Storytelling as a Core Skill for Adoption

Dan Sullivan, Director of Journey Management at CHG Healthcare, has transformed how a major healthcare company connects business outcomes to customer experience. With a background spanning customer success, strategy, and design, Dan has built an enterprise-wide journey management practice that brings data, insights, and teams together to act as one.

In this conversation with TheyDo’s Jochem van der Veer, Dan shares how CHG made journey management tangible, through immersive storytelling, data integration, and co-creation across teams. He reveals how to align CX with business strategy, balance customer obsession with outcomes, and create organizational change that lasts beyond the latest initiative.

Guest Bio

Dan Sullivan is the Director of Journey Management at CHG Healthcare, where he leads the development and implementation of a company-wide journey management practice. His work bridges customer insight, product design, and business strategy to drive measurable impact. Prior to CHG, Dan led customer success at TheyDo and held strategic roles across startups and global enterprises. Known for his creative storytelling and systems thinking, he’s helping redefine how large organizations use journey management to become truly customer-led.

Top Takeaways

• Journey management is not about the artifact, it’s about changing how decisions are made across teams.
• Start with awareness, not solutions: make the problem visible before promoting the framework.
• Balance customer and business goals: customer obsession means nothing without measurable impact.
• Immersive storytelling drives adoption: CHG’s “journey museum” helped hundreds of employees walk in their customer’s shoes.
• Keep adapting: journey management is a living system, not a one-time rollout.

Chapters

00:00 Introducing Dan Sullivan and CHG Healthcare

02:12 Why it’s not about the journey itself

04:40 Customer centricity and business alignment

08:46 Balancing customer obsession with business goals

10:28 Finding gaps and building the case for journeys

13:20 Why CHG chose a journey-led approach

16:42 Connecting teams through shared journeys

18:48 Building an immersive journey experience

25:13 The impact of the immersive launch

29:19 From solution awareness to problem awareness

31:37 Making data meaningful, not just measurable

34:43 Using journeys as a decision-making tool

36:30 Keeping journey maps simple but powerful

40:38 Helping experience teams understand business impact

44:12 Organizational changes and long-term shifts

48:33 Embedding journeys into OKRs

52:14 Navigating resistance and scaling adoption

54:30 Governance, ownership, and design systems

58:18 Building ownership across teams

01:00:43 Advice to younger self and closing thoughts

LinkedIn Profiles

Dan Sullivan (CHG Healthcare)

Jochem van der Veer (TheyDo)