7 Tell It: The Role of Narratives

Long story, short. People are buried in corporate-speak, but you can help them by embracing narrative storytelling to be clear, concise, and compelling.
I’m Tired of Meaningless and Meandering Corporate Jargon. I’m Ready for a Good Story.
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” so said Steve Jobs at the start of his legendary presentation unveiling the first iPhone at MacWorld in 2007.
This presentation, which you can watch on YouTube, is a terrific example of how businesses can use narratives to deliver key messages. He might not have been aware of it, but Jobs was building a strategic narrative to make his keynote presentation tight.
First, he stated his purpose for being on stage that day: “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
Jobs then talked about how Apple was a company that was always introducing these breakthrough products that really served a fundamental need people had—from the Macintosh to the iPod and iTunes.

All good narratives have a villain or a conflict. In this story, it was Apple’s competitors, Jobs explained, who were not doing their job. Their mobile phones were hard to use and not very intuitive.
“The most advanced phones are called smartphones. They say it’s the Internet. It’s sort of the baby Internet,” he said, mocking his rivals. “They are not so smart and they are not so easy to use.”
Jobs argued that Apple needed to step up and create a breakthrough device that not only would be smart and easy to use but also would solve a lot of problems that users encountered with many mobile devices. People needed to be able to browse the Internet, make phone calls, and listen to music on a user-friendly device. He explained his brand’s intentions: “What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been, and super-easy to use.”
He strengthened the core presentation by explaining how Apple was going to deliver on his bold promise to improve the user interface and phone software: “Who wants a stylus? You have to get them and put them away, and you lose them. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus…. [the iPhone is] far more accurate than any touch display that has ever been shipped. It ignores unintended touches; it’s super-smart. You can do multifinger gestures on it.”
At the end, there was an explosive round of applause from an audience that understood the full impact of why iPhone would be one of the most revolutionary and pervasive devices.
Instead of launching into a list of all the phone’s features, Jobs first chose to tell the members of his audience a compelling story they would all embrace. It’s a wonderful example of how a product launch can be fundamentally different if it’s framed in a narrative. The personal connection was immediate and lasting.

Where’s the Disconnect? When a Story Is Missing
It can be frustrating for people to visit a company’s website, read it, and leave without knowing what the company does. And that happens all too often—not just online, but in meetings, presentations, and conferences. Businesspeople talk but say nothing.
My cousin, a business consultant in New York, was approached by a recruiter to interview for an open executive position at another professional services firm. His first move was to go to the firm’s site and do some reading to prepare for the interview. Flustered and confused, he called me to decipher what that company really did.
“It sounds like I’m missing the point, and maybe it’s just me,” he lamented on the phone, wondering if his skills matched their offering. “I thought, given your profession, you could spend some time on their site and figure it out for me.”
“Forensic messaging isn’t really my specialty,” I thought, wondering how to help him out. While we were on the phone, I checked online for a few minutes to look for some clues. All I found was a laundry list of business buzzwords that didn’t describe anything specifically; in fact, they just sounded like the company did what everyone else in technology consulting might claim to do.
“Mike, I think they’re playing it safe and giving the laundry-list approach,” I advised. “In my experience, they say they do everything and are really saying nothing. The only option for you is to do the first phone call with the CEO and ask a few open-ended questions.”
“Like what?”

“Ask him for a few short examples of their best clients. Ask him who they sell to and why companies buy from him. Get him talking, and you’ll probably get a clearer sense of what they do and if you’re qualified for the open position.”
“I’d really like to be better prepared before doing that,” he said reluctantly.
“I know, but they’re giving you a corporate smokescreen and there’s no way to know what they do unless you get them to share a few success stories.”
“Makes sense. I’ll let you know what I hear.”
Unfortunately, my cousin was likely not the only person to encounter such roadblocks. Companies do this all the time—say both everything and nothing at all. It drives regular people crazy.
Contrast my cousin’s frustration with the clarity a boutique consulting firm in Chicago creates when it describes its organization in its website’s About Us section. It consciously elected to tell a story about how its clients want to get their employees to embrace change but initially don’t succeed.
What struck me instantly when I visited their site was the storyline’s simplicity.
“There are executives that have a clear intention to change—the few—and there is a disconnect with the many who can enact it. The few envision the idea, and the many struggle to make it happen, and there’s a chasm between them.”
This made immediate sense to me—because the story grabs you and pulls you in. You begin to feel for the ineffectiveness of the few and the impotence of the many, and as a result, hope for resolution. We wonder, can the chasm can be crossed?
That’s the power of a good narrative: it speaks directly to you and creates instant clarity. It’s memorable and easy to step into.
Like Apple, businesses that embrace stories can make quick connections that last. Those that feel stories aren’t appropriate leave people hungry, confused, and irritated.

