Tags: persistence, hard-work, experts, mining It takes a lot of hard work and persistence to do something great. Naturally, if the goal is a big one it’s going to be harder to achieve. You just don’t want to give up and find out that you were close to achieving it. This week, Mark tells a […]

Tags: safety, moments, attention-grabbing Our story this week is a short one, but it has an impact. As you will see if you tell a story in an unexpected way, and the topic is possible death or injury, you will immediately generate interest from your audience. We also talk about keeping track of the movies […]

Tags: apocryphal stories, influence stories The web is full of stories of dubious origins, which is the very definition of apocryphal, yet many can be used to make a business point as long as you make clear that the story is most likely false. We provide some examples of apocryphal stories and we dig into […]

Tags: brand storytelling, competitors, collaboration In this episode of Anecdotally Speaking, we explain what it is that Mark and I do for work, why some stories work for some audiences and not for others, and the difference between the typical ‘brand stories’ we see and the one we share today. Lots of companies have ‘brand […]

Tags: persistence, vision, opportunities It’s Mark’s turn to share a story, and so he tells a great one of how Janusz Kamiemski wanted to come to Australia but didn’t think he had any chance of doing so. It’s a great example of persistence with a twist at the end. He told the story at a […]

Tags: leadership, story-triggering, lead by action, education In this week’s episode of Anecdotally Speaking, an Irish principal demonstrates a powerful message to her school of predominantly African American students with one small action. It’s a fantastic example of how to lead through what you do, instead of what you say. Shawn and Mark also unpack […]

In my work with Anecdote over the last 13 years, I’ve come across thousands of stories. Some of them have had a huge impact on people. They’ve revealed weak spots in organisations, changed cultures, and inspired people to achieve far beyond what they believed they were capable of. In most cases, a story has the […]

We understand that life gets busy. Between emails, meetings and projects it can sometimes be hard to deliberately think about useful business stories that you’ve encountered recently. We want to make it easier to become better business storytellers, and for that reason we’ve decided to post regular stories that include bite-size tips on how to […]

We understand that life gets busy. Between emails, meetings and projects it can sometimes be hard to deliberately think about useful business stories that you’ve encountered recently. We want to make it easier to become better business storytellers, and for that reason we’ve decided to post regular stories that include bite-size tips on how to […]

There’s an incredibly strong urge that comes over us, right when we end an anecdote, to explain what the story means. This urge seems especially strong when we tell a story at work. We’ll finish it and then go on and say something like, ‘So, what this means is …’ You must resist this urge […]