Mike Wittenstein
Facing big changes? (who isn’t?) I will guide your leaders to reach clarity, win commitments, and get ahead.
Reviews
"Mike led an exciting, inspiring and engaging workshop for over 40 customer experience leaders from across TELUS. His use of stories, case studies and thought leadership got the operational leaders to talking strategically about our “feasible futures” for customer experience."
Arleen King
Managing Director
TELUS
"Mike is so charismatic and knowledgeable. Everyone ‘gets him.’ Though his approach is soft, he asks the hard questions."
Marcio Hociko
Senior Vice President
LeasePlan
"When we decided to host a customer experience conference in Bulgaria for more than 300 retailers, one of the best decisions we made was to hire Mike as our keynote presenter."
Michel Fuyet
CEO
BNP Paribas Personal Finance
"Mike was engaging, entertaining and approachable. He was exactly what I wanted and that’s why I have invited him to speak at a second conference next year as well."
Katherine Boccaccio
Conference Director
SPECS/Chain Store Age
About Mike Wittenstein
Storyteller, strategist, digital agency lead, IBM eVisionary, consultant, coach Four languages, 100+ cities, 800+ engagements MBA, BA, CSP, CCXP, CMC, DTM #Business #Story #Strategy Travels from ATL (Atlanta, GMT -5) Webinars 24x7 Husband, Dad, hiker, woodworker, traveler, civic volunteer Always curious. Sometimes funny. Polite in all cultures.
Speaking
Speaking engagement:
Keynote | Conference Speaker, Webinar | Live Video, Interview | Debate | Panel, Advisory Service, Master Class, Breakout Session
Expertise:
Business | Management | Strategy, Innovation | Creativity, Retail | Lifestyle | Fashion, Technology, Facilitators | Presenters | Moderators, Marketing | Sales | Service
Field of Speaker:
Innovators | Visionairs, Business Coaches, Futurists | Trend Forecasters
Best Audience:
Adults, Csuite/ Executives, Managers/ Supervisors, Young Professionals/ Young Talent
Travels from:
United States
Language:
English, Portuguese, Spanish; Castilian, Russian
Fee range:
from $15000 up to $20000
Topics
FUTURE STORY (KEYNOTE)
Craft a 20/20, crystal clear view of your future that's equally inspiring and compelling. One that results in a significant mindset shift among your audience. Format: 45-60 minute visionary-yet-practical keynote for use in times of immense change. This program is perfect for: • Leaders • Leadership teams • Middle managers • Internal/external consultants • Service design/customer experience design teams • Operations teams • Hybrid teams • Implementation teams Who need to: • Lead fearlessly during times of change • Communicate clearly to gain commitments • Get and keep everyone on the same page The audience will leave with: • An understanding of how sharing stories from the future's perspective helps the present • Specific ideas to better deliver their own stories • An appreciation for getting the details right • A feeling of confidence The Future Story keynote helps audiences learn how expressing strategy as a story inspires your most important audiences, then gets them on the same page when implementing first-of-a-kind ideas.Future Story helps teams prioritize outcomes and how things can work while leaving current constraints and why things won't work behind for a few moments. Once people in teams get a peek at the future and learn that it can work, they are more likely to contribute their efforts to making it work.
THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (KEYNOTE)
Customer Experience has taken the world by storm, and the opportunities are just beginning. Learn what's right around the corner and what you can do today to transform your business in time for tomorrow. This always-up-to-date keynote gives audiences a peek at trends that are headed for mainstream adoption. Knowing early what customers may request means more time to prepare and lower costs of experience delivery. Format: 45-60 minute media-rich keynote with examples of tech and techniques that can drive better experiences. This program is perfect for: • Marketing and service design leaders • Strategists and consultants • Technologists responsible for customer experience Who need to: • Anticipate what's next to remain competitive • Watch the company's bottom line while not falling behind • Lead with their own customer and employee experiences The audience will leave with: • Examples of customer and employee experience building blocks • Awareness of how tech trends can shape the customer experience • Inspiration to make their company's own experiences different and better at the same time • An eye for creating better experiences and higher profits with the same experience design The Future of Customer Experience keynote is never the same twice. There are so many developments in sensors, display tech, algorithms, personalization, and in customers' expectations, that's impossible for this presentation to stand still. Before the event, Storyminers will interview you about the challenges your industry faces, what your customers want most, and what you would like to share with your audience. Consider following up on the Future of Customer Experience keynote with a workshop to capture your team's sentiments and ideas so that action can happen more quickly.
