Andy Goodman’s story: The importance of communicating through storytelling

A few weeks ago, I attended the True Spin Conference in Denver. There were plenty of thoughtful presenters, but my favorite was Andy Goodman, author of a blog called Free Range Journal. Andy has latched onto an extraordinarily powerful theme: Telling stories is the most powerful communication tool there is. Andy earns his living by teaching people how to convey the purposes and functions of their organizations by telling stories. Over the years, he has assembled an impressive repertoire of ideas all based on the power of story telling. To be sure, the importance of telling stories has been recognized by numerous other people, including several other speakers at True Spin. It is often claimed that through story-telling, one frames one's message in a way that makes it memorable. It is also widely recognized that communicating through story-telling allows one to package arguments in such a way that they look like mere information rather than lecturing. How powerful is story telling? Consider this quote:

"If you can control a nation’s stories, you need not worry about who writes the nation's laws."
The author of this intriguing idea was Adolf Hitler. Building upon an entertaining blend of common sense and cognitive science, Andy Goodman takes story-telling to new heights. He has worked hard to become quite a storyteller about storytelling. In this post, I will recap some of the ideas he presented during his keynote talk. According to Andy, we all want to tell the truth, but in order to do this, we first need an operative definition for “truth” in order to give ourselves focus. "The truth isn't just what happened, but how we felt about it when it happened and how we feel about it now." As you might imagine, Andy has little patience for the dry presentations of facts that we often find on the websites of do-gooder organizations. For an example, take a look at this jargon-laden blurb offered by the American Cancer Society:
The American Cancer Society's international mission concentrates on capacity building in developing cancer societies and on collaboration with other cancer-related organizations throughout the world in carrying out shared strategic directions.
This is not an unusual example. As part of his presentation, Goodman displayed the websites of several of the organizations in attendance at True Spin, pointing out the bureaucratese. This tactic drew a mixture of embarrassed groans (by those belonging to the organizations responsible for the websites) and nervous chuckles (by those who worried that their own websites would be featured next). He warned that those who run organizations must be careful to not allow "mission-speak get in the way of your mission." What is the alternative to presenting dry "factual" information? As you might expect, the solution involves a conscious and careful use of narrative--storytelling. Narrative is so incredibly powerful because it sets forth our history, our identity, how are remember, why we give, and to whom we give. These emotionally charged ideas don’t readily sink in without the use of stories. In fact, without the power to tell its own stories, a culture has no opportunity to "grow up." Goodman made reference to the children's classic, Peter Pan, asking the audience why Peter didn’t grow up. According to the story, Peter’s answer was, "I don't know any stories." As we grow up to become adults, most of us stop telling stories. Becoming a grown-up in modern culture too often means that we are taught to communicate with technical jargon in order to be "serious." It is a travesty that so many of us get caught up like this. We are told to be more like “adults” and this is a shame because our stories effectively tell others (and ourselves) who we actually are. Stories allow us to remember who we are. [more . . . ]

Continue ReadingAndy Goodman’s story: The importance of communicating through storytelling

Suggestion for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Hire real script writers.

My family doesn't go to many movies at theaters. In our experience, modern movie theater audiences tend to be far too talkative during the shows and prices are not cheap. Netflix is the default option for my family. I made an exception for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009). On Friday, I had heard an director interviewed on NPR. She indicated that the producers had to work hard to earn the trust of those who run the various Smithsonian Museums, the setting for the movie. Plus the movie featured Robin Williams and other notable actors. Thus, I gathered up my willing daughters (aged 8 and 10) and assumed that even though this was a movie geared for kids, there was a decent chance that it would have some take-home value. I was sorely disappointed. The problem is that this movie, despite the almost-constant high-quality special effects, had no meaningful plot and no meaningful resolution, even for someone willing spend disbelief for the duration. I was already dissatisfied with the movie while the credits ran, but now that I have had further chance to consider the work both as a parent and a member of the audience, I'd have to say that I'm all the more disappointed. Those special effects constituted eye-popping pyrotechnics, but it's an old story for so many American movies: the producers forgot to hire a real script writer. Thus, the movie was merely one damned thing after another, with Ben Stiller and company dashing here and there, in a wacky and barely-connected series of scenes that continually threatening to break out into needless violence. What especially aggravated me is that the attention-deficit afflicted characters made almost no effort to think things through, quite a feat for 105 minutes. There was no sustained effort at problem solving, but only a constant need to drop buckets of wise-cracks and put-downs and to keep on the movie moving--to keep doing something, anything. This movie exemplifies one of the most prominent social illusions: that movement is necessarily progress. Here's my bottom line: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian presents a collection of paper-thin characters running amok, somehow not getting each other killed. Most notable is the prominent appearance of the character of heroic aviator Amelia Earhart (played by the fetching Amy Adams), who was quickly reduced to a woman who became all-too-willing to take orders from a numbskull ("Larry," played by Stiller) while maintaining her schoolgirl crush on him for most of the movie's 105 minutes. This movie must have cost many tens of millions of dollars to produce. Whatever it cost, the producers of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian could have spent a pittance more ($50,000??) to hire a real writer so that all of those special effects could have told some sort of story. Sheesh. [Hint: there are many good writers looking for work.] It was like the producers were concocting the scenes even as they were shooting them, even though this couldn't have been true, since big teams of computer artists had to be finessing in those dozens of special effects. What an embarrassment it must be for them to see their first-rate special effects put to such piss-poor use . . . .

Continue ReadingSuggestion for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Hire real script writers.