by Ron Ploof | Jun 25, 2018 | Business Storytelling
“That’s a great question,” the interviewee said, inserting a long pause between the comment and her answer. I had flashbacks to similar moments where I was also forced to bide time to construct my response. And that got me to thinking. What was it about this particular question that made it “great?”
Great questions shed light on pivotal moments from our pasts. These unexpected epiphanies shift our minds into overdrive to extract meaning so deep that it’s impossible to answer with a single sentence. In other words, great questions require story-answers, thus we need additional time to work out the details, setup the premise, and deliver the conclusion.
- What made you start this business?
- What event made you who you are today?
- If you had to pick one moment to relive, what would it be?
- What single piece of advice would you offer your younger self?
Great questions are time machines that deliver us to the most influential moments from our pasts.
So, when was the last time someone asked you a great question and you had to think deeply about your answer? In all likelihood, you answered with a story.
Photo Credit: Wood, Thomas Waterman, Artist. Thinking It Over. , 1884. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002723420/.
by Ron Ploof | Jun 18, 2018 | Business Storytelling
I’ve never had a problem staring at a blank page for hours on end. It’s always been easy for me to sit down and type. Don’t get me wrong. I probably don’t type about anything useful, but, the actual act of writing creates momentum that always takes me in a useful direction. Years of storytelling experience has taught me little tricks that help find that momentum–the most valuable being the test. I first wrote about testing in The Four-letter Word that Drives all Stories and will expand upon the concept today.
Tests work because they force something to happen. Positive test results indicate that things are on track while negative ones indicate that something must change. In other words, negative test results signal the beginning of a story while positive tests signal the end of one. And therein lies the rub for marketers who seek to be budding business storytellers. The problem is that most upper management forces their marketing teams to wear blinders that only allows them to see the positive test results. And that keeps the team from finding the real stories.
Think about the initial reaction a prospect had when first introduced to your product or service. Did the person like it? Was the reaction strong or tepid? Or perhaps the reaction was mixed—where the product fit from a functional perspective, but was too expensive, or the price was right, but adopting it would require massive changes in the way the customer did business. Such negative test results offer the beginnings of potentially great stories because something must change. Perhaps the customer will negotiate the price, find additional budget, or uncover an innovative way to transition from the old system to the new.
Negative tests are the basis for a cause-effect relationships and force counter-reactions. The stronger the negative test result, the stronger the counter-reaction, and the more interesting the story.
So, the next time you’re seeking marketing stories, try a test. Test your customer’s assumptions, theories, and their wills. If the results are positive, do one of two things: end the story or keep testing. Once you hit a negative test result, you’ll have found the beginning of your next story.
Photo Credit: Cassinelli, Pete, Bob Cassinelli, and William A Wilson. Bulldozer Freeing Tractor Stuck in Mud. , 1978. May. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/ncr000652/.
by Ron Ploof | May 14, 2018 | Business Storytelling
The statement, “journalists make the best storytellers” has always confused me. My issue comes from the their duty to report facts, which would limit them to narrative instead of storytelling. Journalists have an allegiance to the facts over their audiences.
Don’t take my word for it. Robert Siegel, famed co-host and journalist from NPR’s All Things Considered, described the difference between journalists and storytellers in an interview that he gave to Park Howell on Episode #140 of the Business of Story Podcast.
In the clip, Siegel recalls a conversation he once had with Ron Howard about his movie, A Beautiful Mind. Siegel asked Howard why a specific scene from Silvia Nasar’s book of the same name didn’t make it into the movie. Howard explained that “…it wasn’t part of the story line—the arc that we were choosing…” because he worried about losing the audience to it.
Here’s what the retired journalist had to say about Howards’s answer:
“For Ron Howard, a great filmic storyteller, to maintain the sympathy of the viewer…he crafted…a story…that omitted a…pretty salient fact about Nash’s life… There’s the difference between being a storyteller and a journalist; we (journalists)…can’t decide that if I leave out this salient fact from the story that people will listen longer. And in fact, we’re obliged…to find the point that might be hard to reconcile, that might disabuse a listener about some assumption about it, to probe to where…this story gets tough…It’s a big difference. And I think the challenge…for a journalist…is to be very mindful of the facts that we have to include in the story. Where we have to acknowledge where we got something from, even though that might harm the flow of the storytelling…but we’re bound to do that. We can’t just chuck it out because the story would be more streamlined and easier to follow.”
And hence my confusion. Journalist can’t be storytellers—by definition. Siegel is clear: journalists have an obligation to the facts; storytellers have an obligation to the audience and never the twain shall meet. If a journalist chooses to omit certain facts out of deference to the listener, then they’ve not only broken their sacred vow but may have ventured onto the slippery slope of activism. We might call such a leap as “fake news.”
Pandering to a particular audience by selectively editing the facts is more insidious than publishing bogus facts. We see this everyday with the cable news networks, for example, as both Fox News and CNN hand select facts that play well to their respective right and left-leaning audiences.
Journalists are beholden to facts. Storytellers are beholden to their audiences. While storytellers have more latitude than their journalism cousins, they too have their own code of ethics as we covered in Storytellers Tackle Ethics with DOTS. Storytellers are free to modify (D)etails, (O)rder, (T)ime and make (S)ubstitutions, as long as those substitutions serve the listener as opposed to the storyteller.
The one trait that journalists and storytellers share is the ability to write. The best journalists are masters of narrative. The best storytellers are masters of life and the human condition.
And never the twain shall meet.
Photo Credits: Delano, Jack, photographer. Don Jackson, a senior, delivering a news broadcast at the Iowa State College radio station. 1942. Library of Congress
