Storytelling to Ignite Action  

 We are not talking here about Big-Time Storytelling, a theatrical performance, actually, delivered with animation and staging to an enthralled audience by an accomplished raconteur. Such storytelling has become quite the rage these days (and rightly so, as it replaces too many presentations of mere data and facts, without heart.)   

We are talking instead about storytelling with a small s, with the stories woven into the fabric of a conversation among meeting-exhausted professionals struggling with some complexity until almost offhandedly --a participant shifts the focus with an offer: I'd like to tell you a story.   

Then, for a brief time, their imaginations engaged, listeners seem to suspend their skepticism, confusion, or disbelief, to consider the action of the story. Perhaps the story is only a simple narrative beginning with There was this problem, and then here is what happened to resolve it. Nothing fancy, and hardly of mythic proportions. But effective in getting people to think in another frame, another mental set -- that of IF.   

From what anthropologists report, no known society, from pre-history to the present, was without storytelling, which is apparently as much a given in us humans as the tendency to make language. As well, there appears to be in humans a certain yearning to be told stories, a kind of story-hunger. That being so, an excellent way to influence people is by telling stories as we converse and discuss. Listeners become more engaged and less resistant because stories don't tell listeners what to think. Stories allow them to draw their own conclusions. And listeners often remember the stories even as they forget the data.   

When my son Aaron was small, he often asked me: Dad, please tell me another story about when you were a little kid. And so I did, with pleasure, tell him about the time we almost got caught in the apple tree, and of the snow-ball fights with the tough kids from the next block, and of hooking and almost losing the big bass. Nearly two decades later, Aaron still remembers many of my once-told tales.   

Similarly, former students from my three decades Of college teaching remember mainly the stories  the anecdotes, personal experiences, and examples from life. When I chance to encounter them in the market or the mall and they reminisce about some course they took with me years ago, they say Yes, I remember the time you told us about your Berlin Wall experience . . . or the time you were embarrassed by arriving too early for that Norman Rockwell reception in South America   

. The abstract and theoretical matters I taught remain archived in their texts and notebooks; but the stories are still alive.   

In his splendid book, The Springboard (2001), Stephen Denning sketches out the essentials for a story To influence change and stimulate action:   

 -- should be relatively brief and textureless 
 -- must be inherently interesting. 
 -- spring listener to new level of understanding 
 -- should have a happy ending 
 -- should embody the change message 
 -- the change message should be implicit 

As Program Director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank, author Denning discovered how simple Stories could have great influence when stacks of data- based reports had little or none. Somehow, well- constructed stories could be both disarming and captivating. They could free the imaginations of the listeners. They could, as he puts it, ignite action in knowledge-era organizations.   

Denning also recommends that these stories be authentically delivered, with conviction. The teller has practiced it and has full ownership of the story. Denning writes, You must feel the story as though it is your very own flesh undergoing it. There must be nothing foreign or exotic.   

When Jesus was asked by his disciples, Why Do you speak to the people in parables? he answered, Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Yet some of the people could be reached with a brief story told in simple language. When conversing with the intent to influence, can we do better than follow the example of such a master communicator? Probably not.