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| 28/08/09 | | Contrary to popular belief, business stories are mostly short |
There's a perception in business that stories are long and time consuming. "I don't have time to tell a story. I'm just going to give them the facts," I hear business folk say.
The reality is quite different. Every month or so I run a storytelling for leaders workshop. One of the first activities I often run is a jumpstart storytelling session. Each person has 90 seconds to tell their story and from my observation most people finish within a minute or even less. It doesn't take very long to tell a story. See for yourself. Check out the stories we've published here over the years, read them aloud and see how long they take.
Sure, there are the epic stories told by professional storytellers than can last for hours but business stories are mostly short.
This Johnnie Walker ad is a good example of a longer story you might hear in an organisation when someone is recounting the story of a project, a team or in this case, a company. Note how Robert Carlyle gives us the names of the people involved. We are interested in this type of detail and it's often omitted in business stories.
BTW, what did you think of the props? Did they distract you from the story or help build the picture?
Thanks to Terrence Garguilo and Kathy Hansen for finding the video
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Comments
That's impressive, especially the timing.
Initially the props looked a little awkward, then came to remind me of The-Art-of-Memory - associative recall, both for the speaker, but also visually memorable for the viewer - can you recall the door, the banner, the barrel (not even mentioned, but our brain completes the picture ;) - more memorable than bullet points?
I've been watching The Mechanical Universe videos on google and love how they (repeatedly) weave in the characters (Newton, Galileo etc.), their motivation, reasons for seeking what is often presented as abstract formulas devoid of any context. Kind of like James Burke's Connections, retrospectively following a strand through a rich fabric - "History doesn't happen in straight lines" he says.
Any thoughts on media-skills in an age of such appealing and persuasive "public relations"?
Nice scenery, too :)
Posted by: ken at August 29, 2009 5:13 AM
I was fascinated to see that most of your story tellers finish in a minute or less, because I came up with a more or less identical recommendation when writing my book 'Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations' (http://bit.ly/1zIy1C).
After quoting some stories from famous speeches verbatim, I concluded the section as follows:
'I have included these anecdotes in full in order to underline the point that the most effective story tellers keep them brief. It is obviously difficult to be precise about the perfect length, but the evidence from famous speeches that both had an impact when delivered and were remembered later suggests that the most effective anecdotes hardly ever take much more than a minute to deliver' (pp. 233-234).
Posted by: Max Atkinson at September 1, 2009 7:17 PM