When Using Storytelling In Business Don’t Lead With Your Insights

When I read this quote from Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon from 1971 that “ a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention” I thought about its ramifications for presenters.  Today, we are firmly swimming against a King tide of information overload, so Simon’s dystopian prophecy has come to fruition.  This is the Age of Distraction for audiences.  They are gold medal winning poor listeners and yet we have to present to them.  We know that storytelling is one sure fire way to snaffle their attention and yet that path is littered with landmines.

Very few business presenters tell stories at all in their talks.  They are enamoured with their high quality content.  Which usually means the results of surveys, research or data collation.  Data is rarely strong enough to linger long in our memories.  This is  because usually there is a ton of data, each morsel, each three decimal tidbit vanquishing the one before and so on and so on, until we recall nothing, as Simon predicted. 

Business presenters imagining their data is enough are fooling themselves, because their messages are not breaking through that wall of distraction and that poverty of attention.  For the few who do tell stories they are freelancing, going free style with no structure.  They just relate what happened.  What is the point of the story?  Is the delivery getting the key messages in front of the audience in a way that they will remember it?  Are the listeners seeing any relevance for themselves in this story?

Where do we start with the story?  Do we get straight to the point, do we go to the key take away?  “Hey, get to the point”. We often hear this from bosses and we mistakenly follow that direction with our storytelling.  Why is it a mistake?  We have to grasp the fundamental difference between writing a report, where we start with the conclusion we have reached from our analysis, otherwise known as the “Executive Summary” and giving an oral presentation.  When we launch forth with our recommendation, we open up the flood gates of rampant critique.

Many who are listening start thinking that we are wrong, have misfired with our analytical findings and have failed to account for important alternate considerations. Why do they react like that?  We have put forth our main point completely naked and unprotected, so that is all they have to go on.  In the sequence, our explanation of how we came to this conclusion follows next.  Critically, the critics are not really listening now because they are consumed by what they think is wrong with it, so the justification portion gets lost for them.

We should instead begin with our context, the background which has informed our conclusion, based on the data and experiences we analysed.  We need to populate this context with people they know, places they can see in their mind’s eye and lodge it in a temporal frame which the audience can process. 

The genius of this approach is that while sitting there listening to us warble on, the audience are racing ahead and reaching their own conclusions about the insights to be gained from this context.  Given a certain set of circumstances, there are a limited number of conclusions to be drawn and the chances are very high, that they will have reached the same one you did. When you announce it, the listeners mentally say to themselves “that’s right”.  Bingo! 

Now instead of facing an audience of doubters, one uppers and thrusters, you are dealing with fans of your work.  The key is to make the insight download very concise.  When we teach this formula, invariably people want to jumble a number of insights together and run through them.  Each additional insight dilutes the power of the one before it and so on.  It is critical to select the strongest, best insight and only pull the velvet curtain back to reveal that one.

The final step is to take the context and the insight and then package it up and place it on a silver tray for the audience to take home with them, when we outline the relevance to them.  Although we have produced an insight, it is an inert outcome.  What does that insight do for us, how can we use it, where will this be valuable for us, when can we apply it? When we receive the insight wisdom with that relevancy formula attached, it makes sense. We feel attending the speaker’s presentation today was time well spent.  We got something worthwhile which will help us navigate the future that little bit better and more easily.   Again, this has to be done very concisely, for the same reasons discussed about explaining the insight.

So the formula is context, insight and then explain the relevance.  If we mix it up we are making things hard for ourselves, so resist any calls to get to the point, by being forced to put up the insight like a sacrificial lamb about to be slaughtered.  Hold it in reserve until the scene has been set.  Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, great fictional detectives always revealed the baddie’s name after giving the background of the crime.  It is a well tested, tried and true formula for storytelling, so try it.