Is Storytelling Just A Business Fad?
13 thoughts to transcend the trend
This week, the second episode of the podcast This Human Business focuses on the craft of storytelling in business. It seems a simple subject — after all, who could object to a good story?
Actually, an honest telling of the tale of storytelling’s place in business culture must include a point of contention. Many established voices in business have strongly objected to the idea that commerce can be practiced as a kind of story.
The loudest voice from the anti-story reactionaries has been designer Stefan Sagmeister, who announced at a conference in Toronto that storytelling in business is “boring”. Sagmeister aired his grievance before a camera and declared,
I am actually quite critical of the storytelling theme. I think that all the storytellers are not storytellers. Recently, I read an interview with somebody who designs rollercoasters, and he referred to himself as a storyteller. No, f**khead, you are not a storyteller! You are a roller coaster designer. That’s fantastic, and more power to you, but why would you want to be a storyteller if you design roller coasters? Or, if you are storytelling, then the story you are telling is bullsh**! It’s like this little itsy bitsy thing. Yes, you go through space, and yes, you see other spaceships, and yes. That’s your story? That’s a f***ing bullsh** story. That’s boring!
Sagmeister seems offended that mere engineers should aspire to the art of narrative. In his rush to outrage, however, Sagmeister seems to have missed the essential nature of storytelling. A story is the telling of a fundamental truth without regard for the literal accuracy of the facts it contains.
Even children understand this subtle art. When they hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood, they don’t object to the Big Bad Wolf’s ability to speak like a human being. They don’t quibble about whether the wolf could really disguise itself as a child’s grandmother. They understand that the facts aren’t the point.
What Sagmeister hasn’t grasped is that when roller coaster designers call themselves storytellers, they aren’t being literal. They aren’t claiming that their amusement park rides begin with the words “Once upon a time.” They’re telling a story about themselves. In that story, they recast themselves as something more than just tinkers with a physical job to be done. They’re telling a story in which people of all kinds — and not only roller coaster designers — can perform their work with a sense of higher purpose.
When the telling of a story is effective, there’s a kind of fluid play with the truth that both the storyteller and the audience agree to, with a willing suspension of disbelief. Storytelling is a performative ritual, like theater, but one gets the impression that Stefan Sagmeister is the sort of person who might go to a Broadway show and complain that the actors were following a script.
The Fad That Wouldn’t Go Away
Stefan Sagmeister isn’t alone in his derision for storytelling in business. The Financial Times seems to share his unease with the uppity pretensions of businesspeople who try to tell tales.
Lucy Kellaway wrote in the paper that, “Stories are best for the Bible and in novels, not the C-suite,” arguing that, “The storytelling craze has gone too far. I first wrote about the fad more than a decade ago.”
If storytelling in business is a mere fad, it’s a very long-lived one. Kellaway’s article was published by the Financial Times three years ago. So, by this reckoning, the supposed fad of storytelling in business must have been going on for at least 13 years now — no flash in the pan.
Kellaway seeks to depict business as a merely technical profession, claiming that effective corporate executives are like plumbers. “Plumbers don’t tell stories,” she says, “because they are too busy unblocking your toilet.” The suggestion is that people in business can be divided into useless storytellers who do nothing but talk on the one hand, and effective managers who focus on solving problems on the other.
On a factual basis, Kellaway’s argument is inaccurate. If you stay in the bathroom and strike up a conversation while the toilet is getting cleared, the chances are very good that your plumber will tell you a number of stories about his customers and their pipes. It’s through these stories that a sagacious plumber — and yes, plumbers are wise — will convince a customer that further work may be necessary.
I’ve done ethnographic research with plumbers, and learned that the most technically proficient of them view their work as an art form. Their pipework, though it lays behind the walls of their customers, is designed to tell a story of professional character to other plumbers who will discover their work in years to come. Kellaway makes the mistake of presuming that plumbers have no stories to tell simply because she has not taken the time to learn their language.
There’s danger in the belief that technical skill and storytelling skill are in opposition. That’s because storytelling is an essential cultural tool for determining what work really needs to be done. A business leader who refuses to tell or to hear stories will never be anything more than a technocrat — and may end up applying the most highly developed skills in profoundly wasteful directions.
