Telling stories is one of the most compelling ways to hold someone’s attention. It’s also one of the oldest and comes completely natural to us. This may not be immediately obvious. You may not think of yourself as a teller of stories. But just think of this: whenever we're confronted with something we only half understand, we tend to construct a story to complete the other half.

 

Here's a situation you may recognise

I worked for IBM in the '80s and '90s. IBM was going through a hard time with lots of rumours of reorganisations. On April 1st 1987 the national manager came to our floor, which he never did, and talked to our unit manager for an hour in his office. Why? What was going on? We all thought it must be about the upcoming restructuring. They're probably talking about how to communicate relocations and maybe even job losses.  None of us did much anymore that day. 

 

On April 2nd the new IBM PC (PS/2) was announced. They had been discussing the final details of the launch.

 

There were two moments. The first was what we observed. The second when we learned the truth. In between we had created our own truth. In this particular case it led to a few hours of lost time for our group. Sounds familiar?

 

It can get much worse though.

 

Disaster narrowly avoided – might this happen to you?
The consequences might be more profound than a few lost hours. I remember Morris Tabaksblat, CEO of Unilever in the 1990s, who never spoke while standing in the lift in their office. He had learned that even enquiring after the weather forecast could lead to unintended actions in the ice cream marketing unit.

 

You don’t want that to happen in your organisation.

 

Use the power of story

So we create stories almost automatically. The good thing is that you use it to good effect by deliberately telling stories to make a point.