenge webelieve is making meaning out of
that data.
And and it's hard to makemeaning out of observed data or
reported clicks and yeses datawithout some version of like,
(35:54):
what's the voice behind this?
You know, and and when I wantto explain, like I may maybe I
write something and somebodysays, Can you explain it to me?
That means they need my voice.
My voice needs to be added toeven what I've already
expressed.
And that's that's normal,that's human.
We say things, we follow upwith things, we take this is
what I really mean, or this iswhat's really important about
what I had to say.
And that's hard to do inpassive or extractive data
(36:17):
collection.
So the role of listening, Ithink, is going to become a
differentiator for leaders andtherefore their companies,
because their ability to siftthrough massive amounts of
passively collected, activelycollected, or observed data to
say what's really importantabout this employees'
experience.
We might be able to replace orat least make sense of all of
(36:40):
this data we have over here ifwe just listened to this person
for five minutes.
And we know that to be true inhuman-to-human interactions.
Um, when I stop presuming,assuming, and I ask a question
and I get an answer.
Actually, a lot can shift in avery, very short amount of time.
So I so I think, you know, workis work is itself undergoing an
(37:02):
overhaul.
I think our relationship towork is is shifting both
globally and definitely incertain social or socioeconomic
contexts.
And all of that is going tomake it harder for people to
navigate to what is meaningfulwork for me and for companies to
say what is valuable work tous.
And finding that balance,finding that sweet spot to me, I
(37:25):
would bet on listening as amuch better way to determine
that than say just collecting10,000 surveys.
Stephen King (37:33):
That's wonderful.
I really love the way thatyou're approaching this in the
ethical way that uh your toolcould be used because I've seen
so many other staff surveys andwhat I think they've been run to
death.
Uh thank you so very much,Radhika. Would you like to close
us down because I think we'vehad that's the end of our time.
Radhika Mathur (37:50):
Yes, thank you so much for being on our
podcast, James, and telling usall about Share More Stories.
And for all of you guyslistening, thank you for tuning
in to another episode.
Do like, share, and commentwherever possible, and be sure
to join us on the next one.
And welcome back, and here we are for I think
episode 9 of the Incongruenti 5,which has been going so so
well.
I hope you've all been enjoyingit.
My name's Stephen King, andtoday I am joined once again by
Radhika Mathur.
Hello Rhadika.
Radhika Mathur (00:22):
Hi Stephen.
Stephen King (00:26):
So, Radhika, we've had a beautiful story today.
We had a beautiful story,that's a really good way of
saying it.
Who did we speak to?
Radhika Mathur (00:33):
We spoke to James Warren and we talked to
him about his latest venture,which is uh titled Share More
Stories, and it's all aboutlearning about customer and
employee experience through AI.
Stephen King (00:46):
It is, and it's a very very for those of you who
are doing research, whether it'sacademic or customer research,
there's a very good discussionhere about the strengths and
weaknesses of AI chatbots andwhether the old way of using uh
form-based collection is stilluh uh a useful uh methodology.
So that was really interestingfrom that perspective.
(01:08):
Uh we also looked at theimportance of the listening
organization uh using other datapoints rather than regular
surveys that just keep measuringpercentages on a light code
scale.
So this was a it was a really,really, really good
conversation.
Uh-code, was there a point thatreally stood out to you?
Radhika Mathur (01:30):
I really liked how we touched on the topics of
ethics and uh privacy and whathe had to say about that, and
how his platform is differentfrom many others out there.
Stephen King (01:42):
Ethics and privacy was key to making sure people
feel safe about sharing whattheir thoughts were, especially
from an employee's point ofview.
So, some really, reallyvaluable content here.
Uh if you're into HR or ifyou're into marketing or
internal communications or brandbuilding in general, this was a
fantastic story.
And uh if you're already, we'regoing to go here we go.
Radhika Mathur (02:11):
Welcome to another podcast of the
Informing.
A human experience insightsinnovator, strategist and
writer, James empowers peopleand brands to share their
stories with the world.
He believes the stories wecrave, the stories we learn the
most from, and the stories welong to share come from a place
of authenticity, courage, andcuriosity.
(02:32):
So we're proud to welcome JamesWarren to our podcast today.
Um, for nearly 30 years, Jameshas nurtured a passion for
storytelling andentrepreneurship.
During his time in ColumbiaUniversity's creative writing
program, James finally beganwriting in earnest.
In 2005, he started exploringthe space between publishing and
technology with the digitalbook project and experiment in
(02:54):
online novel writing.
