Monthly Archives: November 2017

Performing Arts = Business Tools

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“So what are you going to do with a degree in Performing Arts?”

I bet every student who’s ever studied drama or theatre has been asked this question. Ok, so you might get a job in theatre or arts. But you might not. Either way, you’ve acquired some really valuable skills that you could use in any workplace:

  1. Storytelling
  2. Empathy
  3. Improvisation

Here are the notes from the presentation, as a Keynote file. And here’s the basics of what we covered.

STORYTELLING

Business stories must have these basic ingredients:

  1. Stuff happens (who, what, where and when)
  2. People care (how do you/they feel)
  3. The moral (why does this matter)

People in business tend to ignore or gloss over the emotional content of your stories, but they shouldn’t. Emotion directs our attention to what matters and helps people remember the point you’re trying to make. Here’s a great example of emotional storytelling with a very clear business aim:

This TV advert – this story – came out of a business insight that 90% of laundry in India was done by women. So I set the class a challenge: see if you can come up with your own story based on this business insight:

You can use a classic story arc to give your story that roller coaster of emotion that will make it irresistible. As BBC Planet Earth II showed, even a humble iguana can experience a story arc:

In business, you need to tell stories about yourself (Foundation Stories) but you’ll find it easier to keep telling fresh stories about your customers  (Brand Stories). Here are two examples of one company telling both kinds of story. First, the Foundation Story, where the company is the hero:

And now the Brand Story, where the customer is the hero and the product barely gets a mention:

So that’s Storytelling. Let’s talk about Empathy.

Empathy means feeling what other people feel. Actors and writers use it to devise credible characters. They start with thoughts, feelings and desires then create words and actions.

But if you switch this around, you’re in the world of market research, commercial ethnography or, as designers call it, empathy. Great designers don’t just make new products because they feel like it. They base their ideas in detailed studies of what their customers do and say, then they try to work out what they think, feel and desire. Because, if you can work these things out, you can sell stuff to people.

Finally, on to Improvisation. This is a vital skill for anyone trying to innovate, to find new ways to solve problems.

Tell a story you can hold in your hands

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Seeing is believing, right? But there’s one sense that’s even more credible – and that’s touch. If you make your story visible, your audience can see what you mean. If you can make your story physical, something your audience can hold in their hands, imagine how much more powerful it becomes.

Even Genesis has a real apple

But often, you’re telling a story about something that happened elsewhere or something that doesn’t exist yet. How can you make that physically real? Well, here are three possibilities:

  1. Artefact
  2. Prototype
  3. Metaphor

Artefact: Any object can give a story focus. The story isn’t just the thing itself but the people who made it, treasured it, bought it or threw it away. The BBC and British Museum managed to tell the history of the world in 100 objects. Stuck for an idea? Take in an something you made for/with your last client.

Here’s one we made earlier

Prototype: Dating shows are hard to get right and TV commissioners are very picky. The makers of ITV’s dating show Take Me Out built a studio model with working lights for their pitch. The idea was that the women would switch off their podium lights if they didn’t fancy the male contestant. In front of sceptical commissioners, the producers lit up their model and knocked lights off one by one. “No Likey, No Lighty” became instantly real. (Seriously, if you haven’t watched this show, you need to stay in more.) So the moral of this story: if you can make a prototype to illustrate your story, do it. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated – LEGO or cardboard will feel more real than just words.

Metaphor: I pitched a piece of work to a company recently who wanted to improve the way their teams gave each other feedback. I pulled one of these out of my bag.

“Try and take a group selfie,” I said to one of the management team. He got up, took the disposable camera, tried to take the shot then handed the camera back. “Now,” I said, “imagine it takes me a couple of weeks to get the photos developed. Imagine we sit down in a couple of months and look at them in our appraisal meeting and I start telling you why your photography skills aren’t very good. You’ll barely remember how you took the photo, so what chance have you got of learning from the experience?”  I made the contrast between 35mm film and digital. “If you’d taken that group selfie on your phone, we’d all be looking at the results right now. We’d see what worked and what didn’t and you’d be able to try again to do it better.”

The camera was a metaphor and moral of the story was this: expertise grows with rapid feedback. More importantly, the physicality of holding a camera, winding it on, pressing the shutter all helps cement this message into your memory.

(I didn’t win the pitch, but that’s another story)

 

Business Storytelling – Vistage

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Stories can help you pitch or present an idea, they can unlock the kind of culture change you want to see in your business. So it’s amazing how often people fail to use the power of even the simplest stories.

Business stories must have these basic ingredients:

  1. Stuff happens (who, what, where and when)
  2. People care (how do you/they feel)
  3. The moral (why does this matter)

It’s tempting to ignore or gloss over the emotional content of business stories, but don’t. Emotion directs our attention to what matters and helps people remember the point you’re trying to make. Here’s a great example of emotional storytelling with a very clear business aim:

You can use a classic story arc to give your story that roller coaster of emotion that will make it irresistible. Even a humble iguana can experience a story arc:

Here’s a reminder of how Star Wars can be read as a simple story arc.

