Public radio's Ira Glass on storytelling

Two of my favorite bloggers have posted on Ira Glass' (This American Life) videos on storytelling.

Shawn Callahan of Anecdote discusses the video here and connects it to the work his team does with businesses. (There are still a few days left to register for Shawn's narrative in business workshop in Boston on March 29.)

And Garr Reynolds of the great Presentation Zen blog breaks down the video and summarizes each section.

Storytelling is everywhere.

storytelling, narrative, presentation

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Story v. Essay

It's becoming conventional wisdom that stories are a superior form of communication for complex information, such as strategies, value of technology products, business knowledge, brand attributes, etc. (Don't believe me? Read these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.)

Here's a simple way to distinguish a story from another form of communication, the essay (which works well in other situations):

Story	Essay
engages the senses	engages the mind
concrete, detailed	abstract/conceptual
specific	general
contains moment-to- moment action. (“Thomas flicked his finger, causing his pen to twirl around his thumbnail until he caught it again.”)	summarized (“Students are often bored in school.”)
suspenseful, surprising	linear
uses action verbs	“is”

Wait, you're saying. Don't some stories have the same characteristics as the essays you're referring to?

Yes. But they're rarely good stories.

(Picture by kaliyoda via stock.xchng)

storytelling, narrative, sales, management, change management, branding

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More stories--this time, listening

After my post last week about storytelling in business, I received a nice comment from Shawn Callahan of the Anecdote blog about using stories in business another way--about collecting and making sense of stories to understand deeply what's happening in a company. Shawn's ideas are summarized here.

Imagine that your company has recently reorganized. Deep in the organization many disruptions ensue. But what exactly is happening, and how do people really feel about it? Without this basic information it's impossible to assess the impact of the change, and how to mitigate the negative effects of the change.

Stories can help. Getting employees to describe in detail what is happening to them, without imposing limitations such as predetermined hypotheses, closed-ended questions, numerical ratings, etc.--yields much deeper insights (here's a neat white paper from Anecdote describing how this works). And from those insights, a company can design effective responses to improve the work environment and help an important change take root.

Thanks, Shawn, for pointing this out.

(Picture: the listening ear from sailortownbelfast.org)

innovation, narrative, business

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