Around the same time, Jamesalso led various CPG brand
management and businessdevelopment efforts at Ultra
Group, including a number of newbrands and new products in its
introductions.
Following a successfulcorporate marketing career,
James took the plunge andstarted Share More Stories in
the summer of 2014, uniting hispassion for stories and love for
(03:18):
entrepreneurship.
Share More Stories is a humanexperience research company and
through its AI-powered seekplatform, focuses on helping
companies understand employeeexperience and customer
experience with a focus onimproving them.
Welcome to the podcast, Jane.
James Warren (03:34):
Thank you so much for having me.
Looking forward to thisconversation.
Radhika Mathur (03:38):
We're excited to have you on and learn more
about Share More Stories.
So let's get right into it.
Our first question is (03:43):
could you share some of your career
history and explain what pushedyou to leave corporate marketing
and build Share More Stories?
James Warren (03:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think some of it you you touched
on a little bit, but um Istarted my corporate career in
communications and theneventually moved into brand
management.
And from that point, I got achance early in my career to
work on lots of like new things,new projects, new initiatives,
new brands, new business insidethe company.
(04:16):
And that for a while really,really sort of fueled my my
entrepreneurial drive.
And you know, I think when youhave that bug where you where
you're more of a builder and youlike building more than you do
managing, um, it's hard to letthat go.
And so as my career progressed,I kept opting in for or raising
my hand for more and more ofthose types of projects and
(04:38):
programs where I could beleading something that the
company hadn't really donebefore.
And I it kind of goes back tothis advice I got um early in my
career from uh a friend we hadworked on one of these really,
really big complicated newprojects on.
And I remember him saying tome, I was maybe three or four
years into my career, and he hadlike 25 years, and he said, you
(04:58):
know, whenever you can in yourcareer do something that's
first, first for the company orfirst in the industry.
Um, because you may, others maycome behind you and it's their
job to make it better or improveon it, but they'll never be
able to say they did it first.
And the amount you learn fromthat personally for the
organization is significant.
(05:19):
So I think that was really adriver for me.
I've always sought out umthings that maybe feel initially
maybe complex or really hard todo.
But then if you build the rightteam and you build the right
approach and you listen deeply,you can start to find a pathway
through it.
And I think when it was when itwas time to sort of transition
career, entrepreneurship was thebig, big thing that was calling
(05:41):
me and saying it's time to dothis.
If I didn't do it then, I Iknew I would regret it for the
rest of my life.
So that's that's why I took theplunge and I had a really um
supportive spouse who made thata relatively easy decision.
Um, because I had anotherfriend who told me, another
mentor who said, when you starta business, um, if you're
already married or you have along-term partner, it's like
(06:02):
having another child in thefamily because it's it's another
mouth to feed, it's it'sanother thing you care deeply
about and want to be successful,and it will also test your your
emotions from time to time.
And that has been absolutelytrue.
So that's kind of a little bitof the journey I've taken so far
and why I do what I do today.
Radhika Mathur (06:21):
That's uh really interesting.
Um, can you explain how yourSeek platform blends narrative
with data to uncover the whybehind behavior?
James Warren (06:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, one of the things Ilike to say is that stories are
data.
You know, so often people willsort of juxtapose, well, you
have the stories and you havethe data.
And I've probably been um partof that, you know, misconception
myself.
But the story, you know, if Iif I think of data as as
information, not justquantified, but qualitative
(06:52):
information that I can make adecision on or I can put some
data together, see what thepicture is and start to have a
point of view, then stories areabsolutely data.
And in fact, they they've beenour original data for millennia
because you know, before wecould do any any number of
things, we could share storiesin our most tribal and even um
(07:12):
pre-original states.
That's how we communicated withone another, that's how we knew
what was safe or what wasdangerous, that's how we
eventually moved past that stateof existence and started
sharing and passing wisdom.
And so that to us is really thepurpose of the story.
It's to learn from as much asit is to connect.
So in the SIG platform, whatwe're doing is we're asking
(07:32):
people who maybe are consumersof a brand or associates of a
company, or they live in aparticular community that's
navigating a certain issue ortopic or challenge.
We bring them into theplatform, we give them a place
to share their story, a personalstory about that experience
that's usually, you know,considerably longer than they
would spend time thinking abouta quick Facebook post or a tweet
(07:56):
or what have you.
So it's it's a different levelof engagement for them.