THE WORLD'S BEST EXPERIENCES (KEYNOTE)
Inspiring and detailed stories from the best customer experiences in the world. Find out what world-class customer experience is, how it works behind the scenes, and why people love it. Also, see how delivering a better experience actually helps increase customer retention, improve market share, and profits. Format: • 45-60 minute webinar (recorded upon request). Q+A can be built in. This program is perfect for: • People new to customer experience who need to consider making it part of their 2020/2021 strategy • CX professionals who need additional ammunition • Individuals who want to know earlier what they might be responsible for handling Who need to: • Discover for themselves the impact a customer-centric approach can have on their businesses (and on them) • Convince leaders to fund, support, and encourage new customer experience experiments and projects • Gain an overview of customer experience potential without doing lots of homework or reading The audience will leave with: • Case studies and stories about brands that went in then counter-intuitive directions and got positive results • Examples they can share in their own words of customer experience fueled turn-arounds Contents and examples are always customized for the audience: • Retail • Hospitality • Tech • B2B + B2C • Healthcare • And many more... The World's Best Experiences has been shared in over a dozen countries. In each place, I pick up new stories and examples for the library. Not all innovations come from the country I live in. Expect a combination of always classic and ever-fresh examples.
BREAKING BIG THINGS (KEYNOTE)
See how breaking standard conventions, measures, and behaviors can lead to extraordinary results. In far-flung places like Australia, South Africa, and the Middle East, it turns out that the biggest CX breakthroughs come from the organizations willing to break the biggest mindsets. This presentation will compare case studies from around the world -- then summarize what you need to think about and do differently so that you and your teams can amp up your CX successes. Format: • 30-minute TEDx-like quick talk This program is perfect for: • Leaders • Strategists • Visionaries • Planners • Designers • Board Members Who need to: • Be prepared to make radical changes with grace and accuracy • Face their own biases • Find new ways to create value with their enterprises to meet changing customer needs The audience will leave with: • An understanding that the big breakthroughs come from using CX on the company, not just on the customer's experience. • Global experiences to augment their own libraries of case studies • Awareness of the hidden dangers of ROI. (This might be your biggest obstacle--and it's definitely not the best measure of success.) Breaking Big Things was first presented in 2019. Given the pandemic the world faces, this talk is more timely than ever imagined.
STORYMINING® (BUSINESS DESIGN KEYNOTE)
Storymining®, Storyminers' signature engagement, has been used by hundreds of companies to focus their efforts on creating value for their clients and customers. Based on the work of Mike's colleague, Stephan Haeckel (IBM) in Adaptive Enterprise, Storymining adds branding, experience design, and implementation layers to Steve's work. Every business is in business to deliver value to its customers. Storymining identifies that value, decoupling it from a company's profit incentive, in a way that creates enhances focus and offers greater agility at the same time. This Storymining keynote simplifies several concepts in a way that is comfortable for leaders to understand and warm up to. Numerous real-world examples provide the proof that being adaptive by design and offering better experiences go hand-in-profitable-hand. Format: • 60-90 minute presentation with examples, techniques, and Q+A. This program is perfect for: • Leaders and leadership teams • Line-of-Business leaders and their teams • Managing Directors and their associates Who need to: • Focus their enteprises on value creation for clients • Increase agility and adaptability without increasing costs • Push decision-making to the front lines of their businesses The audience will leave with: • A starting point for understanding systems thinking applied to business design and strategy • Examples of the value of a Reason for Being • Awareness of Promise Maps and how they help leaders obtain sustainable results from their teams, departments, and partners • Exposure to design thinking from a strategy perspective Storymining explores four essential parts of any organization's context, including: • Reason for Being • Principles • Emotions • Roles + Accountabilities Design (Promise Map) • plus 7 Launch Steps As reported by clients, Storymining® has kickstarted a period of high growth, innovation, and profit.
SECOND OPINION (LEADERSHIP SESSION)
Second Opinion from Storyminers is an advisory service offerd only by the firm's partners that directly and confidentially addresses your questions, problems, and opportunities. This session can be conducted remotely, on-site, or via conference. Tapping into our expertise on strategy, story, customer/employee experience, change, and adoption can save you time, money, and effort, while helping you see the effect of future moves more comfortably. Format: 1-hour interaction preceeded by our doing homework on your organization and issues and followed by a brief written summary. You get: • The benefit of another strong mind at the table • The perspective of specialists in customer experience, strategy, and story • Exceptional creative horsepower • Affirmation (or not) of your key assumptions • A written highlights summary and, if requested, a Zoom video capture of the session If the stakes or the uncertainty around a customer experience project you've undertaken is high, we can help you pinpoint issues (and opportunities) other may have missed. It's insurance for your future.
