Business Storytelling For Dummies

Introduction

Welcome to Business Storytelling For Dummies! We guarantee if you choose to read this book, your work life will change for the better.

What makes us say this? We believe that business storytelling is the most critical skill set to hit the business arena in ages. You’re probably asking, Well, if that’s the case, why isn’t everybody doing it already? Ah. What looks really simple on first blush isn’t. That’s why you now have this resource in your hands. Although it takes a little time to put the strategies, tools, and techniques of story into action, the results are striking.

We’d love to give you a magic wand and have everything you touch turn into golden stories but alas, that talented we are not — yet! What we can do is remind you that you already tell stories, and with this book in hand you can become an awesome business storyteller. Then you can dazzle your co-workers, stand out in your career, and run rings around your competition. Woo-hoo!

About This Book

For years, we’ve wanted to write a pragmatic book on business storytelling. And voila! We now have this book to share with you. We didn’t want you to just grasp concepts associated with storytelling; we wanted you to be able to take action after reading each chapter. So we’ve spent a lot of time documenting how-to steps. This was hard for us. Storytelling is as much an art form as it is a science. It’s not linear. We know those who are advanced in the subject will appreciate the value of reducing complex topics to a series of step-by-step bullet points that cover the basics. At the same time, we recognize that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Yet we wanted to give you a clear-cut place to start. We hope those new to storytelling will benefit from our efforts.

We also had a personal agenda. We wanted to give you the latest, greatest information and tips we had on the subject. This means there are topics here that you may not find anywhere else.

There are two different audience slants for this book. The first has to do with your role. The second has to do with the type of organization you’re affiliated with. With that in mind, this book is for you if

check.png You’re an individual who needs to make a compelling point in a presentation or a meeting in order to get people to take action.

check.png You’re an account manager or sales professional wanting to enhance customer relationships and increase your closing rate.

check.png You’re a supervisor who needs to get your staff on board with changes and motivate them to continually produce high-quality work.

check.png You’re a project or program manager who needs to garner commitment, communicate progress more effectively, and capture best practices.

check.png You’re a mid-level manager who needs to build a collaborative work environment and drive innovation and creativity.

check.png You’re a senior leader who needs to rally and align large groups of people around a common vision to achieve new goals.

check.png You’re an entrepreneur who wants to grow your business in unique and cost-effective ways.

We did our best to cover these organizational types throughout the book. You’ll find the content valuable if you

check.png Work in a startup that’s looking for more funding and visibility in the marketplace.

check.png Are a small or microbusiness that wants to use stories to attract and retain customers and expand into new markets.

check.png Are attached to a nonprofit seeking to build a community and spread your cause.

check.png Are in a creative field and want to bring storytelling into your design and production work.

check.png Are employed in a public sector organization seeking cost-effective ways to effectively communicate with employees and constituents and shift their thinking and behaviors.

check.png Work for a privately held or publicly owned enterprise that desires increased brand awareness, more market share, and more compelling corporate communications.

What was our overall goal for this book? To get you to benefit from the active use of storytelling techniques and processes in your daily work and your daily life. Business Storytelling For Dummies shows you how to drive your organization to new heights and become a force for change yourself.

We used the following conventions throughout the book:

check.png Websites appear in monofont to help them stand out — like this: www.dummies.com. Some addresses may need to break across two lines. Just type exactly what you see in this book, pretending the line break doesn't exist.

check.png Any information that’s helpful or interesting but not essential to the topic at hand appears in sidebars, which are the gray-shaded boxes sprinkled throughout the book.

check.png Whenever we introduce a new term, it’s italicized.

You’ll see three additional conventions in the book:

check.png Any time a story or other type of narrative example is used, we indented it so you can easily identify it.

check.png We’ve put several stories that we reference into the Appendix.

check.png We’ve noted cross-references throughout the chapters so you can easily find information.

We made several assumptions about you:

check.png You want practical advice. We provide our own personal experiences and those of others — as well as steps for doing whatever we suggest.

check.png You want examples of what we consider to be well-constructed, compelling stories. So we give you several.

check.png You want to read more than what’s here. We provide numerous links to articles, blog postings, books, and other resources we’ve found to be of interest.

check.png You most likely define story differently than we do. We make sure that every story we present or refer to is consistent with our definition. When it isn’t, we mention that.

check.png We use the words storytelling, storifying, and story work in this book to include finding stories, evoking them from others, digging into them for meaning, crafting them, using story triggers as memory devices, and telling them.