Um, and when they share thatstory, we prompt them through
not only the topic, but how toget that story out of them.
So we talk about theiremotions, we talk about their
senses, we ask them to kind ofgo back in their memory and
recall that experience withdetail.
And that gives them a really umpowerful feeling.
(08:19):
Sometimes it's like catharsis,but a lot of the time it's just
this idea of like, oh wow, Ididn't I didn't realize I had
that in me.
So it's a little bit ofcuriosity and self-discovery.
For us, it becomes, you know,the playground for data because
you've got the story itself.
We process those stories foremotional scores and
predictions.
So each story actually getsbroken up into smaller segments,
(08:42):
and we run those against anumber of algorithms that we
built that predict 55 differentemotions.
That data, those emotions andthe stories themselves give us a
really rich picture of whothose consumers, our employees,
our community members are.
Stephen King (08:59):
So that's taken into some of this technology
side of the machine learning.
Uh so how do you uh capturethese stories?
Is it uh done through textprompts?
Are people talking to achatbot?
Is it done by video recordingsto people sent through voice uh
memos?
(09:20):
How is it that you'recollecting this uh these
stories?
James Warren (09:24):
Yeah, so typically in a like in a normal research
project where you would qualifyindividuals if they were going
through research or in any othermeans you would have a link to
a project, you'd bring them in.
Um most of the most of thecollection today, well, all the
collection to this point hasbeen written.
We've just rolled out audio umas a collection method.
So typewritten and audiostories are what we're
(09:46):
collecting.
That's because mainly thoseallow the participant to focus
on their response, whereas thevideo stories tend to have the
participant focus on how theylook.
Um, and and it's it's just adifferent um level of
authenticity or emotionaldetail.
When they write or when theytalk about their experience,
they're a lot closer in theirhow they're approaching the
(10:08):
content, but also how they'resharing their perspectives and
experiences.
And that makes it a lot easier,uh, a lot easier for us to
analyze those two methodsconsistently.
Um when they come to the seekplatform, if they've never been
there, they register and thenthey go right to their project.
They see a prompt, they seesome information about that
prompt, and then it just stepsthem through, um, getting them
(10:29):
to a place where they've got ascreen to type in, answer a few
questions and they're done, or ascreen where they hit the mic
and record their story, um,answer a few questions and
they're done.
So we try to keep the storyjourney um as clean and simple
as possible, while alsorecognizing that for some
people, if they don't thinkthey're a storyteller or they
(10:50):
don't think they're a writer,that may be a barrier for them.
So we want them to know likeyou don't have to be a
professional.
This isn't a matter of, youknow, do you have great grammar?
This is none of that isimportant.
What's most important is yousharing your authentic
experience in your voice in theplatform so we can analyze it.
Stephen King (11:06):
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
So is is this I'm assuming it'schatbot related, it's not uh a
form related, it's a it's aninteractive conversation that
the that they will have, or no,it's it's a it's a form.
James Warren (11:21):
So they get to the prompt gives them a high-level
prompt to think about.
They might say, tell me aboutor think about the most um
impactful travel experienceyou've ever had.
And then it'll give them somesubprompts.
When you think about this,think about who you are with,
where you went, maybe why youwent, what you took away from
that experience, and how it madeyou feel.
(11:41):
Um, then we actually they'llclick the next step of their
journey and we will show them aseries of visual cues that start
them to have their sensoryrecall.
Who do you remember being with?
What were you doing?
So they can click a couple oftiles that are standardized
across all of our projects.
Now they're a little bit moreemotionally invested, and also
they're bringing their memory upa little bit more.
(12:02):
Then they click a button to thenext section and they start to
go through and select what doyou remember tasting, smelling,
um, touching, hearing.
By that point, they're reallyactivated to share their story.
And so the last button thatthey push is I'm ready, and they
get to a form where they typein their story, their title,
etc.
So we we don't use and don'treally want to use a chat bot
(12:24):
for that experience.
We want them to feel umprompted, but also ready to
really go through their ownexperience versus a series of
QA's that build a story, if youwill.
We experimented with that kindof interaction early in our
process and just found that itit didn't really help the
participant think of theirexperience in a kind of complete
(12:45):
way.
It really just became a QA,which is not a bad thing.
That's just a different type ofcapture method than what we
were looking for.
Stephen King (12:53):
That's quite that's quite interesting because
there uh every single type ofdata capture has its own
strengths and weaknesses.
And I don't think we'veactually explored the weaknesses
of chatbots um uh as much asyou know it should be done.
