Story telling in a business context

I have recently had the opportunity to attend a few conferences in the Agile thought leadership space and now I find myself with quite a backlog of blogging. This helps serve two purposes, firstly it helps me share some of the learnings I picked up and secondly it helps me in consolidating that understanding. So I kick off with one of the sessions that I attended at the Berlin Scrum Alliance Gathering. Oana Juncu's session was very distinct from the others so stands alone. Her subject was Story Telling. The point was simply that people remember stories, stories are an accessible exploration of a concept which is non threatening due to their third person delivery. However transferring this deliberately into a business context to start, I was a little skeptical and I couldn't get past the credibility element, if I made up a story to support my argument, then isn't that like falsifying evidence? All smells a little too 'Dodgy dossier' About a week later I caught myself referring to a totally unsubstantiated anecdote that supported whatever point I was making at the time, and I preceded it with the little phrase, 'it is like that story where' and I immediately thought back to this session and reflected that she might be onto something. The benefit of that little prefix is that now from this point you are on much safer ground, your audience is aware that the story will support your point (no duplicity) and may not actually be true but the retention and non-instructive learning benefits of the story approach are enabled. So to the content of the workshop, first of all we deconstructed stories to understand what makes them work, the same approach could be taken to help write a novel I suspect.

1. Identify a hero, the main protagonist and establish whether you want a hero that you can get behind and shows success or an anti-hero that is undone by his mistakes or misdeeds and gets their comeuppance
2. Set the Status Quo. Establish the context, keep it simple and credible and as close to your audience as possible without awkwardly implying that THEY are in the story
3. Identify the Problem. Clearly something is rotten in the state of Denmark, doesn't need to be deep dark mysterious malevolent forces at work, in fact a clear problem is easier. The purpose of telling the story is usually to draw parallels to the listeners situation, so the problem maybe one of your start points
4. Give a trigger. Something happens which starts a series of events that draws out the scenario that you wish to get the listener to either buy into, or explicitly try to avoid. This trigger needs to be either something the listener could do or something that could happen. Try not to make this something that has happened as either your story is pointless because you are saying all the good things will come to pass anyway, or the impending doom is inescapable.
5. Give the consequence, so this is your content
6. Give the outcome, finally the message, the purpose and meaning of going to the effort of scripting and delivering the story in the first place

So as an example if the problem is that there is a team with too much work to be delivered in a given time, then you could say: 'Yes it is a bit like that story about the fashion designer that moved house and couldn't fit all her clothes in her new funky built in wardrobes. The first four boxes of shirts and blouses were fine but then it was clear that the rest wouldn't fit. Obviously not unpacking the last few boxes wasn't an option because that would have left her without any underwear, and she wasn't that kind of girl. Eventually she resigned her self to unpacking every box and she then selected stuff from each that was suitable for the current time of year. That went in the wardrobe, the rest went in the loft' This is credible, non threatening with enough spice to make it interesting enough to want to get to the end and short enough to be able to get though it without losing your audience of be interrupted. The point that the user needs to break up the stories to understand what is needed NOW and deliver that first, is so This sounds a bit contrived but the more I have thought about this, the more I have reflected that I have actually done this in the past, invented little tales to support my piece, but I have done it on the fly. This is a more organised approach to support your coaching and change management. So next time you find yourself with an intractable audience, try starting, 'It is like that story where' Credit to Oana Juncu; @ojuncu Find me on LinkedIn.