Program
FUTURE STORY (WORKSHOP)
Start to build your own Future Story in this highly interactive, tailored-for-you workshop that teaches valuable storytelling patterns and tools and gives participants the time to put what they learn to use in their own situations. Format: 2-4 hour workshop that combines theory, practical application, prototyping, and feedback. This program is perfect for: • Marketing and communications leaders • Culture experts • Organizational change specialists • Line of business leaders • Internal/external consultants • Cross-functional teams • Hybrid teams Who need to: • Articulate and adopt a future direction • Work with other areas of their company (or with partners) successfully in a changing environment • Identify opportunities to work smarter and better during times of immense change The audience will leave with: • An understanding of how sharing stories from the future's perspective helps the present • Specific ideas to better deliver their own stories • Examples of their own making to use in the workplace • The confidence that comes from understanding and doing The Future Story workshop gives teams the opportunity to explore the full cycle of telling stories from the future to affect change in the present. This includes: outcomes-based ideation, situational analysis, character development, new capability introduction, learning strategies, personal growth, and cooperation.
STORY WORKOUT™ (WORKSHOP)
Get clear or refine any story, idea, service, experience, or brand in an interactive, executive-level workshop. Tailored to fuse prototyping, training, and expert coaching, anyone who walks in fuzzy walks out with clear ideas for earning buy-in and accelerating adoption. Format: 1-2 hour hands-on, experiential workshop This program is perfect for: • Marketing/branding teams • Service design/customer experience design teams • Operations teams • Hybrid teams • Non-technical implementation teams Who need to: • Make their story crystal clear • Get everyone on the same page • Earn authentic engagement from employees and customers The audience will leave with: • A better version of their story • Specific ideas on better delivery • Practice sharing it better • A feeling of confidence Deliverables include: • Written summary • Video highlights Storyminers has led Story Workout™ workshops in English, Portuguese, and Spanish in over a dozen countries. Story Workout™ helps you gain clarity about your or your team's story, strategy, service, or new ideas. Once your story is better defined, we teach you how to set it up as a discovery experience people will love. That's what makes your story feel real. After attending Story Workout™, you will feel more confident and find it easier to earn support from others.
JOURNEY MAPPING (WEBINAR)
Journey Maps show where your customers are, what they're doing, and how your business is supporting them-at each step in their experience. The use of Journey Maps makes it easier to pinpoint problems, take advantage of opportunities, and to measure progress. Journey maps complement the process-based approaches you already use. They make it easier for different department leaders to coordinate their actions and processes-so that customers get the best experience you can offer. Format: • 45-60 minute webinar (recorded upon request). Q+A can be built in. This program is perfect for: • Teams interested in better collaboration • Service and experience planners with new ideas on their minds • Marketers who need to coordinate omnichannel into their experiences • B2B and B2C practitioners Who need to: • Establish a customer-centric view • Streamline processes without losing friendliness • Up their brand game The audience will leave with: • An understanding of what Journey Maps are and what they can do • Examples from various industries including the problems that Journey Maps solved • Real-world stories of how Journey Maps got members of different department on the same page • Insights into how Journey Maps can work with Voice of Customer metrics to improve operations The Business Design explores six essential parts of any organization's context, including: • Outcomes of Value • Starting and Ending Points • Stages, Segments, Encounters, and Clues (the building blocks of experience design) You will get a better understanding of each stage of the customer's experience so that your people will know what to develop and how to deliver it-on brand. Journey Maps help optimize operations for the business while delighting customers and keeping them engaged with the brand. Use journey maps to envision future-state customer experiences. With everyone's ideas on one page, the entirety of the customer's journey comes into focus. A journey map lets everyone get on board and focus on what matters most to customers. Use journey maps to transform selling experiences into buying experiences. If your business sometimes pushes internal processes onto customers to save costs, using a journey map will let you see ways to save costs and deliver an experience your customers will thank you for at the same time.