I think they they've just beenrolled out everywhere.
That's that's that's reallyinteresting.
(13:13):
Uh Radically, do we have ohsorry, go ahead.
James Warren (13:15):
I was gonna say that's an interesting point
because in they are being rolledout in more and more use cases,
but obviously, the you know, upuntil recently, the vast
majority of their use cases werein a quote unquote customer
service um experience, which hasa lot of sort of collective
memory or frustration with it.
You know, like I don't have alot of good memories of using
(13:36):
chatbots when I wanted somethingdone.
Um, almost every chatbotexperience I've ever had has
frustrated the you know what outof me, the hell out of me,
because I'm like, no, that's notright.
No, that's the wrong question,that's all for the wrong answer,
and I don't have the time orenergy to fix it.
And some of that has carriedover into these chatbots as data
(13:57):
capture, um, where you see alittle bit of a too filtered,
too formulated, too framed of aconversation that makes it hard
to get what you really want toknow.
Stephen King (14:07):
And I would probably predict people are a
little bit scared of what isgoing on.
I think with its aesthetic QAform, people know what they're
doing.
They can they can also go backand download it and print it,
and there's there is that kindof familiarity with that kind of
uh with that kind of tool.
That's great.
Radica, do we have uh what'sthe what's the next question?
Radhika Mathur (14:29):
Yes, um so many see storytelling and AI as
opposites, one deeply human, theother mechanistic.
How do you see them workingtogether?
James Warren (14:41):
I love this question.
Um you know, in the in thethere is something fundamentally
and and we'll see howtransformative but clearly
transformative in AI in terms ofbig tech things that have
changed our lives over the last30, 40, 50 years.
And at least in today's, as faras we can see, as far as most
(15:03):
of us can see today, it is avery, very, very powerful tool.
So we're leaning hard intothat.
We're leaning hard into the itis a tool that can be used in a
lot of different ways.
Our focus on using the tool isin the analytic space to say,
well, some predictive and someanalytic to to predict what are
the emotions that are present inthese stories so that we can
(15:25):
zoom out and have an emotionalmap of that group of consumers
or employees.
Why does that matter?
Because our argument for theC-suite is demos don't really
tell you anything much anymore.
They they're useful in someplaces, but they really don't
predict behavior.
Even behavioral analytics arelimited because while two
(15:47):
customers or consumers mayexhibit the exact same
behaviors, if you don'tunderstand their underlying
motives and their contextchanges, one will continue to
behave that way and the otherperson will be different.
Like, what happened?
And if you and if you just say,oh, that's just the you know,
we didn't get it right X percentof the time, but you could get
it maybe right more times if youunderstood the motives and the
drivers.
(16:07):
And the emotions are a really,really good way to understand
that level of of drivingbehavior, the underlying
emotions, the underlyingfeelings and thoughts and needs
that are shaping our actions,both conscious and
semi-conscious.
There are certain things we doat a at a at a subconscious
unconscious level all the time.
We blink, we breathe.
(16:27):
Those things, there's not a tonof emotions that we can we can
you know attribute to them.
Although in times of high, highstress, we know that we might
blink faster, breathe deeper,breathe faster.
But those are still sort ofbodily responses to known things
that throughout the humangenome, basically, we know that
we know to be scared of, we knowto be anxious about, we know to
(16:47):
be frightened, and we have avery well documented response to
that.
But there's a gazillion otherthings that as humans we
experience that aren't in thatpretty clearly defined bucket of
normal human responses to thesame set of sort of triggers or
situations.
And that's how we live, that'show we interact with our
families, that's how we go towork, that's how we buy what we
(17:10):
buy, um, or write what we writeor say what we say.
And for those types ofdecisions and actions, there's a
lot of emotion that is behindthem.
That's what we're trying toquantify, that's what we're
trying to decode.
And so when we present our ourcustomers back with, hey, these
consumers, these are theirexperiences, this is what
they're talking about, but thisis how it's making them feel,
(17:31):
and this is why they'reexpressing these stories.
It's a different conversationfor them in terms of what they
can do with it.
Stephen King (17:38):
Privacy becomes the next thing then, because
you're not just talking about uhpeople's cognitive uh
experiences and what theyactually see realize, you're
getting really deep into theirminds and into their into their
feelings and the emotions, asyou've said.
Uh how are you protecting thisinformation?
How are you assuring that kindof uh privacy for the people
(18:02):
that participate, whether it'semployees or customers?
