“YesterMojo” – Can An Entire Organization “Story Coach” Its Way To Success?

It’s a big question, one that we at HigherMind are now asking with our very first client, Yestermorrow Design/Build School, in Mad River Valley, Vermont.

We’ve now spent six months working with Yestermorrow on a wide variety of organizational projects – you can read our case study here at our site. (We are really proud of our design for their new 2012 course catalog – see photo above, and link to and read the whole catalog here.)

For 2012, we’re looking at how to involve Yestermorrow community members in telling the YM story – a project we’ve dubbed “YesterMojo.” Beyond the sexy name, “mojo” is shorthand for “mobile journalism,” and the exciting challenge before us is this – how do we train YM community members to intentionally, thoughtfully, purposefully use social media tools and platforms share YM’s evolving story with larger networks of people across the country (and the globe) in ways that are genuine and meaningful?

Yestermorrow is doing critical “hands on” design and build teaching and learning – inspirational stuff, as anyone who has visited their site will tell you. And they are doing a fine job of sharing their story across a wide variety of media platforms – just visit their web site to see what I mean.

But (and this is where it begins to get interesting) – it is largely their visionary executive director Kate Stephenson and a few other staff members who are doing the “heavy lifting” here as storytellers, on top of the zillion other daily and weekly tasks they must execute to make the school run smoothly.

So…opportunity!

Peter and I were over at their school campus last week meeting their new interns, when I happened to look over the railing and see three straw bale building designers (see above) take a brief break to snap a “work-in-progress” photo on an iPhone. The proverbial cliched “light bulb” went off in my head. What if we encouraged, nay ordered (kidding) every YM builder to  start capturing and sharing their YM work as it unfolded?

“YesterMojo”!

Will it work? That’s where HigherMind comes in. Our job is to “Story Coach” YM to storytelling success, by 1) training YM staff and interns in effective use of social media platforms and technologies, 2) helping YM staff and interns discern how to identify and share “the YM story” in all of its many manifestations, and 3) ask and attempt to answer the attendant philosophical questions that accompany any social media “Story Coaching” endeavor. And we’re excited to work with YM executive director Kate Stephenson, here providing an overview of all of YM’s storytelling platforms to the new crop of interns last week.

You can find Yestermorrow using all kinds of social media platforms.

Facebook. - where they already enjoy 2,077 “likes” and some fantastic story sharing.

Twitter. - where they have tweeted more than 1.045 times and have built a network of close to 1,000 following/followers.

Blogging. - where they have begun to rotate story sharing responsibilities amongst staff members.

YouTube. - where they have 130 video subscribers and 56,000 + video views.

Follow along, and learn about this cutting edge design/build school’s story!

YesterMojo. Let’s go!