Another Financial Times missive against storytelling in business comes from Andrew Hill, who warns, “beware when the boss’s storytelling turns into mythmaking.”
Hill makes a classic blunder, defining myths as nothing more than misleading depictions of the world. He writes about storytelling as if it is merely a tool for keeping people’s attention, and one that should not be trusted, because it cuts corners, allowing dangerous inaccuracy to creep in. “Stories make complex, important information simpler, more coherent, and more memorable,” Hill writes, and that’s certainly true, but the facilitation of information transmission is only a fraction of what storytelling is all about.
Myths are not the most misleading of stories. They’re the most meaningful stories we have, even though they don’t describe real times and places. The purpose of mythology is not the description of facts about who we are and what’s taking place. Myths articulate a vision of what could be and what we want to become. Their metaphors represent fundamental values, rather than recounting literal information about reality.
“It is a good moment to put storytime back in the nursery,” Hill advises us, as if telling stories, and listening to them, is somehow immature. The idea is that adults should simply pay attention to facts, and report the data that’s available to them, without spin. But which facts should we pay attention to? How should we organize the data? With these simple choices, we inevitably travel down the path of storytelling.
The irony is that the very assertion that pure objectivity is possible is itself part of the mythology of modernist culture. It’s a tale of the eradication of cognitive impurities through the practice of rationalist rituals. It’s a story as thoroughly emotional as the anecdotes it seeks to leave behind.
Human beings have no choice but to tell stories. The choice we can make is between A) Telling thin, emotionally dishonest stories while pretending to stick to “the facts” or B) Acknowledging our storytelling agenda, and learning to practice the craft skillfully and ethically.
Getting Past The Story Gimmicks
Certainly, though the best stories urge us to pursue a higher road, there are storytellers who aim low and are just looking for a shortcut.
People who follow along with storytelling in business just because it’s become trendy haven’t grasped what makes a good story. A fad, after all, is practiced without reflection. The fad follower is a knockoff, a mere copy of everyone else. If there is a story to a fad, it’s the story of a second-rate sequel that the author of the original never intended to create. The best stories are about people who have the courage to stand out from the crowd.
Those who simply are looking for a new gimmick to improve click-through rates will get what they’re looking for from storytelling tips — a temporary boost in their numbers. The advantage won’t last, however. What they overlook, by failing to read the underlying structure of stories, could enable them to form sustainable commercial relationships that don’t rely on mere trickery.
Businesspeople who look deeply into the experience of storytelling find big ideas around which true communities can form. They learn to go beyond clever spin to connect with fundamental human truths that data alone can never reveal.
The Principles of Business Storytelling
The following are just a few of the big ideas about story to be found in the episode on storytelling from This Human Business.
- Effective stories are mysterious, with ends that are not immediately apparent, though they seem obvious once they have been revealed.
- It takes a human to tell a story, because, although digital systems are remarkable tools for measuring facts, but they’re downright terrible at developing fertile fiction.
- Stories are not formed through conscious effort alone, and are listened to by human minds that respond at levels beyond their own awareness.
- Storytelling is a subversive challenge to the ideology of Silicon Valley.
- Any product, and any work, can become part of a great story, because no subject is boring to a sufficiently curious mind.
- Stories are vehicles of meaning, reminding us that our labors are not random, but are about something.
- Storytelling isn’t just a business fad. It’s a fundamental human practice that’s always going on — whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
- Stories are conceptual engines that give direction to the emotional fires that burn within us.
- In order to tell stories effectively, we need to understand who we really are, as well as being intimately acquainted with our audience.
- Stories can easily backfire against our business objectives, unless we are familiar the cultural field out of which they have grown. This familiarity doesn’t come spontaneously. It requires intense culturally-focused research.
- By helping us to think metaphorically, stories build ideas that transcend the merely functional benefits of a product, providing a business with a means to escape commodification.
- Storytelling isn’t just about describing the present. It’s also a way to develop a vision for what we stand for, and what we would like the future to be.
- Stories are models that show us how to get back on track when our businesses lose their way.