Throughout this book are a variety of examples of story use and actual stories that people gave us permission to use. Please respect the copyright notices in the front matter of this book.

Icons Used in This Book

Look for the following symbols to find valuable information in the book:

tip.eps This icon indicates helpful advice, tips, how-tos, and steps to doing whatever we encourage you to do.

warning_bomb.eps This icon points out pitfalls and mistakes to avoid. Read them!

remember.eps This icon points out important information you should try to remember and details we want to embed in your brain.

checkitout_antique.eps This icon links you to a website, book, blog posting, video, audio, or article that we encourage you to check out.

reallifeexample.eps This icon highlights what we and/or others have done related to the discussion point. To the best of our knowledge, these real-life examples are valid.

Beyond the Book

You'll find free articles and a cheat sheet for the book on the Dummies website (www.dummies.com/extras/businessstorytelling/). One article gives advice on how to title a story. Because we know how hard it is to turn data into a story, the second article provides another example of how to successfully do so. Two additional articles discuss how to use stories with virtual teams and ten things you should always do when working with stories (the opposite of Chapter 17).

We’ve created three cheat sheets to help you use the content in this book. First, we summarize beyond Chapter 4 all the types of stories we mention in the book. The second cheat sheet is about crafting a storyboard. The final one summarizes all the story structures we present in the book.

Where to Go from Here

If you want help in a specific subject area, search for it either in the table of contents or the index. If we want you to know something prior to this material, we provide a cross-reference to this information. Feel free to jump to any topic of the book and get what you need right when you need it. Or take a more traditional approach and start with Chapter 1.

Take the time to delve more deeply into various topics by going online to check out the links we provide throughout the book. This extra information will help take you to the next level. It certainly has expanded our thinking.

We hope this book empowers you to do more than you’ve ever thought possible — to get your voice heard, get people to take action based on what you share, and achieve results you thought were out of reach. Story on!

Part I

Getting Started with Business Storytelling

pt_webextra_bw.TIF For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more.

In this part . . .

check.png Highlight the role of storytelling in business and its impact on individuals.

check.png Identify the ultimate goal of business storytelling and the results that can come through its use in organizations.

check.png Identify the core elements of a story and what distinguishes it from anecdotes, case studies, examples, and other forms of narrative.

check.png Outline seven types of personal and organizational stories to have in your hip pocket at all times.

check.png Evoke, listen to, and capture stories from others in a way that empowers and honors these individuals.

Chapter 1

The Scoop on Business Storytelling

In This Chapter

arrow Highlighting the role of story in the new economy

arrow Identifying the best definition of a story

arrow Connecting story to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual

Is storytelling a tool, a technique, or a core competence and a business strategy? We believe it’s all of the above. More and more businesses are recognizing that storytelling is more than giving presentation skills to managers and staff. They’re acknowledging it’s a critical capability in effectively leading an organization. That working with stories requires an overall strategy that addresses why and what, in addition to building skills that speak to how. That storytelling in marketing, branding, and sales is about engagement, listening, and creating storied experiences to sustain customer loyalty and profits. That stories provide deep, rich, and meaningful experiences for people if crafted and told well. And that stories can be the wellspring for change and help unite a community around an organization.

Storytelling’s Role in Business

checkitout_antique.eps For years, businesses have realized that story can mean big money. In the 1995 article, One Quarter of GDP Is Persuasion, economists Deirdre McClosky and Arjo Klamer calculated that persuasion activities (advertising, public relations, sales, editing, writing, art making, and so on) accounted for 25 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (American Economic Review, vol. 85, No. 2). Author Steven Denning, formerly of the World Bank, conjectures in The Leader's Guide To Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (Jossey-Bass, 2011), that if half of that amount is devoted to story, then storytelling is worth $2.25 trillion annually (www.stevedenning.com/Documents/Leader-Foreword.pdf). A 2013 review of literature relating to McClosky and Klamer's research suggests this persuasion number is closer to 30 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, which equates to $4.5 trillion annually (www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-1/Report/Persuasion-is-now-30-per-cent-of-US-GDP). These numbers alone are enough to pay attention to storytelling!