You’ll need to tell stories about yourself (Foundation Stories) but you’ll find it easier to keep telling fresh stories about your customers  (Brand Stories). Here are two examples of one company telling both kinds of story. First, the Foundation Story, where the company is the hero:

And now the Brand Story, where the customer is the hero and the product barely gets a mention:

Get used to telling customer stories in sixty seconds or less. You never know when you’ll be able to drop them into business conversations.

Stories unlock culture change when you:

  1. Identify the change you want to see.
  2. Find stories that illustrate that change.
  3. Keep telling these stories (and refreshing them with new stories) until the change is part of the culture.

Here you’ll find the presentation deck from the Business Storytelling session (minus the video clips).

Good luck. And send me the stories you’re proud of!

Storytelling – for World Usability Day

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Stories really can be simple, so it’s amazing how often people in business fail to tell a good one. The most basic ingredients of a story you can tell about work are:

  1. Stuff happens
  2. People care
  3. The moral

I’ve highlighted “People care” because this is the bit people usually leave out of business stories. But you shouldn’t, because emotion fixes our attention on something and helps us remember it later. If the emotion is strong enough, we’ll go a step further and share your story with others.

Here’s a great example of emotional storytelling with a very clear business aim:

#ShareTheLoad started out from a simple business insight: that 90% of laundry in India is done by women. What are the insights in your business and how could you turn these into stories?

You can use a classic story arc to give your story that roller coaster of emotion that will make it irresistible. Even a humble iguana can experience a story arc:

Your story should NOT be a straight line from “once upon a time” to “happy ever after” with no bumps in the road. You may be tempted to gloss over difficulties along the way but don’t. These are what make your story seem more real.

You’ll need to tell stories about yourself (Foundation Stories) but you’ll find it easier to keep telling fresh stories about your customers  (Brand Stories). Here are two examples of one company telling both kinds of story. First, the Foundation Story, where the company is the hero:

And now the Brand Story, where the customer is the hero and the product barely gets a mention:

Journalists and advertisers use all kinds of tricks to hook your attention when they have a story to tell. Think of this as using what’s in the front of people’s minds, not forcing them to dig into the back of their minds. You can get “front-of-mind” attention if you can make your story Timely, Relatable, Unexpected or Evocative.

Here are the techniques I used to help people structure their business stories:

  1. Story arc – where your customer is the hero.
  2. Mentors & Animals – how you help your hero is what makes your brand stand out.
  3. Cheats and Rebels – because we are fascinated by rule-breakers.
  4. T.R.U.E stories – journalists’ and advertisers’ tricks for grabbing attention.

Aesop is the father of animal archetypes in fiction and his Fables are still entertaining us 2,630 years on. At the other end of the spectrum, try Stephen Lloyd and Arch Woodside’s fascinating academic review of how animals are used in advertising.

The slide deck from this training course is available here as a Keynote file (321Mb). The worksheets are available here as PDF files.

 

Ten Creative Tools

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“It’s tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything like a nail.” In this memorable line, Abraham Maslow nails (forgive the pun) the problem of innovation. Too many of us only have one or two ways of working. That means we come at problems the same way again and again. Sure, it works. But will it keep working as the world around us changes? And will the same-old approach ever produce surprisingly new ideas?

Remember the Orange Test? Try it again, but this time with different colours. What’s the first thing you write down for white, green and blue? I bet it’s snow, grass and sky or sea.

Under pressure, your first answer will be obvious. So you have to push beyond your first answers to get to new and unusual. The best way to prompt this kind of divergent thinking is to say to yourself (or others) “Yes, what else?” every time you come up with an idea.

Tools 1 & 2 help you come up with lots of options right at the start, when you are looking at the problem you’re trying to solve:

  1. Why? What’s Stopping You?
  2. Questions for Insights

Tools 3 – 8 help you find lots (and I mean LOTS!) of possible ideas in response to your creative challenge:

3. SCAMPER

4. Brainwriting

5. Lateral Nudge

6. Break the Rules

7. Steal from the Thesaurus

8. The Shock of the Old

The last two tools give your new ideas growing space and spot the problems that might be lurking behind them.

9. Pluses, Potentials and Concerns

10. Pre Mortem

And remember, as Margaret Heffernan says, “great ideas don’t come from offices”

The worksheets from this session are downloadable here as PDFs.

The slide deck is downloadable here as a Keynote file (117Mb).

Postcards from Estonia

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Here are all the resources I used in my classes and talk at World Usability Day Tallinn 2017:

Stupid Mistakes Smart People Make (and what you can do about them) was my attempt to introduce the fascinating topic of cognitive bias in a light hearted way. I’ll post a link to the video when it’s ready, meanwhile here’s the slide deck and your own printable version of the Sunk Cost Fallacy worksheet.

10 Creative Tools gives you a selection of deliberate creative thinking techniques to use by yourself or with your team. Just like picking up any other kind of tool, some of them take a bit of getting used to. Here’s the slide deck and the worksheets.

Storytelling will help you turn your ideas into stories. Storytelling is the best way we’ve developed to remember and spread information, so why not use it for your business? Slide deck and worksheets here.

If you want to ask any questions about these, email me steverawling@gmail.com