Introduction transcript

Storytelling is one of those funny things that's really easy when you have no idea how to do it,

but incredibly difficult when you do. If you've ever listened to an amazing speaker, it might had been

a TED, might have been a Think conference, [and you thought]: "My gosh, they were just such an

incredible communicator!" Maybe you watched the season of something on Netflix and you just had

to binge watch the whole thing in one go. I'm sure you've got a favorite book or a favorite movie. But

have you ever actually wondered why was it so good? What exactly did they do to engage with me in

a way that I thought this is one of the best things I've ever seen, watched, read, [or] heard?

Well, my name is Jeremy Waite. I'm a communications designer and I'd like to encourage you

to think differently about storytelling over the next couple of sessions. I'm going to introduce you to

a framework that we've invented, something that's going to help you to be a better communicator as

well. We're going to look a little at the foundation of storytelling, but more importantly, I want to try

to reframe storytelling as one of those "hard" skills. Not this "soft" skill, the nice to have that's just

about your tone and the way that you dress and the visuals and presentation skills. Whilst all of that

is important, there are structures that you can learn from the best communicators. The thing that

made them tell you a story that made you wanting more. The four magic words in storytelling: "and

then what happened?" [and] the audience is on the edge of their seat. Sometimes, that's easy when

that's TV or when that's cinema, but maybe less so when you're in the boardroom, or with your

team, or perhaps with your friends. Maybe you're doing a stand up or you've got some kind of a

session where you need to explain, "here's how we deliver this incredible client project".

Well, Communications Thinking is all about the art and the science of storytelling. Think about

what a story is. Like, what is it? What's going through your mind right now? A story is going to do one

thing: a story is going to make you feel something. Hopefully, that's good things. Bad stories can
make you feel bad things and bad presenters can certainly make you feel bad things. But a great

story makes you feel something.

The problem with that in our world is that that's not always enough. Because we can't just

entertain people. We can't just tell a really engaging or a really compelling story. They may go away

thinking, "oh my gosh, she was amazing" or "he was a really great speaker, I really liked that story".

Well great, but what did you do with it? That's what the art and science of true industrial storytelling

is all about. It's to make people feel something so that they do something.

This is important for all kinds of different reasons, but [here's] a couple of stats that I'd give

you to think about. First of all, the average executive you know, the average professional people that

you're working with every day, how many thoughts a day do you think they have? 70,000. 70,000

thoughts every single day. Most of them are subconscious. We can only process about maybe six or

seven of them at any one time. Probably a bit less with me. The challenge with that is that about

80% of the thoughts that you have are the same as yesterday. About 90% of them are negative. So,

first of all, you're speaking to an audience that may naturally have a certain mindset. Now, obviously

that changes by band, by experience, by culture. But all of these things when you start looking at the

psychology of storytelling, which is really what you're trying to do, you're trying to share something

that's going to resonate with an audience. It's going to make them feel things so that they do things.

Those basic principles are as relevant whether you're a band 7, 8, or 9 or whether you're one

of the most senior leaders that we have across the organization. [It] just boils down to, "how do I tell

an emotional and an engaging story?" There are hormones associated with that that we'll look at

later on. There's structures and journeys that we can look at as well.

But think about this: most of the people that we're working with feel overwhelmed, especially

at the moment. This data has been around for a couple of years and it doesn't seem to change that
much. We cover it sometimes in our C-Suite studies, the biggest study of its kind in the world. C-

Suite executives are asked, "Why do you do what you do? Why do you think the way that you think?

Why do you buy the things that you do?" and "Why do you engage with companies and people in the

way that you do?" There needs to be trust, there needs to be a relationship, there's going to be

generosity, there's got to be some kind of a bond, there needs to be a connection.

But here's the thing, roughly about four out of five executives currently feel overwhelmed and

underprepared for the challenges they're probably facing over the next couple years. That's almost

regardless of band. Most of us have impostor syndrome. We're struggling to try and keep up and it's

hard. Transformation is really hard. Working in a big company is hard. There's lots of

politics, there's lots of moving parts, you're working super fast, and you never got enough time.

You've got to communicate really big ideas, often using small words in short sentences in a language

that people can understand when you do your job properly. Right? Because people are

overwhelmed.

Here's what's interesting about that. If you were to look at why they make decisions in the

way that they do, what you'll probably find out is about 75% of business professionals like

yourselves make major strategic decisions with their gut. Some of them might say with their heart.

What they're actually doing is talking about a different part of the brain. They're talking about the

limbic part of the brain. That's the part of the brain that generates emotions. It generates hormones:

the great hormones of storytelling like dopamine, like trust that comes in oxytocin. Or, if you want to

make somebody laugh while crying, you're engaging them on a dramatic journey, that's usually

endorphins as the antidote to fear and anxiety and stress. So, if three quarters [of executives] are

making emotional decisions, well don't we just give them all the data? Well, that's really nice, but I
like to think of it like Brené Brown, a wonderful communicator and TED speaker. She said a story is

just data with a soul.

And what we're finding out from our research is that those executives that are making

decisions with their heart, sometimes they go completely against the data, even if it makes sense.

You might be looking at ROI, or cost takeout. You might be looking at why this project is going to be

delivered in the way that it is. There may be all kinds of sensible, rational, logical reasons why this is

the right thing to do. And often it still doesn't land. Maybe the win rates are not high enough.

Maybe you didn't deliver on the thing that you originally set out. Maybe it was nowhere near as

innovative because something got bogged down along the way.

Well, that's what happens when we don't tell the right kinds of stories. We speak to the left

part of our brain that informs, that educates, and that solves a problem. Often feels like that's the

right thing to do, because people need to know more things. They need to know about things that

they don't understand and that might be your job: to simplify complexity, to deliver that

project that's going to help them to transform for the better. Then you've got to try and solve that

problem based upon the humans, the people, the IBMers. That's what we do. IBMers make the

world work better. And we use all kinds of intelligent machines and tools and ecosystems of

partners to try and do that.

But the challenge is if you're only leading with the data, you're only speaking to the part of the

brain that's called neocortex. And here's the problem in storytelling when you speak to that part of

the brain: it processes all the numbers, it listens to your words, and it processes your sentences. It

has no capacity whatsoever for decision-making. Google it. Look at the neuroscience behind it. What

you'll find is that the other parts of the brain, of course, it's not strictly left brain and right brain, but

that limbic part of the brain that comes from telling a really human story, something relevant to you,
something personal, something that happens in the intersection of humanity and technology. You

tell stories like that, now all of a sudden, we're not just going to inform, we're going to inspire. We

don't just educate our audience, we excite them. Sometimes we engage them, and we entertain

them as well. And on top of just solving a problem, we try to challenge them with a unique point of

view. I've been in many rooms where the people with the most powerful point of view that

understand more than most exactly what's going on because they're under front lines of delivery or

trying to build are often band 7s, 8s, and 9s.

So, I just want you to think about that as we go through these next few modules together.

Think about the responsibility that you have, not just as a storyteller but with the energy and the

insights and the things you get to see that perhaps other people don't. So, my hope is that you'll take

some of these tools, some of these skills, and you will use them. We have a system; they don't have

to be used as a system, just things that you can pull up at just the right moment to try and help you

make a difference in your jobs.

That's our purpose. It's always been IBM's purpose since the moment it was founded in

1911. IBMers just make the world work better. You can make it work better by telling better stories.

Because if you tell the right type of stories, I genuinely believe that we can change the world

together. Does that sound good? OK, let's have a look at this system.