Getting in on the storytelling action

checkitout_antique.eps How does this mountain of money that’s being spent on persuasive communications — which could be devoted to business storytelling —translate to organizational work? Dan Pink, the author of the New York Times best-seller A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future (Berkley Publishing Group, 2006) says business is entering a new age marked by the need to do the following:

check.png Use synthesis to detect patterns and opportunities for new innovations

check.png Create artistic and emotional beauty (think Apple)

check.png Craft a meaningful satisfying narrative through story

check.png Empathize with others

check.png Provide purpose and meaning in both work and the products and services consumed

check.png Replace seriousness with play

He goes on to state that desktop PCs and automated business processes have heightened the value of two types of skills. In expert thinking, new problems are solved for which routine solutions do not exist. In complex communication, interpreting information, explaining, persuading, and influencing becomes essential to success. Storytelling builds competency in both skills.

checkitout_antique.eps Futurist Rolf Jensen also explores this need. In his book The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business (McGraw-Hill, 1999), he states, The successful employee of the future is a virtuoso at acquiring and conveying knowledge, and coalescing and improving the work environment. The employee who, through telling stories about the organization’s results, manages to strengthen corporate culture will be considered a valuable asset. Nothing so inspires an organization as an enlivening story relating how the whopping contract was finally won, despite adversity and horrendous odds. The storyteller creates corporate culture. He goes on to say, Anyone seeking success in the market of the future will have to be a storyteller. The story is the heart of the matter.

When it comes to business offerings, story is front and center for Rolf Jensen. He talks about a shift from generating products or services and then telling a story about them to first focusing on the story that will then generate the product or service. For him, the next generation of experience is when a company and its customers are selling the story together as co-storytellers, with engagement driving sales.

reallifeexample.eps Jensen cites Harley-Davidson as an example. In 1999, the Harley story was about transportation. Today, the Harley Owners Group (HOG), a collection of more than 1,400 groups, encourages its members to tell a much broader lifestyle story around the theme born to be wild. This broader story serves as the background to video anecdotes (these don't contain all the elements of a story as explained in Chapter 3) about individual women riders who have created one-of-a-kind H-D motorcycles. You can view them at www.harley-davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/women-riders/the-right-bike.html.

How storytelling can help your business

checkitout_antique.eps In The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage (Harvard Business School Press, 1999), Joseph Pine and James Gilmore reinforce this shift with its emphasis on story when they say, "Every business competing for the future is customer centric, customer driven, customer focused, customer-yadda-yadda-yadda. So what’s new? This is new: Experiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated genre of economic output (author emphasis)."

remember.eps Stories are experiences. When you share a story, you relive an experience and invite others to share in it with you. In this way, you move people from focusing on the tangible and intangible qualities of products and services to memorableness. And today’s customers want memorable experiences. They want to engage with organizations that reveal themselves. Buyers perceive greater value when the experience lingers in their memory.

There’s also a second outcome: Stories, when crafted well, can be transformational. Over time, as customers interact with your product or service, their lives will change — perhaps even transform — hopefully for the better. This happens when your enterprise helps each of them aspire to a happier place. We talk more about this transformation later in this chapter and in Chapter 14 when we cover using story in marketing. For an enterprise to help customers in this new way implies moving the organization from a mindset of sparking sales to embodying qualities connected to these stories that all parties can share — which has lasting consequence beyond the immediate consumption of a product or service.

Nutritious stories versus junk food stories

Every day, you’re surrounded by entertaining junk food stories that leave you wanting more. Think of the latest zombie or vampire movies, reality TV shows, or other stuff on TV or the cinema that excite you or make you laugh. Notice that they don’t make you say, A-ha! or, Oh, now I get it, or Ahhh, that’s deep. Like soda and potato chips, junk food stories briefly satisfy an immediate craving. Don’t get us wrong — a little junk food is fine. But you’re usually hungry again later on.

checkitout_antique.eps Junk food doesn't build health; it can lead to a host of maladies. In the same way, junk food stories also create maladies, which can include narrow thinking, distorted views of reality, exploitation, arrested development, and even stereotyping (more on this topic at http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.fr/2012/06/danger-of-single-story.html).