James Warren (18:04):
Yeah, great question.
Um the first thing we do is youknow, some of this, of course,
at a system level, what do we doin our platform to keep it
secure?
How have we designed access tothe platform?
That's why you know people haveto register because we have to
verify that you're an individualwith an identity and you're an
adult.
And you have a you then youthen get an anonymized user ID.
(18:27):
Some users change their ID tofit some version of their
knowable identity, I guess, butmost users keep that anonymized
ID.
And so, unless you have, say,project admin or system admin
rights, you would never be ableto know the person behind the
ID.
Um, that's one step.
The second step is in how weprompt people, and the way we
(18:50):
prompt them is we say thingslike, you should feel
comfortable sharing, you know,this is a private and secure
platform, and your your data umis anonymized, and you have the
choice on how you want toexpress yourself.
Um, I often tell people, youshould feel comfortable saying
things that are deeply personal,but not necessarily private.
(19:10):
Not because we're worried aboutyour data leaking out, but
that's the kind that's the sortof security you want them to
feel, that it's not, you know,an open field on their
information because hardly everdo we give, do we willingly give
that level of permission tocompanies that we work with or
buy from.
And so we want them to feelthat same level of security that
(19:31):
if we were in a room and youwere worried about that person
over there who's a supervisorknowing what you're about to
say, we want you to know thatyou don't have to worry about
that in this platform, that youcan say what you need to say.
But we generally encouragethem, go personal, go deep.
But if this is a place wherethe information were like, you
know, confidentially HR-related,it's probably not the right
(19:53):
venue for it.
Or if this were a place whereyou needed to express something
you would observe that wouldotherwise involve the
authorities, probably not a goodplace for it.
Um, but a good place to exploreexperiences that matter deeply
to you, even personal ones, andwhy they impacted you the way
they did.
That's really what we try tofocus them on, and then just
reassure them in our process andour technology and our
(20:14):
practices that their informationis definitely secure.
So when we're doing analysesfor clients and partners, what
we're really focused on is hey,let's zoom out, let's look at
this group in a different way,which oftentimes really
dominates what they can canhandle and consume and absorb
because they've rarely looked attheir audiences or their teams
(20:34):
in this sort of emotionallysegmented way.
They've usually only looked atthem demographically and
behaviorally.
So that alone gives them plentyto chew on.
Um, and then of course, if ifcertain segments are too small,
you wouldn't be providing thattype of information anyway.
Stephen King (20:50):
Uh the next three questions sort of are very
interlinked.
I mean, you we spoke earlierand you mentioned earlier about
how this is like uh a new babyin the house.
And I feel you, I feel that uhstartup business, and you're
trying to tell everyone that youhave this fantastic new tool,
and people are not ready toreceive that information.
(21:11):
So, how do you convincecompanies that uh listening to
their employees, let's face it,okay, I think they're uh you uh
listening to customers, I thinkhas been grudgingly become uh a
norm, but listening to employeesis still uh is still quite a
novel concept, unfortunately.
So, how do you convince them todo though?
(21:33):
And have you got examples ofyou know uh how this has worked,
uh either to spot a blind spotor to prove uh something
effective?
James Warren (21:42):
Yeah, I mean you hit the nail on the head.
The challenge in much ofbusiness in general, but
especially leadership, whetheryou're in the for-profit sector,
not for profit sector, orpublic sectors, you know, a lot
of our leaders who are inpositions of leadership today
are you know generally of asimilar generation or two, and
(22:05):
they've grown up under a certainmindset of what it means to
lead, which means I gotta haveall the answers.
And and as one executive oncesaid to me, um, I don't ask
questions, I don't know theanswer to.
And I was like, How the hell doyou learn anything?
Um, and and I was like, I makeit my business to know
everything.
I'm like, that's not possible.
And so our biggest challengehas been to really help leaders
(22:28):
who are willing to go down thisprocess to get a little bit more
vulnerable than they're they'retypically comfortable with.
And that vulnerability couldshow up in two ways.
One, if you have trust, butyour organization or a level of
trust, I should say, but sayyour organization doesn't
necessarily feel that you hearwhat they have to say, which by
the way, if that continues tohappen, you won't have trust.
(22:50):
But let's say you're you're inthat sort of place where there's
room to salvage it and fix it,then your job is not to dominate
the process by saying, Here'smy experience, now tell me
yours.
Your job is literally to startwith, tell me yours, because
that type of group is waiting totell you.