The Birth of Narrative Mapping: A Way to Organize and Deliver Your Story
Over the course of many years, I developed the following distinct methodology to organize and deliver corporate narratives.
Earlier in my career, I used basic visual mind maps called message maps in my workshops. I helped clients that ranged from large multinationals to start-ups develop an outline and gain consensus on their core message. They typically used these structures for public relations (PR) and media purposes.
During these mind-mapping exercises, small groups of 8 to 10 key stakeholders gathered in a room with a large whiteboard and some flip charts. They set about to openly tackle topics like industry issues, new product launches, and new corporate strategies. I promised that their message map would reflect a common understanding and help them craft a clear hierarchy of essential ideas. The results were strong visual outlines or key messages they all agreed to share.
I liked facilitating these sessions and leading disparate perspectives into a common way of explaining something tricky. I saw potential for the message maps not only to convey a company’s key ideas but also to do more. Because I tend to think like a journalist, I started to evolve message maps to build a story—not just corporate talking points. I enjoyed seeing the narrative-like progression of those ideas develop and started to wonder how I might connect them in a more logical, visual way. I enjoyed these exercises so much that, in 2006, I decided to break off on my own and start a business so that I could dedicate myself exclusively to elevating and advancing the art of message mapping.
The following story is a good example of how I transformed maps of corporate talking points into more visual storytelling maps. I taught message maps to many people during my career, including U.S. Army Public Affairs leaders. On one occasion, I helped debrief General William Caldwell of the 82nd Airborne on his new assignment as the chief media spokesperson for Central Command in Iraq. When I eventually became Gen. Caldwell’s media trainer, I saw him immediately embrace the tool, not only as a spokesperson in Iraq, but also as head of the Command and General Staff College, the Army’s graduate school for officers, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Later, Gen. Caldwell invited me to speak at a senior leadership conference for Army generals on the power of narratives and message mapping. He also sanctioned research on the role of narratives as part of a more ambitious project to refine Army doctrine on how to share and disseminate information in what was then the new era of 24-hour media.
Gen. Caldwell’s research team interviewed me extensively on message maps in Chicago. By this time, I fully realized how such a map could fuse with an organization’s need for a common story. It was during those interviews that I first conceived the term “Narrative Map.

Rediscovery of Narratives and Storytelling: Breaking through the Blah, Blah, Blah
By this point, you’ve rediscovered (or finally realized) the vital role stories play in crafting clear and organized messages you want to share. You recognize that this was always welcome, yet often overlooked by many of your colleagues and peers in the business world.
Thankfully, organizations are beginning to notice that telling stories is a strategic way to manage people’s attention. It’s not only an acceptable business practice these days; it’s the key to establishing a powerful, common, and lasting understanding.
When I read a good story, it sticks with me. Yet how many companies tell a good story? Most are eminently forgettable, usually because they all sound the same.
Some organizations, however, do have a great story. Take Southwest Airlines, for instance. Their employees look back and tell stories of how Herb Kelleher had a powerful vision for a new type of airline.
His narrative of a new airline that was thrifty, focused, and fun quickly spread. Their stock symbol was LUV. Their employees embraced the story every day—and still do.
Just as Apple reinvented the phone, Southwest reinvented the airplane flight.
Yet most businesses still don’t get it. Having and sharing a good story, though logical, might seem out of reach.
Look at the state of business communication today. There’s little clarity and discipline—something that becomes apparent when you attend any business conference. It lasts for a few days and features one presentation after another that bores you to tears. It’s very information-driven, like being lectured to hour after hour. It’s cold and inhuman.

Stories are a more human and respectful way to communicate.
Many years ago, I had the privilege to hear Southwest’s co-founder speak at an industry event. Everything about his speech was memorable—even manly. (Imagine that!) His entry was dramatic. A walk down the center aisle under an archway of flashlights used to guide aircraft to the gate held proudly by his employees—an emperor under the wild welcome of fun-loving colleagues.
Kelleher’s dress was business casual at a time when all CEOs wore suits and ties. He even poured himself a scotch and smoked a cigarette during his speech. The approach was pure cowboy, and it perfectly matched the plain speaking and storytelling that held me captive. For 40 minutes, he told tales that illustrated the character and courage of his airline, which was setting a new standard in the industry.
I’m certain Kelleher was no lover of PowerPoint. His interactions were passionate and pointed. He told the Southwest Airlines story with pride.
Just a century ago, storytelling was a skill widely used. And although it’s been mostly lost in the information age, people still love stories. We need to spread the love and learn to embrace—and engage in—solid storytelling.
Listen, I’m Ready for a Story
When you throw a party, you do your best to make it fun. However, this doesn’t seem to be your concern when you have a big business meeting. Why are these meetings so boring?