Good nutrition nourishes your body, making you feel energized, alive, and happy. Similarly, sustaining stories are those that feed you well. They nourish and sustain your psyche, spirit, and relationships with others, leading to higher levels of aspiration, and more energy, aliveness, meaning, and satisfaction.

One of the goals of this book is to steer you away from junk food stories toward sustaining stories. We want to help you craft and tell deeply satisfying, meaningful stories to sustain your organization over the long haul. Storytelling isn’t merely a tool or device to use once in a while. It’s an essential strategy and competence for all organizations to survive and thrive. The age of storytelling has arrived.

How We Define Story

There are many definitions of story in the field, which often leads to confusion. To bring clarity about what we mean by story and why we use the definition that we do, let’s review a few definitions. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines story as follows:

1: a history such as a: an account of incidents or events; b: a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question; c: anecdote especially and amusing one; 2a: a fictional narrative shorter than a novel; b: the intrigue or plot of a narrative or dramatic work; 3a: a widely circulated rumor; 4: a lie or falsehood; 5: legend or romance; 6: a news article or broadcast.

his definition doesn’t tell us too much that’s helpful. It includes several narrative forms like anecdotes and works of fiction, genres like legends, romance, and news articles, and a statement of facts or an accounting of an event. This is a descriptive definition — it describes various types of stories. But it doesn’t help us understand what a story really is and what it does.

Not everything is a story

It’s popular in some circles to say that everything is a story. That’s simply not true. Most of your daily life isn’t a story. Many of your conversations aren’t stories. A lot of what you read isn’t a story. And they don’t have to be. But if you want to turn a human event into a story, then you need to pay attention to the specific process for creating a story. Story is simply a way of structuring information in order to create context and relevance, engage listeners, be memorable, and generate some nugget of meaning.

In today’s business world, as you’ll see in Chapter 2, without a story you get diminished results. But telling a story is only half the equation. You also need to be listening for stories. As you’ll find out in Chapter 5, you need to listen to the stories your collegues, prospects, and customers share with you so you can discover their needs and then meet them.

TIn his book Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story (Libraries Unlimited, 2007), Kendall Haven offers another definition of story:

Story: n.: A detailed, character-based narration of a character’s struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal.

This is a structural definition — it’s about the elements that create a story. Quite often, you’ll see definitions of this type. They say for a story to be a story it must have a plot, characters, emotion, a problem, and a resolution. Even though this helps us get closer to understanding what a story is, structural definitions only focus on what comprises a story — its elements. These types of definitions often become a laundry list of ingredients that don’t help you craft and tell better stories and don’t help you understand what a story really is and what it does.

Here’s our definition of story that we use throughout this book:

A story provides packets of sensory language presented in a particular way that allows the listener to quickly and easily internalize the material, comprehend it, and create meaning from it.

This is a dynamic definition of story. When you focus on the results that occur from telling stories, then you understand what the story is supposed to do for you — which is why you tell them in the first place. Why do we prefer this definition? It focuses on what a storyteller is actually trying to achieve. When you know why you want to share stories, you have the context for understanding the elements of a story and can construct them with more confidence.

How Stories Impact People

Every day, you’re bombarded with tons of so-called stories. Not all are worth attending to — poorly crafted stories are a dime a dozen. If you want your stories to stand out from the crowd, upping your storytelling game is essential. Upping your game means crafting stories that impact people in four ways simultaneously: physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

The physical impact

reallifeexample.eps In Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (Jossey-Bass, 2006), Arthur L. Major, director of System Safety at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, describes the physical behavior he observed in senior leaders when he wove stories throughout a presentation on what he planned to do to reduce mishaps and near misses. I saw executives lean forward, put their pens down, look at me and listen. He goes on to say, Their behavior changed because I changed the way I presented.

These executives settled in to listen. They were attentive because they wanted to know where his stories were going. At the same time, their behavior demonstrated that they were open and receptive to the experience and what they were hearing. Sure enough: These executives approved his approach for another year.