On the other hand, if you'vealready lost trust or you never
(23:11):
had it, they need to see you getvulnerable before you ask them
to get vulnerable.
And that leader needs to do theopposite.
They need to actually say, Iknow this is, I'm I know I'm
asking something that you mightnot feel comfortable with, or
you might not even trust me.
Let me demonstrate for you thatI'm willing to be vulnerable.
And they share out of anexperience themselves.
(23:32):
And so those are like twotactical approaches we take with
leaders, especially on theorganizational side.
To your point, there's a littlebit more supposed rational and
objective reasoning for sayingwe should listen to customers.
And yet, many, many leaders ofcompanies and brands don't,
(23:52):
because even still they have astrong belief that, you know, I
know better what the I knowbetter what this customer wants
and needs than they dothemselves.
It's kind of almost thisego-driven violation of people's
own agency.
No, the customer knows, theydefinitely know better than you
what they want and need.
They still may not know allthat they want and need, but I'm
pretty sure they know betterthan you because they know their
(24:14):
own lives, they know their ownexperiences.
So what we're trying to do isclose that gap by saying, look,
when you listen to people in acertain kind of way, they tell
you what you really need to knowrather than just what you want
to hear.
And that is the shift in sortof insight and leadership action
that we're trying to work with.
So has it been a challenge?
You bet, because we've beenearly for a long time.
(24:36):
But I but I do feel of latewe've started to find a really
good groove where we've beenable to identify our target
customer much more clearly inthe market and engage them.
And you know, you talk aboutsome of the success stories,
that's become part of thatconversation.
When you're building somethingthat's really different, it is
hard to collect cases.
(24:56):
So those cases take longer,they they're harder to validate,
but if you stay at it longenough, you get them.
And we've worked with, youknow, organizations as recently
as an energy company where theyengaged us to help solve a very
specific problem.
They were hiring lots ofpeople.
And they said, you know, wehave a feeling that our new hire
(25:17):
experience is not very good,not just for the people we're
hiring, but for the peoplehiring them.
And that was brilliant thatthey were at least open enough
to say that's a problem we thinkwe have.
So we engaged uh a significantpercentage of all of their new
hires in the past three yearsand all of the hiring leaders
through the Seek platform toshare their stories of that, you
(25:40):
know, brand new hire or hiringprocess experience.
On one hand, sort of not themost emotionally resonant topic,
and yet those participants wentto town on it.
They had a lot to say about notjust things like this system
works or doesn't work, or Iliked my cube or I didn't, but
really how the experience ofbeing recruited, hired,
(26:01):
onboarded, and set up forsuccess, how that experience
went for them.
And the hiring leaders equallywere saying things like, I want
to lead my team moreeffectively, but I'm stressed
and strained and pulled in thesedirections because of this
process.
And so when you think aboutthose kinds of insights, it
really helps those executiveleaders focus in on what do we
need to do to make thatparticular process, which is,
(26:24):
you know, only get one chance tomake a first impression.
How do we really go solve thatproblem with our with our new
talent?
Stephen King (26:30):
That's that's fun because I've just seen on
LinkedIn a HR managercomplaining about his own HR
processes and how long it takes.
You're you're in charge, man.
I mean, seriously.
I don't think he was actuallyreferring to his own practice,
he was pointing fingerselsewhere.
But I'm pretty sure there wassomething in there.
(26:51):
Uh Radica, I think we're up toour last three questions.
Good.
Radhika Mathur (26:57):
Um, so how does your community of 8,000
storytellers shape or challengeyour work?
James Warren (27:05):
Yeah, you know, the the community we have, we we
have probably even much morethan that, because that's that's
almost thinking about thecommunity of people that engage
with us and on our channels.
And and you know, when westarted building the company, we
really we really had soughtout, when we started building
the company, we had reallysought out um people who valued
(27:27):
stories, period.
Like stories are what we'rebuilding, we believe in the
value of sharing them.
And so we were seeking peoplewho also had that value.
As we grew, we started toattract people who also were
leaning into where we weregoing, which is stories as
insight.
And so the curiosity of peoplestarted to emerge.
(27:47):
Um, the questions that theywere asking about their own
experiences, about where theyworked, about who they bought
from and where they lived, thosewere starting to percolate up.
And so I would say, you know,we've been able to engage our
own community often, especiallyaround new projects.
Um, some of our communitymembers are really passionate
about expressing themselves andbeing heard.
