Recently I have had the privilege to work with a global organisation for the last five months to institutionalise Storytelling in their company. One of the things we did was regular submission of stories by their sales team that is globally placed to make storytelling a habit for all. A couple of weeks ago one story was submitted which was not used for a sales pitch or presentation and I found it...

You are responsible for leading a change management project and you believe in that change. Carol Dweck, a researcher at Stanford University describes this belief as a Growth mindset. Contrary to your Growth Mindset, there are people with a Fixed Mindset who don't believe in the change you wish to implement and are surreptitiously second-guessing and undermining everything you are trying to...

We like to think that when we take medication, it has an unfailing ability to get to where it is required in the body to treat the illness. But do you know, the cells we are trying to treat themselves can block entry to the drug because they think it's something foreign and potentially harmful. Basically, I don't know you, I don't trust you and I am not allowing you in even if you can do some...

This is our 3rd blog on Storytelling Techniques for Transforming Presentations For those who have missed Part 1 and Part 2, the questions I answer in Storytelling Techniques for Transforming Presentations blog series are questions I have been asked by clients. So, this blog series is a curation of answers to those questions. In this blog we will answer only 1 question. Why ? Because, it is the...

This is part 2 of our Storytelling Techniques for Transforming Presentations Blog series. In Part 1 of this blog series, we answered questions that generally run through our minds even before we start putting our presentations together. In this blog, we share some learnings which are centered around delivering the story. I have yet to come across any literature on Storytelling that covers these...

You may know how to craft a story or presentation well but presenting it effectively is a different skill altogether. A well-crafted story that is delivered poorly is like a vintage wine drunk out of plastic airline cup. How you deliver your story can significantly change your desired outcome. You may have amazing verbal skills but you can very easily fail as a storyteller because in oral...

The evolution of brand stories can be categorized in three stages. Fiction Stage: Brands crafting fictitious stories to trigger emotions have become a very popular way to connect the brand to the consumer. The connection occurs because they aim to trigger an emotion which matches and reinforces the consumer's world view. As a result of triggering emotions the brand story is felt, remembered and...

Happy Birthday Apple! We all know Apple as one of the finest technology brands but apart from technology lessons Apple has taught us some psychology lessons too. On Apple's 38th Birthday today, as a Business of Stories, I want to share one of the best told stories from Steve Jobs that I have enjoyed, learned, applied and benefited from [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTf0LmDqKI[/embed]...

What I want you to do is to go back to how you felt on the first day of your job. You probably felt a mixture of excitement and uncertainty. You would have had an orientation and got to know a lot of exciting things through orientation. One of the topics flashed on the orientation slides would have been ‘Company Values'. You may not even remember this because most likely it meant nothing to you...

2015 is 20 days away ( this post was written on 11 Dec 2014 ) and we are madly planning for a successful year. Much like every year we have a great list of things we will do and in 2015 we are determined to achieve it all. This is what we are thinking. Correct? Lets rethink this process because I have my doubts we will achieve it all. For the last 2 months I have travelled working on Brands...

We have 2 reasons to celebrate and 1 issue to fix today. Happy 60th Birthday Steve Jobs (you are still more alive than some who are actually alive) and Happy Maiden Ruckusmaker day. This morning, the first thing I read was Seth's Blog on Ruckusmaker Day. The blog ended with these lines. Commit to articulating your point of view on one relevant issue, one news story, one personal issue. Every day...

Today, my story is based on personal experience and centered around Humility. Recently, I was at Changi Cove working with Doctors and Healthcare Leaders. It was a fun day of crafting Narrative Medicine that involved hospital deaths, brand positioning and leadership. At one stage, Dr Ben Tan (one of the participants) and I spent 20 mins working on one of his upcoming talks. Dr Tan asked questions...

Following on from the last blog post on personal values, this is a great video on the use of video storytelling to get across the message on safety from the Victorian Government's Worksafe authority. [video]https://youtu.be/YFyxUtJdFS4[/video]...

My work gives me an opportunity to listen to a lot of good business stories. So naturally, I add those good stories to my story bank by writing the key details and tagging them with the most important point. However, sometimes I come across a business story that makes me want to work with the person that's telling the story. This happens when the incident being narrated exposes the entire fabric...

A few days ago my husband and I went to see a film. Before the movie started he went to buy a small bottle of water. When the cashier told him the bottle of water was $3, he returned the bottle and took back his money. I was aghast ! We had just paid $20 dollars for the movie tickets so $3 was nothing. And this was also the man who never hesitates to spend on holidays. How do you reconcile these...

[video]https://youtu.be/uoWp52mfUjg[/video] The two main sources for a doctor to know what is going on with a patient is via the patient history and the physical examination. All too often now the physical examination has given way to a battery of tests. In an era of amazing advancements in medical technology, this is a most telling and moving talk by Dr Abraham Verghese on the importance of the...

In a number of states in America, there has been the legalisation of the sale of so called "Medical Marijuana" and as a result, large numbers of shops have sprung up in shopping centres selling marijuana openly to people who supposedly have a medical need for it. Last week, I saw a documentary on the efforts of citizens in some of these towns to change the laws to prohibit these sales and to shut...

Adam works as a corporate communications head in a hospital and is just about to announce a new initiative to the entire hospital, the formation of a Pediatric Rapid Response Team. So what is the Rapid Response Initiative? In the usual hospital setting, escalating care for a deteriorating patient is mostly a hierarchal process with nurses informing the ward doctors who will review the patient...

Last week I was in a meeting with a client and we were discussing the content for a keynote that I am delivering for their sales conference in April. We also spoke about a workshop for their Sales Team, and the same question came up again. Storytelling, what is the Return of Investment? I personally don't believe it's the right question to ask but not having an impactful answer has bothered me...

As a busy working mum my day at 5.30 PM kind of goes pear shaped because I still have so many tasks to finish for the day and only 30 mins left to get home. Last week was no different except that on my way home I had to also pick up a set of ear rings and a head band from Forever 21 a shop close to the train station I board my train home from. I was running late and as usual I had packed getting...