As story coaches, speakers, and trainers, we as authors have been privileged to present a number of compelling stories to audiences and to watch groups of people as they listen to a compelling story. Listeners noticeably shift their physical behavior. They may lean in or sit back. They stop what they’re doing — they stop taking notes, put down electronic devices, and cease having conversations. They often stare directly at the person who’s telling them a story. Sometimes the room becomes very quiet. Other audiences may mutter things like Wow, That’s unbelievable, or, Really? They may laugh — or cry. In any case, all their physical behaviors point to a deeper kind of listening in the moment.

The mental impact

checkitout_antique.eps What are these listeners processing? Here's what Princeton University neuroscientists Greg Stephens and Uri Hasson (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 27, 2010) found when they took brain scans of a graduate student telling a 15-minute unrehearsed story and those listening to a recording of it (www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14425). Although speaking and listening are known to invoke different brain functions, On average, the listener's brain responses mirrored the speaker's brain responses with some time delays. The delays matched the flow of [the] information. They also found that an additional area of the listener's brain is lit up — the part that anticipates what's next. That didn't happen in the teller's brain.

What does this mean? The speaker’s words actually shape how the listener’s brain responds to what’s said. This is groundbreaking! It implies that stories create an immediate connection between people.

checkitout_antique.eps Citing evidence from more than 350 studies in fields such as cognitive science, neural psychology, and brain development, in Story Proof Kendall Haven says our reliance on story through the ages has caused a rewiring of the human brain such that it’s predisposed to think in terms of story. Story is how the brain creates meaning. This predisposition is strengthened through hearing and telling stories in childhood.

Think about it. If listeners’ brain responses are mirroring the teller’s brain responses almost instantaneously — like a mind meld — and the human brain is predisposed to think in terms of story, that implies that you pay closer attention when you hear a story. Once you connect to and link the story to your memories and past experiences, meaning-making occurs. Imagine the influences that this revelation can have in a business setting.

The emotional impact

Where does this meaning-making happen? Let’s take a look at the brain.

The left side of your brain is your data center. It processes information in a linear fashion, focuses on language and logic, and is attentive to reasoning. But the left brain also tends to be more skeptical and loves numbers and facts. Because it’s emotionally neutral, it’s always seeking more information. Whenever people are engaged in ongoing debates about information, you know the left side of the brain is in full swing.

The right side of your brain is the fountain of creativity. This part processes information through the imagination. It’s where symbols, images, music, metaphors, dreams, and emotions are. It’s more focused on sensory material (what you can hear, feel, taste, smell, and see), tends to fill in information gaps, and is more accepting. Instead of seeking more information for debates, the right brain’s curiosity leads you to want resolution. And here’s a huge surprise: The right side of the brain is the path to the limbic (emotional) system and quickly becomes emotionally engaged if it is stimulated.

checkitout_antique.eps Why is this important? According to Michael Gazzaniga, author of Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (HarperCollins, 2011), the emotional brain is where feelings of trust, loyalty, and hope are activated and where unconscious emotional decisions are made. In his book How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market (Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Gerald Zaltman says that 95 percent of the time our minds are on autopilot, which means that most of our decisions are made unconsciously.

checkitout_antique.eps Now consider this: Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby found that stories are perceived as truer than facts because we identify with and internalize the characters (www.tiltfactor.org/wp-content/uploads2/Kaufman_Libby2012_JPSPadvanceonlinepublication.pdf). When you can see yourself in the story, it becomes more real than facts.

Let’s now put these pieces of the puzzle together. If it’s true that the left brain is emotionally neutral, is always seeking more information, and tends to be more skeptical, why would you only want to solely speak to it? And, if it’s true that stories are perceived as truer than facts because we identify with the characters, why would you want to rely on business speak to influence behavior? Especially if the right side of the brain, which is emotional in nature, is where decisions are unconsciously made before facts and data come into the picture? What makes storytelling different is that it’s a whole brain and whole body experience.

checkitout_antique.eps Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University, conducted a series of research studies that focus on a story a dad tells about his two-and-a-half year old son, Ben, who's dying of brain cancer (www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1a7tiA1Qzo&sns=tw). The dad expresses that it's hard to play with Ben knowing he's dying, especially because Ben is so happy. Zak demonstrates that two primary emotions — distress and empathy — were elicited in those who heard the story. He found that cortisol is released in the listener when the main character of a story is distressed (due to a problem, challenge, struggle, and so on). Cortisol helps you focus your attention on something of importance. Oxytocin is also released, which prompts feelings of care, connection, and empathy.

