The difficulty in being the expert interpreting a story

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —June 19, 2007
Filed in Business storytelling

Scientific American.com has an amusing piece by Steve Mirsky that highlights one of the reasons why experts shouldn’t attempt to interpret stories—there are many truths in a story (in fact plausibility is more important than truth) and you will tell the one that suits your purpose.

For this reason we often work with many stories and help our clients to see the (sometime contradictory) patterns within them. Most importantly the stories act as a trigger for new conversations, sensemaking and agreement among a group of decision makers on the way forward. It’s this common purpose that’s powerful when there are no clear rights or wrongs.

Here is Mirsky’s example of two ways to tell the story of how a Jack Russell saved the day.

Consider this story, reported by the Associated Press in early May, carrying the headline “Tiny Terrier Saved Kids from Pit Bulls.” The story, filed from Wellington, New Zealand, includes these details:

“A plucky Jack Russell terrier named George saved five children from two marauding pit bulls…. George was playing with the group of children as they returned home from buying sweets.” So far we have an anthropomorphized terrier—plucky, and he was playing with them, mind you—and the Little Rascals returning from the candy store, when:

“Two pit bulls appeared and lunged toward them.” Next comes a quote from one of the kids, an 11-year-old animal behaviorist: “‘George tried to protect us by barking and rushing at them, but they started to bite him.’” Note that she goes beyond description to narrative herself—George’s primary interest was her safety. Now comes the resolution of the situation, according to the 11-year-old: “‘We ran off crying, and some people saw what was happening and rescued George.’”

The headline and the article thus conspire to portray a brave little dog that tried to rescue human children. And that may indeed be what happened. Based solely on the facts reported in this piece, however, we may construct a somewhat different narrative. The pit bulls appeared and moved in on the group; the terrier rushed at them; the pit bulls focused their attention on the terrier; the kids ran away. In other words, the same reported facts could have led to a story that carried the headline “Five Frightened Kids Flee as Tiny Dog Is Attacked.”

Thanks to Les Posen for the link to the Scientific American article.

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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