Andaloosa

Storytelling: how to and live experiment

In this post I’m going to build a business story from scratch, step by step with the reader. The web offers the golden rules of storytelling for free, in less than one hour of surfing every person can have a reasonable idea of how it works. What people often say is “I’m not good at storytelling” or “I don’t know where to find or how to build a story”; is it true? Is it so difficult? Follow me.

The very first question about storytelling is making clear the scope. Every business speech, story and presentation is just a vehicle to transfer a message from the sender to the receiver(s). If you have nothing to transfer, you have no story to design. Let’s imagine the message we want to communicate is about trust, customer service and the benefits of business relations based upon mutual trust and careful service.

I then quickly have a look at the vocabulary and search for the meaning of trust. I note down any unusual, unexpected (at least for me) outcome about this search. For example searching for “trust” I discovered that in the ancient Rome it was a type of contract, used when a good was given in custody to person, who had to give it back to the owner after some time or simply to deliver it to a third party. Maybe it’s not important, but it’s an idea.

Then we just need to follow a few basic rules about storytelling. For example we need a time: I’m going to use a recent past. The interpretation and the importance given to values change with time and new generations, so to make it credible I don’t want to go to the era of the Pilgrim Fathers. Last Spring is ok, as this season is associated to positive feelings.

Then we need a place. I won’t make it too complex and use the town I live, Milan in Italy, just to avoid parochial influences or stereotypes about different cultures.

Then we need one or more people. I guess two are enough, one who “trust” and one who “does not trust”. I imagine they are two men, probably the same or similar age and experience, working in the same department of a corporation.

With this in mind, we can move the sequence of events. I don’t know exactly what the events are, I will let some creativity flow, but in principle something bad is going to happen to the guy who “does not trust” and a promotion or a big reward to the one who trust. It does not look too exciting, but let’s see what happens.

We are ready to begin, I would simply add a few suggestions, that can be applied in any story:

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