Zak concluded that for a story to cause these physical changes, it must have dramatic arc structure — capturing tension with a problem or struggle and a climax. When a story does this, it changes a listener’s brain chemistry.

remember.eps What’s the bottom line? When you’re impacted emotionally by listening to a compelling story, two things are occurring simultaneously: You’re both imagining what’s happening and analyzing the story for content, information, and key messages. As a result, you’re more prone to remember, recall, and internalize the story and take action on it.

The human spirit impact

In the field of story work, almost everyone says evoking emotions is good enough. We don’t. We believe that for a story to truly compel people to action — the ultimate goal of any story in business — it must touch the human spirit. Every day you’re bombarded by messages via TV, podcasts, articles, blog postings, billboards, and other media that try to tug on your heartstrings — to the point where you may have become somewhat immune to emotional appeal. That means any messages you and your company send out have to stand out above all this noise in order to be heard and acted on.

Reflect back on stories you’ve heard over your lifetime. Have any given you goose bumps? Or made the hair stand up on your arms or neck? Such a story strikes you to your core. There’s a special quality about it that makes it unforgettable. You feel compelled to share it and can’t stop thinking about it. You might even say to yourself, I need to do something. Like, right now. Can business stories do this? Absolutely. Can you tell these types of unforgettable stories? Yep. That’s why we wrote this book.

reallifeexample.eps Touching the human spirit also includes stories that are the ultimate embodiment of good. They transcend our personal view of the world and offer an expanded way of being and living that supports our own aliveness and the aliveness of others. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, owned by Caldrea, is one company that plays in this realm. In describing Who We Are, Caldrea says, "Each day, we look for ways to inspire everyone on the planet to breathe in, smile, and live beautifully. This philosophy is the glue that connects what we do every day to the larger impact we want to make on the world and the little ways we want to help you love your home and your life in it. We're committed to using earth-friendly practices and have instituted programs at our office to protect and care for the environment, and our employees (www.caldrea.com/who-we-are).

At Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, this embodiment of good philosophy is depicted through a film series: short video anecdotes (these don't contain all the elements of a story as explained in Chapter 3). These videos are stated to be A celebration of individuals whose generosity, hard work and connection with nature inspire us every day. You can check them out at www.mrsmeyers.com/film-series.

Dispelling the Myths of Storytelling

Used judiciously and properly, stories can make a marked difference for all types of organizations. However, you may need to overcome some of the following myths about storytelling. We raise them here and address them throughout the book in more detail:

check.png Stop wasting my time — this is taking too long. Stories are how people convey meaning. It’s true that no one has time today to listen to information that isn’t meaningful. That means no one has time for bad storytelling. Stories are one of the quickest ways to make a point. Stories engage and inspire action. Sharing a story first allows people to make decisions and take action much more quickly later on. Just because a story may need eight minutes to be told in exactly the way it needs to be shared, don’t let that deter you from using it. People will spend the time to listen to well-constructed compelling stories, which means structuring them well is your issue.

check.png Stories are false and are make-believe. Authentic and genuine storytelling is one of the best ways to share who you are and what your organization is all about. Real-life stories, when chosen, told, and crafted well, transmit cultural values, make the complex simple to understand, and convey both knowledge and wisdom. In addition, storytelling and story listening build empathy. Empathy allows you to experience the product or service from the mind of the user and understand their true needs. Empathy makes us human; there’s nothing false about that. We all want to connect, inspire, and influence on purpose. These are crucial roles that stories can fulfill.

check.png Just give us the facts. You may wonder, Wouldn’t it just be easier to skip stories altogether and simply deliver the facts? Nope — it may be simpler, but it’s not easier. Remember our discussion of left and right brains? If you don’t engage their right brain through story, people shut down when faced with too many facts and data. You’ll have to remind them later of the information. You’ll have to follow up with them to make sure they understood its significance. You’ll need to continually link the data to daily work, and so on. Ugh, what a boatload of work.