A client of mine who works for a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm was holding a big two-day conference with his management team about a new initiative and requested my help. He was concerned about the last day of the conference because the executives were going to give speeches all day long.
I asked him, “Is there anything you can do that would make the agenda more interesting? We’ve got to be sensitive to people’s time and their ability to pay attention for two days.”
“Nothing, really,” he admitted. “Everybody who is on this agenda has to speak, and they’ve all asked for 50 minutes with 10-minute breaks between the keynotes.”
I could picture the managers in the crowd dropping like flies over the course of two full days of meetings. I imagined fidgeting, zone-outs, and hordes of attendees secretly checking their smartphones and having a nearly impossible time paying attention to the presentations.
“Can I suggest any way to alter the agenda?” I asked.
He said, “It’s too late; they’ve already chosen the speakers, and there’s nothing I can do.”
My client recognized the problem as I did, but he threw his hands up.
“It’s just how we’ve always done it,” he said.
I felt terrible for the attendees. They would be energized about a new strategic initiative being announced on day one. Everyone would be actively participating in some hands-on training and practical sessions. Yet the grand finale would be the ultimate buzzkill.
“I have an idea that might lighten it up and make it more tolerable,” I said. “Why don’t you introduce each speaker with a short bio that highlights key aspects of his or her life, including education, hometown, hobbies, and alma mater? With that, you’ve created a little story on each of them.” I suggested.
I went on, “We can find a short YouTube video clip from a movie or TV show that has some direct, yet offbeat, connection to their bio. This will give the audience moments of levity. For example, the head of sales gets a clip from Tommy Boy, the Chris Farley movie that depicts a guy who struggles to succeed his deceased father, a consummate dealmaker; or a What about Bob clip that shows a funny scene with Bill Murray strapped to a mast to make light of a woman who was a collegiate sailor.”
The approach was a huge success. It helped the company turn a standard introduction into an interesting biography that sketched a brief story about each presenter. Each humorous short video was a personal parody. Months after the conference ended, people still remembered the video introductions.

Speak in headlines, or risk losing your audience

“Dewey Defeats Truman.” Headlines get people’s attention and stay with them as much as an image. The headline is the hook that gets people to pick up the paper from the stand. When business people speak in headlines, they steal a page from journalism and frame a subject in a way that makes people want to hear more.

Think About Your Audience: Journalism 2.0 and the Elements of a Narrative
You’re not a journalist, and you don’t think like one—but you should. Anybody who regularly communicates important information and wants to get—and hold—people’s attention can benefit from a crash course in journalism.

In college I discovered a love for reporting, particularly sports. I wrote news stories and, later, a weekly column. Thinking about what stories my classmates at Loyola University of Chicago would find interesting was a constant challenge. A friend of mine, Greg, who later worked at Time magazine and Fox News, taught me a great lesson: he was always passionate about breaking the big story.
Those precareer lessons from him got me thinking about how to win over an audience. Our conversations motivated me to consider a story’s broader appeal, especially when I entered the world of brand communications and corporate strategy. What lessons could I transfer from journalism to the business world?
As it turns out, many of them.
On one occasion, I led a storytelling exercise with 200 executives at a global supply company. It was a leadership meeting that helped senior-level managers reduce a very long story to a 3-minute version. That exercise gave them the basic tools to summarize and streamline complexity into a cohesive narrative.
I was teaching a new strain of journalism, and they loved it.
From those workshops, key considerations of a great story emerged:

• Strong headline
• Compelling lead paragraph
• Clear sense of conflict
• Personal voice
• Consistent narrative thread
• Logical sequence of events
• Character development
• Powerful conclusion

And it must make sense, have a point, and come to a resolution.
We have a lot to learn from journalism’s focus on the broader appeal of stories. Stories aren’t just for news; they keep people connected. Just as a journalist does, we have to consider and respect the elements that make a good story. And as more and more organizations begin to recognize the value of this form of journalism, they must watch out for some common pitfalls that can turn a good story into a bad one.
The following is a short list of some of the early warning signs that occur when organizations misinterpret how and when to use storytelling to their best advantage.

