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I know what you are thinking stories
Filed in Business storytelling.
Many business audiences like to hear stories that are directly relevant. So if you are a civil engineer, for example, it's likely you're not that interested in stories about electrical engineers. But sometimes (actually quite often in the case of innovation) there are great lessons to be learned from another discipline. In these cases it might find be useful to tell a “I know what you are thinking" story to prepare the audience to hear what you have to say.
For example, with our engineers you might like to tell them a story of how a concrete swimming pool was incorrectly installed putting the installers in harm’s way. These engineers are unlikely to see the relevance of a swimming pool story in the first instance so get them ready to hear it by telling a “I know what you are thinking" story. The first step is to find an instance where one discipline was inspired by the practices of another (check out the Medici Effect for examples). It might be something like a group of engineers who heard about the practices of a plastic surgeon and at first you couldn’t imagine there was any relevance, but the surgeon story gave them the idea that totally revolutionised a key aspect of their work. Once this story is told you can start on the story you wanted to tell at the outset, which might on the surface seemed irrelevant to the audience.
The idea of a "I know what you are thinking" story is from Annette Simmons' new book, Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins. Annette describes six storytelling patterns.
Thanks to Seb Fajzullin for asking me the question on how you might tackle this situation with stories.
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