On Storytelling (in business)

You've heard it a thousand times before. "You need storytelling skills." "X job has to be a good storyteller!" "Marketing/product/sales/design is really just storytelling."

I know I've heard it everywhere I go, from law school to career coaching to marketing, sales, and management advice. These bits of guidance show up all over the place, telling you to storytell.

And here's the thing: they're not wrong. But they're also not very helpful.

When was the last time someone giving such advice or platitudes defined storytelling? Or truly guided you through how to do it, or obtaining the skills?

Because storytelling isn't just one thing. It's an entire career in its own right. It's many. There are many, many people throughout history (and prehistory) who devoted their entire lives to telling stories. And you're supposed to what, just tick a box on your resume?

I'm not going to pretend I'm the ultimate arbiter of storytelling, but I have spent a lot of my life on it in various contexts, working on the skills involved both consciously and unconsciously. As a lifelong reader and TV/movie nerd, I've also consumed countless stories in various forms, and spent a good amount of time, classroom space, and podcast audio discussing such stories.

So as a writer of fiction as well as a product manager and founder, I want to talk about what storytelling is. And why it's infinitely valuable. And next time someone tells you they're looking for it in a job listing, you can give more than platitudes in return.

To start with, like I said, storytelling isn't just one thing. I am not attempting to, and could not, encompass its entirety in a blog, let alone a single post. It's a plethora of skills, techniques, and art forms, and it's going to vary from person to person, medium to medium, context to context.

But lately, I'm seeing more and more hot takes about its importance in business, so I'll start with that context: the aspects of storytelling that are useful in business, rather than telling stories for stories' sake. Even though I love stories for stories' sake, especially fiction, and I think stories have world-changing capabilities on their own. (That's just...a different post.)

So why do people keep talking about storytelling in business? Why is it treated like magic?

Because, in a way, it is.

Stories have a unique impact on human minds. Our minds seem to be wired for them. Our memories take the form of stories in their own right, so stories are uniquely capable of sticking with us. Stories are how we make sense of things, beyond just a list of facts. So, it follows, if you want someone to understand, believe, and remember what you have to tell them...tell them a story.

So it's powerful. What is it? Unfortunately, every time I've seen someone truly try to define what a story is, they've either gotten so narrow it excludes a huge range of great stories, or they've been so vague it's useless. (In learning to write, how many times did I see "what is a story?" answered with "well a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end!" as if that told me anything. Other than the concept of finiteness. And perhaps linearity?)

Here's the definition I'll use for now. A story is a collection of elements: character(s), event(s), change, an arc, and the stylish communication of those elements, whether in words, images, sounds, or some combination thereof.

In business contexts, I find many people think about storytelling as words describing events, and devalue or ignore the rest of the elements. (Or they focus on having style and ignore the rest!) But, I would argue, they all have their uses.

Some are obvious. If you're in marketing, your user/customer personas are characters. In law school, we were taught to tell juries a story through your case presentation--that mostly focused on depicting the events you wanted them to believe happened.

But stories' power comes from the combination of these elements. A customer persona means nothing if you can't see the change their lives could undergo, your product's role in the events of their life, the satisfying arc it could create. Let alone if you can't communicate this arc to your potential customers with style.

No single element makes up a story, the story is the whole. That, I think, is what the "beginning, middle, and end" definition is trying to get at, a sense of completeness. That and they're trying to sell you a book on the three-act structure.

Once you've got the story, you have to tell it! That's where the stylish communication comes in. And when I say stylish, I don't mean wearing the latest fashion or trying to sound cool. I'm using "stylish" as a bit of shorthand for the presentational aspect of how you tell your story. Form, as opposed to content.

There's no single correct approach to telling any story, but it's best to be conscious of the way you present it, because that's where a lot of the story's impact comes from. And like the rest of storytelling, this is a whole set of careers that you're being asked to fit into a line on your resume, and I'm not going to attempt to encompass it. But as an illustration (sticking to business context), this isn't just "I'll use a slide deck!" It's "I'll use a slide deck, with this color scheme and font, these images, this order and pacing, I'll pause for emphasis here and I'll repeat this point there and I'll try for a laugh at this point so they're feeling good when they get to this part..."

It's a lot. But it can be powerful.

So what's my point with all this?

I do have one. Actually, I have a few. First, I'm trying to argue that storytelling skills are, in fact, hugely powerful. Second, I'm hoping to provide some guidance from my own history with the subject as to the why and the how. I intend to write more posts on this, getting into specific contexts of storytelling in business.

And finally, I'd love to encourage more people to get into storytelling generally. Whether you take a writing class to get better at your job or because you want to be the next great novelist, I'll be overjoyed at every new storyteller out there. I firmly believe that more stories in the world will make it better, no matter the context.