There’s a time to be independent and creative, and there’s a time to serve your audience. Dummer and DJ, Questlove, felt he was at the top of his game when he was asked to perform at Barack Obama’s farewell party. He started his set feeling confident but finished it feeling disappointed, prompting Barack to share […]

Steven Bradbury appeared lucky when he won gold for Australia in the short track speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The whole story, however, implies that it wasn’t just luck, but hard work and persistence, that led him to win.  This week, Mark shares the story behind Steven Bradbury’s win. […]

Does presentation matter? Here’s a story you can tell or trigger to convince your colleagues that it does. If you regularly read our blog, you will be familiar with story-triggering. Story-triggering is what occurs when someone does something so remarkable that the people who see, or experience it, tell stories about it. In our last […]

Do you remember Dave Carroll’s 2009 YouTube sensation, United Breaks Guitars? Dave was flying United and as they they were waiting to take off a passenger noticed that the ground crew were throwing around a guitar case. It was Dave’s expensive Taylor guitar, and the bag handlers broke it in the shenanigans. Dave complained, but […]

I’m in the process of buying a new car. So last weekend I organised test-drives of three cars from three different car dealers. My first two test-drives followed a similar pattern. The salesperson showed me the car, I jumped into the driver’s seat, and we took a 15-minute spin up a freeway and back again. […]

Last week I was working with a client in Sydney, preparing a senior leader to present a new strategy to their people using a strategy story. We designed the presentation so that the strategy story could be told without slides. We wanted the leader to just talk with their employees about the strategy and why […]

Last week, Shawn and I spent the day together at the Melbourne Convention Centre. The morning speaker was Patrick Lencioni, author of ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ and ten other books. The Wall Street Journal has described Lencioni as “one of the most in demand speakers in America”. It’s easy to understand why. He […]

As easy as riding a bike? Karen Stanton will bet you can’t ride this bike.  This week, Karen Stanton, the Global Branding and Marketing Director at IFF (International Flavours and Fragrances), joins us from New Jersey. She shares the story of the ‘backwards brain bike’.  When riding the backwards brain bike, you have to turn […]

Have you ever felt nervous about making a mistake at work? Jill Roche shares a story which suggests you should look at mistakes as opportunities. This week we welcome our first guest speaker for 2019 to Anecdotally Speaking! Jill Roche is the Chief of Corporate Affairs at World Vision Australia. She shares a story which […]

I want to show you just how powerful the first story really is. Ever since I listened to episode 668 of the podcast This American Life last month, I’ve been asking people, “What do you think about MSG?” Now you might remember that MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is a controversial food flavouring commonly used in […]