Warning #1: Keep Stories Short
You have to be sure to limit a story’s length. When you begin to learn and embrace this process, you may become overly excited and start to get long-winded. That’s a natural reaction when you find a new tool that trumps boring and obtuse corporate-speak and makes your business human and interesting again.

When you start to fall (back) in love with storytelling, there’s an inevitable danger of holding the audience’s attention too long. Ironically, narratives solve one problem but might create a new one.

Keep them short and to the point.

Warning #2: Don’t Fall in Love with Fables and “Once upon a Time”
Sometimes people embrace the broader and more esoteric concept of the art form, exploring the intricate theories of narrative, fables, satire, and even the power of myth. What’s more, some companies fear storytelling because they think it turns serious business issues into playtime or that it’s going to somehow weaken the gravity of their message.
We’re not talking about “Once upon a time” here. We’re talking about a corporate narrative that explains why, how, who, when, where, and so what. These stories must tackle and decode business issues, strategic decisions, new trends, and complex market dynamics—while making all of it personal and intelligible. They are stories like Apple’s or Southwest Airlines’—seriously successful ideas that are presented in a human way. Be wary when you hear people talk about Joseph Campbell or Star Wars; you want to keep it simple. Tell a story that makes it easier to explain something vital.

Warning #3: Don’t Just Promote Storytelling; Teach It
Storytelling is a powerful tool. As such, it needs to be taught.
Some companies jump onto the narrative bandwagon and start to call every type of communication a story. Yet many people don’t have a proper understanding of how to translate information into a compelling narrative form. What’s more, people start sharing stories without knowing how to keep them tight.
One of my clients recognized the huge opportunity that lay before his company in having its management team master storytelling. So, I partnered with a small change management firm to design a customized Story Streaming workshop to help this client’s team grasp the basic elements of building and sharing stories.
The workshops were engaging and easy to embrace. Managers were given a topic and put in small teams of four to stream their stories. Each of them received a workbook and tools to help chart the source, stream, tributaries, and delta of their story.
“It was powerful to see managers turn boring, long-winded topics into tight story streams,” said the lead facilitator. “Hearing them weeks later ‘stream’ their stories meant that they knew how to convert corporate-speak into something short, sweet, and to the point.”
If you promote storytelling but fail to teach it, you’ll only frustrate and confuse people. Giving them the skills to structure and share a solid story can go a long way in their brevity development. It not only helps them professionally; it also shows them how a narrative’s conciseness can personalize their jobs.

Narrative Map (De)constructed
Narrative Maps consist of several important elements that make it easier to explain messages and give them clarity and context.
Let me illustrate this by going back to Steve Jobs’s iPhone launch as an example of how to map a strategic narrative.
Narrative Maps have a clockwise build. You start with the center bubble and add bubbles around it clockwise.
• Focal point (center bubble): This is the central part of a narrative. It’s akin to a headline and explains and isolates the point of the story: Is it about innovation, change, competition, or something else?
• Setup or challenge (the bubble directly above the focal point): What challenge, conflict, or issue exists in the marketplace that your organization is addressing? Why does this problem exist, and who contributes to it? This begins to isolate within the story the major issue.
• Opportunity (moving clockwise, the bubble to the top right): What is the implication or the opportunity for your organization? This is what some people call an unmet need or an aha moment; something that you could do to begin to effect change or to address and resolve an issue.
• Approach (continuing to move clockwise around the center bubble, the three or four bubbles moving around the focal point): How does your story unfold? What are the three or four characters or key elements? What is the how, where, or when?
• Payoff (the bubble to the top left of the focal point): All good stories have a conclusive end-state or payoff. How do you resolve the set up from the beginning? For example, let’s say that the story is about innovation, and there are four ways in which the company is going to innovate. How is that going to benefit somebody? Where does the story conclude? Who feels the benefits?

When you translate boring business speak into a Narrative Map, you apply a filter that makes it interesting.
Narrative Mapping synthesizes volumes of information into a visual outline that produces a logical, strategic, highly contextual, and relevant story. It’s also credible because your organization firmly believes the story is true and will have an impact on people, and it’s concise because it’s on one page.
If you map out your narrative, you could use that story to talk to a client or share it with a room full of key audiences, such as investors, partners, and employees. And you could have people nodding their heads in real understanding in less than 5 minutes.

