We don’t care about one another as human beings. Our interests are purely our own. We are oblivious to the pain of others as long as our own comfort is secure. We lack empathy. The fates of those we don’t know, or who cannot help us, are no concern of ours. Our public smiles conceal our [...]
Want proof that a ‘Hollywood model’ of storytelling is insufficient for business communication? Look no further than the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes — which, of course, Hollywood is going to turn into a major motion picture. A comedy directed by Adam McKay, to star [...]
Here’s an excerpt from my book, GameChangers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, on the future of the organization. Key phrases are my italics: Forces of Nature The old models are giving way today as surely as mountains give way to the elements. The citadels of the [...]
If you’re in a business communication role, it can be tempting to insist that your story is all good news. That is, after all, how we are trained as organizational storytellers. We know of companies that are forbidden by their leadership from bringing up issues that threaten the very [...]
There’s a lot of recent buzz about storytelling in business. As a company in the storytelling business, we see it everywhere. Tweets galore. LinkedIn links aplenty. This is a caution to anyone investing in storytelling for your organization or community: Don’t limit yourself to linear story [...]
With very few exceptions, raising your game to an exceptional level of performance takes practice. It’s a well-worn bromide, as old as the punchline of the joke that goes– “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice!” Great performance artists practice. They [...]
We’ve spent years studying with Organizational Theorists, Rhetoricians, Consultants, Software Developers, Students, Architects, Fractal Theorists, Quantum Physicists, Shamans, Witches, Alchemists, Artists, Enterprise Architects, Dowsers, Gamers, Tribal Elders, Barbershop Proprietors, [...]
There’s a good piece running in Scientific American demonstrating that ‘Storytelling is Surprisingly Arithmetic.’ (I’m geeking on how they use the word ‘arithmetic’ as an adjective!) Research done at the U. of Vermont on 1,300 works of fiction claims to have [...]
Ray Wang (@raywang0), the CEO of Constellation Research , and Vala Afshar (@valaafshar), Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce.com, invited me to be on their first @DisrupTVShow webcast of the 2017, alongside my fellow storytellers, Rich Kylburg (@rlkylburg), the CMO of Arrow Electronics, and [...]
Early in my career, as as a senior staff publicist for Disney, there were two words I avoided in any press material or script I wrote: Magic and Wizard. I wasn’t in a position to make policy about such things, and I’d have been an idiot to try to erase that language from [...]