“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”
– Robert McAfee Brown, American theologian and activist (1920-2001)
Ideas are the currency of the difference makers.
Storytelling is their means of transacting — “the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.”
The world today tries to focus on the sound bite, at the expense of the concept — of the idea. The world today tries to draw us to the sensational, at the expense of the important. The world today wants us to believe that 144 characters is all we need in order to understand, and that a snippet on YouTube can stand in for storytelling. The world today provides ample incentive to take short cuts, and the on-ramps to difference making are rarely built along short-cuts.
Storytelling makes a difference, because it gives ideas sunlight and water and oxygen. It gives ideas fertilizer and good soil, so that roots can run deep and hold strong. Storytelling sets an idea apart, because it allows the idea to become real. Storytelling enables difference making because it engages the audience emotionally, and creates intimacy between the idea and the problem it might solve.
The anti-storytelling movement is built on blind internet auctions; on closed envelope bids. The anti-storytelling movement is led by procurement departments who are paid to commoditize products, solutions and services that can not and should not be commoditized. The goal of the anti-storytellers is to minimize ideas. They trade in the currency of the fearful. Avoiding blame is their means of transacting.
Ideas are the currency of the difference makers. And storytelling is their means of transacting.
Find a platform from which to tell your story. And, tell it like it makes a difference. Because it does.
Manish Pandey says
Hi Steve,
Thanks for this. Storytelling is, no doubt, a great way to put ideas across. And we must remember there’s good storytelling, as there’s bad storytelling.
What also struck me about this piece is–and I could be very well mistaken–that it seems to suggest that there is a conspiracy of sorts (“anti-storytelling movement”) afoot which is hellbent on making us all servile acolytes of the Twitteratti and the likes! These means (social media) can serve a great purpose as powerfully demonstrated by the Arab Spring, just to cite one example. What’s important to know is they can supplement the wider narrative and cannot be a substitute for the story itself.