Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results

2 years ago, I read a similar book about the power of storytelling as communication tool.

I’m about 100 pages into the book and it has a similar message.

You can connect better with people by telling stories that they all relate to. Stories about your family, your experiences, your customer’s stories or stories on team work.

I look back in the last 12 months at the stories that touched me. Fernando Esquivel – our regional Vice President of Human Resources told a story about his early days as a manager on a factory floor and he was relating to the importance of really caring for people. The story he told about how he took the time to listen to someone from the factory floor about a personal issue at home. The story actually became a real life and death issue. Fernando explained that because he actually cared to take the time to listen and cared about the people the story had a happy ending.

My point and the point of the book – third party analyst data may be verifiable but you soon forget, numbers on a spreadsheet may seem convincing and graphs in PowerPoint may help you visualise but it is the (lost) art of storytelling that makes compelling and memorable impact on people because it connects their head and their heat.

Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results