JOURNEY MAPPING (WORKSHOP)
Journey Maps show where your customers are, what they're doing, and how your business is supporting them-at each step in their experience. The use of Journey Maps makes it easier to pinpoint problems, take advantage of opportunities, and to measure progress. This hands-on, work-on-your-own-company's-issues workshop will help attendees make significant progress framing and depicting their future-state customer or employee journeys. Format: • 4-hour in-person workshop. This program is perfect for: • Single- or multiple-department teams to learn journey mapping and begin to apply it • Agency employees tasked with creating journey or experiences for their clients • Executives who want to be hands-on with the front-line work at their organizations Who need to: • Have a tool for aligning everyone toward future efforts • Get immediate traction on their customer experience plans • Learn the basics of journey mapping The audience will leave with: • An understanding of what Journey Maps are and what they can do • Examples from various industries including the problems that Journey Maps solved • Real-world stories of how Journey Maps got members of different department on the same page • Insights into how Journey Maps can work with Voice of Customer metrics to improve operations Options: • At an additional cost, Storyminers can arrange to have sketch artists present to help turn what people say into pictures and/or real-time researchers to help gather voice of the customer input to feed the journey mapping process The Journey Mapping workshop covers the following at a minimum: • Experience Descriptions with starting and ending points for each stage • Grouping of Segments (collection of more specific customer encounters) into Stages • List of Encounters that define the customer experience action • Starter library of Clues It's one thing to understand Journey Maps, and another to have the experience of making one. This Journey Mapping workshop gives attendees a much deeper appreciation for how Journey Maps work and how to use them to manage projects, set strategies, create alignment, and win commitments from the multiple stakeholders it needs to improve a customer's experience on the front line.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN (BASIC TRAINING SESSION)
Learn the basics of Experience Design and see real-world examples of experiences at work. Format: 45-60 minute keynote with case studies. This program is perfect for: • Middle management leaders responsible for customer and employee experience updates and transformations • Internal/external consultants • Cross-functional teams Who need to: • Collaborate to succeed with first-of-a-kind experience work • Understand the basics of experience design to do their (new) jobs The audience will leave with: • Basic information on the purpose, creation, and curation of customer experience • Exposure to the importance of coordinating employee experiences with customer experiences • Examples from many successful case studies • A desire to learn more--and apply it Experience Design focuses on the more creative aspects of introducing experiences to customers and employees. This keynote is not about measures and best practices. Attendees will begin to feel the difference between experiences at competitors after attending this session.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN (MULTI-DAY WORKSHOP)
Develop a high-level experience design for your customers or employees. Start with the basics then layer in details until what customers want most is what the business delivers best. Prerequisites: • Experience Design keynote or breakout session • Homework on personas, situations, and current metrics Format: • 2-3 day working event blends instruction with exploration, practice, review, and planning for implementation. This program is perfect for: • Middle management leaders responsible for customer and employee experience updates and transformations • Cross-functional teams Who need to: • Detail and end-to-end customer or employee journey • Understand the basics of experience design to do their (new) jobs The audience will leave with: • A high-level journey map on paper (or on software) • Notes on building the experience out • A video report out that captures the essence of the work in verbal detail With the addition of an extra day, this workshop can include instruction in one of the leading Journey Mapping tools. Storyminers has done dozens of much larger, end-to-end customer experience design engagement that have transformed retailers, health care providers and tech companies. This starter workshop is a great way to get customer experience innovations started at your organization.
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Mike and the Storyminers team also provide the following services beyond the keynote: • Advisory Services focus on design and implementation issues that balance business and human needs • Design Sessions zero in on what matters most to people and what makes the most for the business • Individual Coaching 1:1 via Zoom bi-weekly • Team Coaching provided in 50-, 100-, and 250-hour increments to support multiple leaders • Quarterly Check-Ups enhance outcomes, optimize business and experience designs, and keep everyone on the same page • Walk Alongs give clients a front-row seat at how their businesses (and their competitors) perform in front of customers
Media
Books
1Habit
Contributing author to anthology about habits that lead to success and happiness.
News
PIRCH DELIVERS NEXT-GEN EXPERIENCE EMPHASIZING CULTURE OVER TECH
The value of PIRCH in this StoryMiners’ white paper series is that you can build a business around a culture. Start with culture, as PIRCH has, to create an indelible impression, a fantastic multi-sensory experience, and business outcomes that far exceed the competition. This white paper shares stunning photography, front-of-house glimpses of the customer experience and back-of-house stories that show you how they do it. If you have a strong culture and want to amplify your brand with it, this white paper will help. It will inspire you (and your colleagues) and you will uncover useful rules of the road for your own journey. PIRCH really is a culture first, and a store second.
Reviews
Arleen King
Managing Director, TELUSMike led an exciting, inspiring and engaging workshop for over 40 customer experience leaders from across TELUS. His use of stories, case studies and thought leadership got the operational leaders to talking strategically about our “feasible futures” for customer experience.
Marcio Hociko
Senior Vice President, LeasePlanMike is so charismatic and knowledgeable. Everyone ‘gets him.’ Though his approach is soft, he asks the hard questions.
Michel Fuyet
CEO, BNP Paribas Personal FinanceWhen we decided to host a customer experience conference in Bulgaria for more than 300 retailers, one of the best decisions we made was to hire Mike as our keynote presenter.