My wife, Kate, and I decided to take a long weekend this recent US Labor Day holiday and explore New England a bit. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT has been on our “must-see” list for a while, so that was our first stop.  It’s the oldest art museum in the USA […]

We’ve all read and heard the word sustainability but how many of us can articulate what it means? When I started working in the sustainability space several years ago, I was frankly baffled that so many people knew the word, but so few could really explain its meaning. I still regularly ask people for their […]

Salespeople detest brand gobbledygook. And it’s no wonder. Have you heard brand lingo lately? Lovemarks, saliency, brand-defined competitive sets, brand character, brand claims, brand personality, 80-slide PowerPoint presentations sprinkled with made-up words and forgettable catchphrases … It’s hard for a salesperson to understand this brand bumf, much less translate it into something they can share […]

We’re all rational beings, aren’t we? If I want to convince you of something, surely I just need the necessary facts or a convincing argument? Well, behavioural science research tells us that this approach simply doesn’t work. This post describes something that scientists have known for nearly 40 years and which organisations stubbornly refuse to […]

In 92 days we’ll be running Storytelling for Leaders workshop in Los Angeles. I’m looking forward to this week in LA because I’ll have just finished a week-long road trip with my brother between San Francisco and LA (should create lots of stories) and we are planning a get together for fellow business storytelling practitioners […]

What do your organisational values actually mean? Do you have a list of 4, 5, 6 one-word, abstract concepts such as integrity, responsive and agile that represent your values? You might even have a few paragraphs describing each value. Most organisations I’ve worked with have something similar and it hasn’t helped them that much. These […]

When you see a poem you know it’s a poem. When you see a screenplay you know it’s a screenplay. Most people, however, have never seen an oral story written down. Probably because it’s an oxymoron. Yet there are times when it’s useful to write an oral story down. For example, when you’re helping a […]

At Christmas, I was in Melbourne with my two kids. All my family live there and I needed to do what I could to ensure there was no disharmony or feelings of favouritism. So I applied Shawn’s guiding principle in these matters: ‘Families are like fish. After three days they start to go off’. So […]

We have talked a lot in this blog about the power that comes from showing how you are like your audience for improving the effectiveness of your communication. From telling stories that show you are like them (The ‘I’m like you‘ story), to using their words, phrases or idioms. There are a number of ways […]

One of the things that we tell people in our workshops is that your stories need to be true, particularly in a business context. Your stories should be genuine and authentic. They must also be accurate, plausible and believable. If they’re not, you run the risk of damaging your credibility. Consider this example of UK […]