What is business storytelling?

What is business storytelling? Why does it matter?

I define “business storytelling” as the process of scientifically and tactically using stories to aid your business — not just randomly telling stories about your business. It’s particularly useful in presentations, as well as marketing, and large sections of management and leadership.

That’s it. All the other stuff you read online is just fluff!

Business storytelling examples

Charities have known about using stories in business for a long time, because (crudely) if you give people statistics such as “X thousand homeless” you don’t get much of a fundraising response. On the other hand if you have a story of a relatable person who’s now homeless because of the earthquake — and who is one of those X thousand — you get a much(!) bigger fundraising response.

You might not like it; you might think you’re immune to the sob stories; but the facts are sadly clear. Tell the story not the facts. There’s a reason charity appeals are designed the way they are!

Here’s a personal one. Instead of saying something like “I’ve helped Xthousand people become more successful speakers over the 20+ years I’ve been doing this”, I have a graphic that sums up the experience of one of them in a mini-story. Heather Townsend’s experience speaks volumes: “Simon got me from a two, three grand a day trainer to a five K a day speaker”. It’s a ten second story (TSS) where most of the work is done inside the listener’s head, but whaooooo it works in my marketing!

I have a friend who was caught in the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. I can give you all the facts about waves of up to 30metres, quarter of a million dead and so on, but it won’t change your behaviour nearly as much as hearing my friend telling you the story of what she did, what she didn’t do, and who survived around her.

Part of the power comes in the trauma and from the feeling people get of (a bit!) of being inside that trauma. Effectively it’s as though they were there, and making decisions. While it’s clearly not a business story, it’s clearly an example of how using a story can change people’s behaviour by giving them a “rehearsal” of what they would (need to) do.

Why business storytelling often fails

I’ve hinted above that the stories you use when you’re doing business storytelling (rather than entertainment storytelling) should be remarkably short — and for a number of reasons that’s true — but there’s a risk associated with that of skipping to the end. There’s a significant chunk of research to the effect that “shortcut stories” (talking about only happy ending) are less successful in changing behaviours than “process stories”, which talk about the process of doing the work to get to the happy ending. (Check out here and here as examples if you’re interested.)

This is because, basically, listening to stories is mental rehearsal. “Being in” a story isn’t as good as doing the real thing, but it’s a primer and it’s a lot better than doing nothing. That’s particularly true if the thing the story is about is mental work, at least in part. In other words mental rehearsal about decision-making skills is handier than mental rehearsal about playing basketball.

I had a client (who I’m not going to name, don’t ask!) who’d won Olympic medals and worked as a motivational speaker, using stories of how cool it feels to be on the podium. The audience was agog. They felt like they were on the podium, feeling the glory.

…but their behaviour didn’t change. It didn’t change because of bad business storytelling.

Firstly, the story is too big (a topic for another day) but also because it isn’t a story that mentally rehearses people for the four AM starts, the working-until-your-eyes-bleed, or the total lack of a social life for months (and months!) at a time!

Proper business storytelling does the motivating and the work in the trenches.

The acid test of a well-used bit of business storytelling

After the hearer hears the story, could they (would they?) be able to behave differently in a situation they’ve not encountered yet?

A single, isolated, story might not get someone all the way there, but it’s a handy question to ask. If it doesn’t move that dial the story is just an anecdote and the hearer hasn’t had a rehearsal.

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We know business storytelling works which means you probably need it. I teach it. Let’s put those things together and see how I can help. Here’s my “business storytelling stack” of the training options you’ve got.