Wanna tell you a story…
There's a welcome buzz around storytelling in the corporate world. But there are different views on what storytelling has to do with business and how it can have an impact on the way an organisation works.
I'm excited that the technique is gaining ground, because I'm keen to introduce it further into the strategic and content work we do for our clients. Storytelling in business also taps into my passion for the science of the mind and human behaviour, and my previous life as a documentary filmmaker.
Stories in business make sense to me, and here's why. No matter what sector a business works in, it is made up of people. And where there are people, there are stories.
But if it's work, why make it personal? Well, think about every great leader you’ve ever seen. They inspire their audiences with the ‘I’ word – ‘I have a dream…’ Think also about a great conversation you recently had. Chances are that it involved passion, humour, energy, desire, maybe even a small amount of madness. Whatever the exact ingredients, it was memorable.
Storytelling as a technique, roots abstract strategies, visions and values in direct, concrete experience. Contrary to some misperceptions, stories in business aren't vague, fluffy or childish. They bring people into the strategic process and, as a result, allow them to sell it on.
How? Because the human mind, no matter how often it's compared to one, is not a machine. It's a unique organ, capable of learning, remembering, thinking and spurring action. Each set of the many billions of neuronal connections in the human mind is the product not just of knowledge, but of feelings.
Feelings are what give colour, depth and texture to knowledge. Without emotion, there would be no experience and without experience there would be no progress, development or growth. Our brains are designed for story.
Put simply, using story to sell your strategy just makes sense.
If you want to know more, here's what we do. Essentially, we:
- take the key points of a client's vision or goals
- hold a series of workshops around it in which we probe and provoke personal responses
- collate those into a coherent narrative illustrated by a series of anecdotes
- sketch a ‘top line’ storyboard
- reflect all this back to you and take soundings on relevance and appropriateness
- adapt the narrative accordingly
- distil the outcome into an easily replicable design concept with multiple applications.
