The Backstory

After well over a decade working at countless organizations — across nearly every industry and within every department — the story remained unchanged, always repeating.

Organizations had countless conversations with customers, who willingly shared their stories, hoping to be heard and understood. Often these were the same conversations, happening over and over, to the point where customers became frustrated and lost trust. The organization would collect mountains of usage data, send out surveys, track satisfaction scores — everything they could think of to better understand their customers.

Yet somehow, they still struggled to effectively innovate and deliver what customers actually needed. There were always delays. Teams worked in different directions with competing priorities. Solutions got delivered that partially solved something or missed the mark completely.

And cycle after cycle, the story repeated. The customer story remained unchanged, as did the organization's story.

The Common Theme

There was a common theme across these stories: people and teams often felt disconnected from the customer. They weren't learning deeply about the customer before doing the job the customer needed them to do.

They were struggling to truly understand the customer beyond the small, fragmented view that their team or department had — a lens focused on whatever work artifacts they happened to create or touch as part of their responsibility.

Information was being shared with the organization by customers, but it wasn't always captured, rarely had the depth needed, and what was captured ended up stored in different formats across siloed repositories — individual workstations, people's heads, different systems. Even when data did exist, it wasn't presented or packaged in a way that actually enabled people to learn about the customer, understand their situation, and identify what they needed to change it.

Here's the critical insight: this limitation on learning holds employees back from reaching their potential. They deliver learning-deprived solutions — not because they aren't capable or don't care, but because the organization lacks the capability needed to enable them to learn effectively, reach their potential, and deliver what customers need.

And this isn't just a people problem. AI has the exact same limitations, constrained by the organization's limited learning capability. Without the right stories and context, even the most sophisticated AI will produce the same learning-deprived solutions with similar outcomes.

The Missing Story

The missing ingredient in every organization's story was the Customer Story. Organizations aren't packaging information about their customers in a narrative format that actually enables humans — and AI — to learn about the customer, connect with them, and understand their needs.

Instead, rich customer conversations get compressed into fragments: “Customer wants better reporting.” “Interested in scalability.” “Had workflow challenges.” The actual story — the context, the emotion, the why behind the need — would vanish. Critical information is lost in conversation and translation at every step.

Without the narrative of a story serving as a foundation for organizational learning, teams can't align to and connect with the customer. They aren't working together to change that story. They can't see how their individual pieces of work come together to transform the customer's experience and change how the story ends.

Changing the Story

We seek to change the repeating story that organizations and customers are telling by putting the customer and their story at the center of organizational operations to enable aligned innovation.

We believe that humans — and AI — learn best from stories. Stories provide the rich context that enables people to relate, empathize, and truly understand. When you have the full customer story, everything changes: teams align around shared understanding, individual work connects to meaningful outcomes, and effective innovation happens.

We seek to transform organizations around that capability — to change the story that has become common across nearly every organization and industry. Because when you can capture, share, and learn from customer stories, you unlock the potential that's always been there in your people, your technology, and your mission.