check.png Numbers are simply abstractions. And, bullet points are merely summaries. Both only reflect reality. A story, however, becomes reality because people immediately engage with and internalize it. Remember, no one ever waged a filibuster or staged a takeover because of charts, graphs, or bullet points.

check.png I shouldn’t — or don’t know how to — talk about myself. People want the human face behind the enterprise. Customers want human relationships, not a faceless organization. People want to hear your personal stories, delivered humbly, authentically, and with respect. No one can argue with the truth of your experience. It’s simply a matter of learning how to select, craft, and tell your personal stories. Storytelling and story listening skills can be learned. Armed with knowledge about what works and what doesn’t through this book, your abilities to influence and move people will become easier and more natural.

Chapter 2

The Why, What, How, and Who of Business Storytelling

In This Chapter

arrow Showcasing results from storytelling initiatives

arrow Demonstrating how business storytelling is different

arrow Applying stories at work

checkitout_antique.eps When we first met in 2003, we chatted for hours about what needed to happen next in the field of story in business and where exciting story research was happening. That conversation led to ideas that culminated in Lori’s book Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Get Results (Jossey-Bass, 2006).

For that book, Lori, Karen, and other story practitioners interviewed more than 70 organizations worldwide about their use of story in business applications such as customer service, financial management, leadership development, human resources, project management, and more. The book documents specific story practices and the results achieved from them.

Because the field of story work in business was still fledgling, many people only had anecdotal qualitative feedback to share. Yet all interviewees experienced positive results through their story efforts. Many enterprises reported more than one type of impact, such as Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group. It reported three outcomes from its storytelling efforts:

check.png Doubling the number of its hotels to 40 in the five years prior to the book being published and readying to double in size again.

check.png Returning guests were 55 percent of customers compared to an average rate in the service industry of 20 to 25 percent.

check.png Turnover was lower than any other major hotel company in the United States when compared to industry standards, as demonstrated through independent survey results.

checkitout_antique.eps Here are the summarized results across all organizations, as first reported by Lori in the article There Are Five Sides to Every Story: Which Are You Missing? in Communication World (IABC, January–February 2007):

check.png 36 percent have experienced positive financial impact to the bottom line through increased growth, profitability, and/or increased funding.

check.png 18 percent have noted that story use has moved them closer to furthering specific organizational goals.

check.png 17 percent have reported increased levels of engagement between people and the organization and/or higher levels of teamwork.

check.png 17 percent are able to show a positive impact on the amount and type of customer feedback, improved customer satisfaction, and/or improved customer perceptions of the brand.

check.png 11 percent have experienced decreased workflow cycle time, improved speed of message delivery or time to market, and increased efficiencies.

check.png 10 percent reported an impact on training feedback and effectiveness, including transfer of skills and knowledge to the workplace.

check.png 8 percent noted positive cultural changes.

check.png Other results include closing more deals with clients, increased visibility through media or industry awards and rankings, improved staff retention, practical problem solving, bringing core values to life, overcoming issues, and improved employee satisfaction and decreased absenteeism.

Would these sorts of results make a difference in your organization? Then keep reading. This chapter covers all sorts of ways that story significantly impacts what each and every one of us does in our daily work.

It’s a Proven Fact: Storytelling Works

checkitout_antique.eps Karen picked up where Lori's last book left off. Each day she powers up her computer, straps on her reading glasses, caffeinates her bloodstream (yes, she's aware of the health effects), and scans the web, hunting for the best articles on business storytelling. Each month, she processes hundreds of articles, throws out all the fluff and the junk, and then reviews and comments on the gems she unearths. If you'd like to follow along, check out www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it.

checkitout_antique.eps Here's one important piece she found: the Significant Objects Project (http://significantobjects.com), the brainchild of journalist Rob Walker. It ran from July to November 2009 as a quasi-anthropological experiment.

Talented writers were invited to invent a story about an object purchased from a thrift store. On average, these items cost $1.25. The premise was that if a story were attached to an object, it would be perceived as more valuable. The stories were fictional, meaning great care was taken to avoid giving the impression that the story was true; creating a hoax wasn’t the goal.