(28:08):
As we moved from doing thiswork in a largely kind of
facilitated session, think, youknow, focus group on steroids,
which is probably not a greatanalogy, but it's what one of
our customers once said, we usedto do it all in person and then
COVID hit, but we were stilldoing them all as sessions
online.
And then we said, no, we reallyneed to move forward to make
this a platform so that it'seasier for people to use.
(28:29):
My biggest fear was that wewould lose the um the emotional
intimacy of being in a roomtogether, being vulnerable
enough to share, and thenimmediately seeing that there
was somebody in that room acrossthe room or even next to you,
is like, and they'll say, I canrelate to that.
And I valued those moments inthe live sessions deeply because
(28:50):
they were so um justemotionally rich.
It was like we called it themagic moment.
Everybody would be quiet,they'd start writing, and when
they had time to share, they'dsay, Okay, I'll go ahead and
I'll share.
And then immediately the roomwould reinforce that.
So I was afraid we would losethat.
And we didn't.
In fact, when we went to theplatform, it shocked me in our
very first project that peoplewent deeper and they had more to
(29:11):
say.
And I think some of that wasbecause they weren't worried
about being on a schedule ando'clock in a session.
They weren't worried abouthaving to even think about
somebody next to them in theroom because it was them and the
tool.
And so that's why we believefor our partners, it really is
an opportunity to bring trulythe voice of your customer or
your employee as a leader, as anexecutive into your own, like
(29:35):
at your fingertips.
You know, with our with ourtool, we're using a GPT type
function as well for real timeanalysis.
So if you're the CEO or theanalyst, you can log in and ask
questions of your story set.
What are people feeling aboutthis?
How do people feel about that?
And you're getting a real timeanswer.
And so, you know, I just thinkthat the the way the community
(29:57):
has has grown with us, yes,people.
Who probably only thought wewould stay a writing platform
for frustrated writers becausethat was our first idea, because
that was the problem very closeto home that I wanted to solve.
As that faded quickly and webecame more focused on a story
sharing platform for everybody,and then a platform for really
(30:17):
making ourselves heard, and thena platform for really
developing insights so thatpeople can deliver better
experiences, the community'sevolved too, but I would say
they've been extremelysupportive and they've grown
along the way.
So it's it's just made our jobmore fun and more interesting
and even a little bit easier.
Radhika Mathur (30:36):
Yeah, that's really interesting because
people do want a safe spacewhere they can sort of share
what they're thinking, whatthey're feeling.
So having also the anonymity ofbeing able to share it without
you know being scrutinized ormaybe you know put on the spot
for what you've said.
Uh I'm sure that is also acomforting um aspect for the
(30:59):
people engaging in yourcommunity.
James Warren (31:01):
I think that's exactly right because even if
I'm in a room, you know, we'dhave sessions as small as eight
people, which felt like, okay,if I if I like to write or I
like to share stories, beingaround five, six, seven other
people is not that big of adeal.
But some of our sessions wouldbe with 70 people in the room.
And they'd all write and they'dall submit, but you could tell
there was we had to get themover a hump of fear of being
(31:24):
vulnerable.
And they went right to wherethey needed to go in the
platform-based experience.
Because I think you're ontosomething there when you talk
about this idea of I don't wantto be not even just on spot, I
don't want to be maybe observedbecause not a lot of people like
writing in front of a lot ofother people that I'm aware of.
Um, so I think there'ssomething interesting to that
for sure.
Radhika Mathur (31:44):
Yeah.
So um as AI tools become morecommon, how do you think the
role of story will evolve inbusiness and society?
James Warren (31:53):
Yeah, you know, some of these things we've
already started to see, and yousee it all over places like
LinkedIn.
Um, and then you see like theentertainment version of it on
places like, you know, X andFacebook and TikTok.
The amount of AI generatedcontent that people publish as
user-generated content is in ina year and a half become
(32:15):
overwhelming.
I mean, people aren't evenbothering to put the little
disclaimers on anymore becausethey don't care, and the
platforms probably can't catchthem.
So the stuff that sort of justwe have to wade through.
I our bet, our belief, our ourplatform is built on this notion
that humans still matter andhuman experiences still matter,
(32:39):
and humans' abilities to expressthose experiences still
matters.
So if those things are true, umstories in one form or another
are going to continue to bereally, really crucial for
humankind because they are afundamental way we communicate
with each other and learn fromeach other.
The tool will change.
I'm sure, you know, back in theday when the printing press
(33:00):
first emerged, you know, peoplewere like, you can't put that
control in the in the hands ofpeople who who aren't literate.
