Tag: Narrative

Tell the story to the ones who will listen …

The market isn’t always ‘right’, if right means that it knows how to get what it wants in the long run. Too often, we are confused, or misled, or part of a herd headed in the wrong direction.

It’s almost impossible to bring the mass market to its senses, to insist that you know better. What you can do, though, is find discerning and alert individuals who will take the time to understand. And then, if you’re good and patient and lucky, they’ll tell the others.

Which is why, over the last thirty years, farmers markets and other entities have slowly grown in influence. Because happy customers tell stories about remarkable products and services.

When you see the corn paradox, label it and act accordingly. Tell stories for the few, help them to spread.

via Seth Godin’s post “The Naked Corn Paradox“

Learn to tell your story …

We live out a stories about who we are, not a list of propositions. This may not seem obvious to some of us, but its true. Kaihan Krippendorff, one of Fast Company’s Expert Bloggers, noted the following in a post yesterday about the power of narratives:

When humans first started to communicate with each other, they did so by sharing stories. They kept their history and traditions alive by spinning a tale to connect a sequence of events. Because this has been going on for so long, there is something instinctive in our brains that makes us attuned to narratives and stories.

Stories are how we learn. As Iacoboni explains, “Early on in life we learn a lot of things through stories. As a child, you listen to your parents and teachers and you learn lessons from their stories about right and wrong. When you go to bed, you are told stories. There is something almost primal about our evolution and development that leads us back to listening to stories.”

So to be a great communicator, a person needs to understand the importance of using narratives. To get people excited about a new idea or thought, he or she needs to be a great storyteller.

I appreciate that Krippendorf left us with homework.

1. Does my company have a story? Where did we come from and how did we get here?
2. Can I craft my company narrative in a way that other people can relate to?
3. Can reliving my company narrative on a daily basis make my business stronger and more focused?

I got to get to my homework now, so why are you still reading?