I am working with fairly senior people of an organisations and we are writing a change story. Some questions I ask and the responses I get are given below Why are you adopting automation? We have a lot more work and it is not possible to do it manually. Why are you making your factory smart? That is the only way to sustain our presence. Why are you hot desking? The management made the policy to...

So why is it even important that we know, How Women Experience Shame? Because of one simple reason, when you know where shame comes from and there are others like you experiencing the shame, you don't blame yourself, which is liberating. According to Dr Brene' Brown, when women were asked to share their definitions or experiences of shame, here's what they said: Look perfect. Do perfect. Be...

Sydney 2008, whilst having a day on the road, doing sales calls, I get stuck in the traffic with a colleague for over 40 mins. Chatting is the only way to kill time. In this purposeless, purely out of boredom chit chat he shares details of his renumeration package with me. I am certain he has made a mistake with the numbers he shared. So I clarify, only to learn that I had heard it right the...

Content, stories, practice, timing, gesture, voice, attire (yes, this matters a lot to women, even if they say, " I don't care ), pause and the list goes on on for things you have to know, apply, be mindful of when you are wearing a speaker's hat. I am almost certain one can do a PhD in speaking. Won't be surprised if someone has done it already ! But if my daughter wanted to become a speaker and...

If Women Told Their Stories, They Won't Be Hidden Figures. Yes, that is the talk I gave on 8 March at National Gallery of Singapore.( You can watch the talk in the link below ) If the talk managed to whet your appetite to want to learn more about stories and how they can help you in a boardroom, meeting, presentation, etc, then you can start with this ebook. This ebook is a short read infused...

Ever been in a situation when you are in a meeting and someone says something you don't understand? Most likely, you didn't ask because you were ashamed of how ill informed you were. Well, contrary to your belief, you are not ill informed but there is just something new for you to learn. Here are 3 stories of similar situations, one of which is my own. hope you will be encouraged to ask and not...

"We want to tell our story." "We want to tell it fast, 90 seconds maximum." "We want people to understand what we do." We want people to know why are we different from others." "We want data in the story that brings credibility." These are some not all of the "We wants" I hear from brand marketers when we work on a story with them. The American Cancer Society creates an impact without the crutch...

Presenting is marketing because what are presentations for? To promote or sell an idea, product or service? The primary goal of the presenter is to sell an idea to the audience, and the best, most effective way to do that is through telling stories. Here are 3 simple questions you can ask yourself when crafting compelling story led presentations. 1. What's the point you are trying to make? What's...

To study narrative is to examine ourselves. We think in story, process our world through the lens of story, and use storytelling to communicate ideas. One prominent economist believes that stories are the heart of human behavior. He says to understand the power of narrative is to understand financial booms and busts — and to prevent crises from getting worse. Robert Shiller is a Nobel...

It takes 40 seconds to ride an elevator to the 61st floor of the Salesforce tower in San Francisco. On the day of the pitch competition, the elevator doors opened and inside stood Salesforce President and Chief Product Officer, Bret Taylor. The door closed and the elevator started to rise. Mars Mundy, one of the eight finalist had a frustrating experience with repair shops that he channeled those...

Leadership team of a large MNC is working on a change story. The team is knowledgeable, so eliciting reasons / benefits from them to structure a change story is fairly simple. The reasons/ benefits sound something like this Harmonisation Efficiency Single Source of Truth We have the reasons/ benefits, its now time to wrap a story around them. Once the leadership team is taught how to assemble a...

We can prove it scientifically. In academic terms, an "emotionally competent stimulus" is any video or photo that elicits a strong emotional reaction. These images can trigger fear, sadness, joy, hope, shock, surprise, or disgust. The turtle video triggers several emotions at once. Once we see or experience an emotionally charged stimulus, the amygdala—an almond-shaped structure in the brain's...

We want to introduce a change in our organisation, we put together a powerpoint with charts, graphs, reasons and benefits. When we finished our presentation everyone in the room has all the information and knowledge. They might even agree but would they change? Perhaps not. Carmine Gallo in his Forbes article elaborates this point, Big numbers rarely spark action, but a sea turtle with a straw in...

February 2001, I am sitting in an amphitheatre along with 10 other girls who are all going to become Singapore Airlines flight attendants post a 3 month training program. Its our day 1 in the Singapore Airlines Training Centre and we are just about to start our orientation. I am expecting for someone to come on the stage and start a powerpoint presentation with details like, Company Vision...

Yesterday, I walked in to a boardroom meeting with 3 gentlemen waiting for me to take them through what I had planned to solve their team's communication challenge. As soon as I saw dynamics in the room, I knew that I am going to face some challenge today and that awareness really helped me navigate the meeting. At one stage, I made a statement - Knowledge is not understanding. I saw one of the...

"Anjali your voice, tone, pace, pitch, dramatics can improve." Over the last 3 weeks, I have purposely put myself in a situation where I knew I would get honest feedback on my speaking abilities. I have never been a believer of tone, voice, pitch and dramatics ( excluding pace, which I think is important to manage). My argument has always been speaking authentically doesn't require a change from...

Who is Judy Murray? Judith Mary Murray, is a Scottish tennis coach. She is also the mother of professional tennis players Jamie and Andy Murray. Much like corporate world, sports is a male-dominated world. This makes attending conferences, workshops and certification courses an intimidating experience. It is never easy being in a minority. Most women look for a seat in the corner or at the back...

Indra Nooyi was PepsiCo's first female chief executive. She boosted PepsiCo's revenue 80 percent during her tenure. One of the most remarkable thing about Indra Nooyi is her ability to storytell. Her videos are shared regularly in women in workforce forums. Here are 3 videos of Indra Nooyi where she story tells beautifully. 1) Women don't help women enough in workplace...

My client Ann ( not her real name ) and I have been working on a story that conveys a very simple point- data insights influence decision making. Ann will be delivering the story to the key stakeholders today. Whilst presenting she changes something unknowingly. Instead of concluding the story with confidence and saying, " So, that is a great example of how data insights influence decision making...

A group of government officials have come up with an idea, to launch a website that informs traveller's coming into Singapore what they can and can't bring into the country. They are required to present this idea to senior officials for a project sponsorship. Thier presentation begins with explaining the problem. The problem statement is projected on the slide For people travelling into Singapore...

Selecting an image to support your message is a skill. Every Picture Tells A Story, but how? Here is an image of Rosa Parks who was an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Here are things you can tell by looking at this image. Date - The clothes, sense of styling and black & white imagery gives us a sense that must have been in 50's...

If the topic you are talking about is digital disruption and you start by stating what is already known to the audience ie " Digital is changing the way we work and live", this start guarantees only one thing - you will be ignored. How about you make it personal, tell a story which makes a point that digital is changing the way we work and live. Here is how I recently recommended a client to...

Most likely you will start your presentation with introducing yourself. You do it because it is polite to do so. Or because that is what you have seen everyone else practice. If that is how you have started, you have just wasted the most precious time. Why? Think about this, if someone has decided to listen to you present, there is a high chance that they know who you are. Checking you out online...

In the past, data was only available to researchers and scientists but now we are inundated with data. This data inundation has led to many problems. One of them is instead of using data to influence decisions we are using data as an evidence alone. But the question we have to ask ourselves is when does data like 36,000 employees, 36 locations, 110 years of existence has ever convinced us that a...

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of State - BBC Four video published in November 2010 is still one of my favourite examples of Data Storytelling. Many credit data visualisation and technology used for this amazing video but in my view the beating heart of this fantastic data storytelling video is Hans Rosling's ability to storytell. I have been fortunate to meet him...