This was put to the test by selling the objects, complete with story and photo (but no item description), on eBay. The result? The project sold $128.74 worth of thrift-store junk for $3,612.51. Clearly, stories attached to almost worthless items made them more valuable. People wanted them and were willing to pay much higher prices for them.

What does this example have to do with your organization? Simply put, we’re all seeking one of the secrets of the universe: how to create the right conditions for someone to reach into their pocket, open up their wallet, and hand us money, whether it be for a project, a new offering, or a new venture. Stories are the key to unlocking this secret.

checkitout_antique.eps Karen also uncovered a study put together by the folks at co:collective about the impact of storytelling on corporate growth and share price. The research distinguished between storytelling and storydoing businesses (check it out at www.storydoing.com/idea). In their words:

Storytelling companies convey the story of their brand, business, or product by telling that story, usually through PR or paid advertising; storydoing companies consciously convey their story through direct action. Storydoing companies use their core story as an organizing principle for activities throughout the company: new product development, recruiting, compensation, partnerships, as well as any communication that they create. Our hypothesis is that storydoing companies spend fewer dollars on paid media, and the dollars they do spend work harder, which makes storydoing companies more efficient.

Co:collective identified 42 companies, which they divided up as best they could into storytelling and storydoing companies. Some of the methodology is problematic. First, this is a small sample. Second, the degree to which storytelling is embedded in the DNA of a storydoing company is still evolving; some on the list embody story better than others. None has fully embraced storytelling in all aspects of their businesses as we talk about in Chapter 12 based on our story research and hands-on experiences. Third, the research only requires that a company have a story. In Chapter 4, we show that organizations need to have many kinds of stories. Even with these challenges, we’re encouraged by this research effort and the attempt to show the difference that embodying stories can make in a business. Here are the results:

check.png Revenue growth over a 4-year period for storytelling companies was 6.1 percent, but for storydoing companies it was 10.4 percent — a significant difference.

check.png Annual operating income growth was 7.1 percent for storytelling companies versus 16.1 percent for storydoing companies.

check.png Annual share price growth difference was significant. Storytelling companies actually lost 4.4 percent in share price. Storydoing companies’ share price increased by 5.6 percent.

We believe that if you follow the approaches outlined in this book, your organization has a heightened ability to achieve these results. In addition, storytelling can create a huge distinction if you think of it as a core business activity like this research suggests, instead of merely a communication strategy.

What’s been learned about the impact of story in individuals who hear and tell them? Not only do people remember compelling stories, they share them. They remember these stories much better than they remember facts and information. Over and over again, it’s been demonstrated that compelling stories

check.png Are relaxing to listen to and engage all of the senses.

check.png Reflect and connect with people’s needs and emotional states.

check.png Captivate people’s interest and make them more attentive listeners.

check.png Are sticky and embed themselves in people’s subconscious.

check.png Communicate information quickly.

check.png Swiftly and successfully convey the meaning of complex concepts.

check.png Show how people solved real problems by making the abstract concrete.

check.png Foster creativity.

check.png Act as catalysts and spark relevant conversations.

check.png Are frequently shared with others.

check.png Enhance individual and organizational learning.

check.png Make information more believable.

check.png Provide a way for listeners to draw their own conclusions.

check.png Convey and demonstrate your values and passions.

check.png Help people imagine a future that’s achievable and worth achieving.

check.png Stimulate action.

check.png Create unique, collaborative connections with customers and prospects.

check.png Create engagement and trust with employees, customers, prospects, and funders.

check.png Build and strengthen relationships instead of having one-off transactions.

check.png Differentiate your company from its competition.

check.png Generate a return on engagement, emotion, and connection.

check.png Establish economic value.

remember.eps Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University says, Stories are the most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal. We agree. We would even venture to say that stories are the most powerful core competence for both you and your organization in the 21st century.

What Makes Business Storytelling Different?

It’s likely you were raised on fairy tales and kids’ books and movies. And you’re still surrounded by all sorts of story-based TV shows, films, and books, including fiction, biographies, autobiographies, and so on. Even video games are stories nowadays. In business, there’s everything from the ain’t it awful stories shared around the water cooler to educational fables about penguins, to help us make sense of chaotic organizational life.

When we talk about business storytelling, we’re talking about your personal stories and those of your organization that are constructed and shared