Seeing and Hearing Is Believing: The Story of the Evolution of Commerce
One of my clients is a company that processes credit card transactions and provides a broad set of technologies for financial institutions and merchants. The company had reached a defining moment: it was planning to roll out a new set of products for the financial services market that went far beyond processing a financial transaction. However, the company did not have internal agreement about the essence of the message, so its management called me for help to build a Narrative Map and uncover the underlying story.

This initiative, called Universal Commerce, was about the evolution of commerce. But there was some debate within the company about the name: Was that term really about an industry trend or a set of products?
I led them through a Narrative Mapping session. I called a dozen key stakeholders into a room, where they discussed this challenge and topic in full detail. They started thinking about it as a story, piecing it together.
They asked themselves, “What’s driving this change?” We mapped that topic out and isolated key points on the whiteboard map. In the end, we rolled it up into a one-page Narrative Map that outlined the client’s entire story—a great one that explained how the way people do business has evolved over the years. It tracked how we’ve gone from traditional commerce, in which we go to a store and buy a product; to e-commerce, in which we go online and buy a product; to now, when smartphones and mobile devices allow us to shop wherever we are, and customers expect a completely integrated experience.

The story affects consumers and merchants in an immediate way. Specifically, consumers have a heightened expectation that technology is like magic and that these devices are going to work together and be highly personalized.
We took that story and turned it into a short video animation of hand-drawn illustrations on a whiteboard, which we called a whiteboard narrative. In this form, a narrator explains the story while it’s being hand-drawn in an accelerated time-lapse animation with music.
It took a few weeks to get the story straight. However, it we hadn’t translated this message into a Narrative Map, it might have been very confusing, with the potential to mislead their executives and sales force. They would have missed the potential beauty and brilliance of this cohesive perspective and ruined any chance of a good story.
The day before the big presentation to the sales force, the leadership team was rehearsing the whiteboard video in a meeting room at a convention center. They showed the short narrative animation to the company’s CEO. At the end, he turned to the senior executive who was leading this initiative and said simply, “I get it.”
He had thought he understood the strategy—until he saw the presentation. Now, it was truly crystal clear to him.

That narrative solidified a common and deep level of understanding among thousands of people. Here’s what they heard:
“This is a story of commerce—how the way we buy is changing. Consumers today want it all; they expect to get the best deal in the most convenient and personalized way and to be connected anywhere, all the time. At our company, we call this Universal Commerce.
For a long time, people didn’t have much control over how, when, and where they shopped. They would visit a store and determine whether they were willing to pay the asking price. Then came e-commerce, which brought greater power and choice. Buying online or in a store, however, were initially very different experiences. The more recent emergence of smart, connected mobile devices merged these two worlds and created mCommerce.
The convergence of offline shopping and e-commerce through mCommerce has created a new world of Universal Commerce where consumers expect a more integrated buying experience that’s quick and consistent wherever they are and at any time.
Imagine this: Your neighbor needs to buy a birthday present for his daughter. He gets an e-mail alert with a recommended deal on a jacket. He looks the jacket up, reads reviews online, checks pricing, and places the item with the best price in his virtual shopping cart. Later, as he approaches his local mall while running errands, he gets an alert on his smartphone that one of the stores has it in stock and will give him a better price if he gets it now. At checkout, he selects his credit card in his mobile wallet and waves to pay using his loyalty points.
As he continues his errands, he pulls up the Starbuck’s app on his phone to order his favorite latte. On his way, he selects his preferred payment method from his phone and when he arrives the drink is waiting on the counter and already paid for. He walks past the line, grabs his drink, and leaves, all in under a minute.
In a reality of increasing consumer expectations, payments are lagging behind. To become and remain relevant, merchants and financial institutions need to adapt quickly. So how will they keep pace with such rapid change and deliver a completely integrated experience?
The age of Universal Commerce is already upon us, full of promise and potential.
And in a world of endless options, we can make it all possible.”
That story has a significant and personal appeal to every audience that hears it. The salesperson knows how to explain and sell this vision to customers, consumers feel this company understands their needs, financial institutions see that this company understands how technology is changing people’s lives, merchants want this company to help them because they understand how they need to adapt to consumers’ expectations, and analysts pay closer attention to the company, because it’s leading an evolution of commerce.
This story has power and purpose.
Long story, short. People are buried in corporate-speak, but you can help them by embracing narrative storytelling to be clear, concise, and compelling.