story telling

story telling has been with us since the dawn of times. men have told stories pictorially at lascaux, mingled history and fiction in poems, weaved legends around the knights of the round table, invented the great american novel or regaled us on the big screen from star wars to the matrix.

the bottom line is men have told stories, mostly about heroes and journeys, others have listened or read, even though we all have had, throughout the ages, the potential to be our own heroes, to inhabit our own stories.

the rise of the internet and more particularly the revolution we are currently experiencing – web 2.0 and beyond – is starting to unlock this potential. all the tools at our disposal – blogs, email, social networks, podcasts, videocasts, smartphones, digital cameras, high speed internet access, cloud computing – now allow us to create our own narrative, share it, publish and broadcast it on a scale unequaled and at a fraction of the historical cost of publishing or at virtually no cost.

as if by synchronicity i now see story telling everywhere – even though story telling never did disappear, it certainly, or at least from my perspective, waned during the post-modernism and deconstructionism waves of the 20th century. i not only see it embodied in the blogging explosion we have witnessed but also in advertising, in public relations, in business, even in politics.

two examples jump to mind. one personal, the other public.

i never cease to marvel at how important a good story is for a startup. stakeholders, employees, partners, investors, customers want to, need to, require that the founders create and tell a good story. in many ways founders have to be good story tellers, and not only to others but also to themselves. i have personally lived this through the last three companies i have been involved with, and now am busy creating the narrative for this last endeavor i am involved with. in my opinion and experience startups that succeed have superior stories to tell.

now to the public example, that of the last u.s. presidential election. barack obama won in part because he had a better and more personal story to tell which he deftly developed over the past two years and weaved in the greater narrative of the united states and american economic, social and cultural issues. his opponent did not or could not and was out of sync as a result. interestingly enough, i think obama won the democratic primary because americans had gotten tired of the clinton story telling. i will even add that sarkozy followed the same story telling recipe with the presidential election in france. his story resonated more and was told more effectively than his opponent’s. he also won.

all y’all – yes, that is the plural of y’all – it is time to start telling your story and share it with others.
and i recommend you read two books: here and here

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::