https://youtu.be/GJUnqQFsdks
Mike Wittenstein is the founder of StoryMiners, a consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia. They help businesses translate strategies into customer experiences. Previously, Mike was a media personality and spokesperson for IBM. We discuss how StoryMiners utilizes design to create value for customers and the frameworks behind their processes.
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Experience Design with Mike Wittenstein
Our guest is Mike Wittenstein, who is the founder and managing partner of Story Miners. Story Miners in Atlanta, Georgia, what a great place to be on January 5th. It turns strategies into stories and experiences to be implemented at the human level. So, Mike will tell us a little bit about that. Previously, he was with IBM. He was the media personality and spokesperson on IBM for two years, and he helped IBM design McDonald's digital drive-thru and Wingate's deskless check-in. And prior to that in the 90s, he was the co-founder and CEO of one of the first digital communication agencies in the world called Delia. He's also a global speaker, a coach and facilitator. So welcome Mike to the show.
Thank you for having me, Steve. It's a pleasure to be here and I can't wait to see what unfolds.
It's fun to have you on the show. Mike, let's start with kind of the regular question. How do you get here? Tell us a little bit how you become an entrepreneur and how did your journey take you on this long and winding road?
You know, I had to write some notes because I knew that question was coming. And here are some of the things I've done since I was like nine years old, because that's when I had my first sales experience. You know, I did babysitting, yards, restaurants, manual labor, office labor. I worked as a travel agent, a multilingual guide, a teacher, a cabinet maker. And then I got serious, a consultant, a little bit of work in real estate, more management consulting, the digital agency that you mentioned, e-visionary for IBM. And now I'm a strategist and a designer. That's a lot of steps, but that's where I am today.
Yeah, but the last 20 years, you were pretty much doing story miners, right?
Yes, story miners is almost 20 years old. That's right. And IBM was a few years and the digital agency, was about eight years before that. So, you know, a respectable professional career.
I'm glad I'm where I am. Job jumping and job hopping all the time.
No, not at all. Not at all. That's a sport for the young.
That's right. Okay. So it's interesting because you started out as an entrepreneur, you did this digital agency, and then you went into IBM, which is like a big corporate job. And I almost said career, but you only were there for two years, and then you left and became an entrepreneur again. So tell us what happened there.
Well, one thing happened. The dot com became the dot bust, and everyone was out on the street. So I would have stayed longer, but, you know, it wasn't in the cards.
Okay, fair enough. So what did you actually learn at IBM that you could put to use in your entrepreneurial?
What a great question. I learned so many things about working with people about how business is done, about how promises are made and kept how to organize big things how to move fast. But the two things that I learned from two amazing people I've used forever since professionally. The first one was from one of my mentors, Steve Heckel, who was the director of central planning at IBM until he quit because he said central planning no longer works.
Made a big statement back then to Lou Gerstner, I believe. He wrote a book called Adaptive Enterprise, which is the actual mechanics of how to make a business agile. Now, we all know how to make a software department agile. You run sprints, you have reports, you have burndown sheets, but you can actually make an entire company work like a software team. He wrote the book on it and it's influenced my life greatly ever since. Steve is still with us, but he's retired. I also met Lou Carbone,