That's a shame.
And then as as other toolscame, you know, my goodness,
this computer is is making mewrite easier.
Am I cheating that I don't haveto think as hard and make, you
know, have error-free thoughtsbefore I write them down in long
hand with this quill and thisink?
(33:22):
You know, when people had moreand more tools, people who were
used to the previous toolsquestioned whether or not those
tools gave them an unfairadvantage, or even more changed
the essence of what they weregoing to express.
And I think tools always changehow we express or do a thing.
The question is whether or notthey change it in small,
incremental, in other words,tolerable ways, or whether
(33:44):
they're changing them intransformative ways that we
can't fully appreciate orunderstand.
We might be it at that momentwith the way AI content creation
is at the fingertips ofanybody.
Um, but I also believe we'reoversaturating our channels and
markets with that amount ofcontent that we won't soon be
able to consume.
We're racing to the bottom, andthat's going to give an
(34:05):
opportunity for people todifferentiate more meaningful
expressions and like stories.
Stephen King (34:10):
I've seen a lot of stuff coming for the
podcasting.
Uh, just on the tool that weuse, it creates lovely.
If we were doing video, itwould create lovely little video
shorts for me.
I've got a number of emailsfrom people saying, Oh, we'll go
through the whole transcriptand we will come up with uh
summaries.
Um there's there's a lot ofstuff which will then transport
(34:33):
transform that into some sort ofanimated news function that's
going down.
So and then they'll take uhkeywords, and then over the
course of your series, they willbuild up a notebook and showing
all the different terms thatkeep repeating, gives you
analysis.
So there's there's there's athere's an enormous number of
people who are coming up withreally, really interesting ways
(34:56):
to use all of this uh generateddata.
Uh uh, how do you see thefuture?
I mean, this is I think is ourlast one.
Uh how do you see the future ofworkplace listening?
I mean, we've got so muchcontent out there, we're we're
we're identifying new ways of ofcapturing it and evaluating it.
(35:17):
Three, four, five, ten years.
We said ten years.
I don't know whether it'spossible to go there.
But how how far ahead are youlooking and on what do you think
it's gonna come to in terms ofworkplace listening?
Rather than customer listening,but workplace listening.
James Warren (35:31):
Yeah.
I mean companies aren'tsuffering for a lack of data.
They they've got plenty ofdata.
The real the real challenge webelieve is making meaning out of
that data.
And and it's hard to makemeaning out of observed data or
reported clicks and yeses datawithout some version of like,
(35:54):
what's the voice behind this?
You know, and and when I wantto explain, like I may maybe I
write something and somebodysays, Can you explain it to me?
That means they need my voice.
My voice needs to be added toeven what I've already
expressed.
And that's that's normal,that's human.
We say things, we follow upwith things, we take this is
what I really mean, or this iswhat's really important about
what I had to say.
And that's hard to do inpassive or extractive data
(36:17):
collection.
So the role of listening, Ithink, is going to become a
differentiator for leaders andtherefore their companies,
because their ability to siftthrough massive amounts of
passively collected, activelycollected, or observed data to
say what's really importantabout this employees'
experience.
We might be able to replace orat least make sense of all of
(36:40):
this data we have over here ifwe just listened to this person
for five minutes.
And we know that to be true inhuman-to-human interactions.
Um, when I stop presuming,assuming, and I ask a question
and I get an answer.
Actually, a lot can shift in avery, very short amount of time.
So I so I think, you know, workis work is itself undergoing an
(37:02):
overhaul.
I think our relationship towork is is shifting both
globally and definitely incertain social or socioeconomic
contexts.
And all of that is going tomake it harder for people to
navigate to what is meaningfulwork for me and for companies to
say what is valuable work tous.
And finding that balance,finding that sweet spot to me, I
(37:25):
would bet on listening as amuch better way to determine
that than say just collecting10,000 surveys.
Stephen King (37:33):
That's wonderful.
I really love the way thatyou're approaching this in the
ethical way that uh your toolcould be used because I've seen
so many other staff surveys andwhat I think they've been run to
death.
Uh thank you so very much,Radhika. Would you like to close
us down because I think we'vehad that's the end of our time.
Radhika Mathur (37:50):
Yes, thank you so much for being on our
podcast, James, and telling usall about Share More Stories.
And for all of you guyslistening, thank you for tuning
in to another episode.
Do like, share, and commentwherever possible, and be sure
to join us on the next one.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.