London School of Economics Professor Mary Morgan says storytelling continues to play a key role in economic analysis today

See What is the role of storytelling in economics? Excerpt:

"Vignettes scattered through Adam Smith’s writing illuminate his arguments. Such thought experiments continue to play a key role in economic analysis today.

Economists are great storytellers. Their tales might be anecdotes of economic events that they have observed and which seem significant. More often, they are small, thoughtfully imagined stories about how the economic world works. Economists use these narratives to reason about why things happen in the way that they do – and perhaps what might happen next.

Where did this style of doing economic science come from? Well, maybe from Adam Smith, who is often seen as the father of the discipline."

She gives some examples from The Wealth of Nations, including his use of the the pin factory to demonstrate the value of the division of labor.

Is good business as much about storytelling as the stock market?

See The Rise of the M.B.A. Novelist: A novelist who worked at Google and Goldman Sachs says the next generation of writers may be toiling away in tech and finance companies by Cecilia Rabess. She is the author of the new novel “Everything’s Fine.” She previously worked as a data scientist at Google and as an associate at Goldman Sachs. Excerpts:

"Could business really be the new breeding ground for literary talent? Although this point is so obvious it may not seem worth mentioning, I’ll say it anyway: publishing is a business, a multibillion-dollar industry where art and commerce collide. It’s also an industry in which corporatization, conglomeration, the digital revolution, disintermediation, thinning margins, relational gatekeeping, the myth of meritocracy, private equitization, the price of paper, social media, social stratification, educational elitism and shorter attention spans have led to what writer Will Blythe has called “the death of literary fiction.”

No wonder stories of economic precarity and income inequality are so popular right now. Tales of late capitalist woe are trending, and stories of rich people behaving badly have never gone out of style. This year’s Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, for example, was awarded to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” a story of institutional poverty in the American South, and Hernan Diaz’s “Trust,” about Wall Street during the Great Depression.

M.B.A.s have a front-row seat to the boardroom drama. Good business is as much about storytelling as the stock market, and while you generally won’t find a classroom of M.B.A. students dissecting the finer points of a short story, the business “case”—a popular pedagogical tool that enlists empathy to practice problem solving—is not too far off. These are stories about beset employees or executives and they usually go something like this: A man named John is staring out of an office park window contemplating widgets. Inevitably he finds himself in a best-of-bad-options type of situation. There’s a ticking clock. A red herring. Discussion questions at the end. Alice Munro the business case is not, but it is ethos, pathos and logos, all the essential elements of story, if not style.

There’s another kind of story that business school privileges: stories of failure. M.F.A.s certainly tolerate failure, but M.B.A.s celebrate it. M.F.A.s are inevitably comfortable with rejection, but M.B.A.s romanticize and even fetishize failure. Fail fast, fail often. Fail better. Fail forward. In business there is almost as much advice for how to fail as how to succeed. Which is, of course, helpful and necessary in an increasingly competitive publishing landscape."

"An M.F.A. may teach students how to lay their souls bare on the page, but an M.B.A. teaches students how to market, sell and serve their souls up on a platter for public consumption."

Sell Me a Story

In marketing, it’s no longer about demographic segments, but about ‘tribes.’ What’s wrong with brands preaching a ‘gospel’ about values?

Steven Poole reviews the book For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be by Marcus Collins. Excerpts:

"people drink a particular beer not only for its unique balance of hops and barley, but for what they believe the brand says about them.

"But what is culture, exactly? Mr. Collins calls it the operating system by which we live, and includes identity, shared language, social norms and cultural production—art, movies, fashion and branded products."

"we belong to “tribes” of shared beliefs and passions (skateboarders, say, or heavy-metal fans); many members of these tribes will gather in larger “congregations” (alternative-sports fans, festivalgoers). To these congregations, brands should preach a “gospel” about their own values. (It is ironic that many brands champion the value of nonconformity to persuade customers to adopt their uniform.) With this rhetorical scheme, the author continues the tradition of commerce borrowing the language of religious virtue."

"Some of Mr. Collins’s case studies illustrate win-win situations in which a surge in profits follows a socially positive campaign, as when Nike made the NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick the star of a 2018 campaign with the tagline “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Most endearing is the author’s account of some of his own marketing failures. Hired a few years ago to rejuvenate the soft drink Sprite—old tagline: “Obey your thirst”—his team made an ad with an updated slogan, “Only for the thirsty.” They had somehow overlooked that “thirsty” is now internet slang for being lustful or sex-starved. Twitter had a field day, and the ad was pulled within 24 hours. This, the author comments wryly, is a good example of failing to understand how cultural meanings have shifted."

"Those who associate with a brand’s values are more likely to buy from it, so brands should seek to “activate their tribes”—as if we don’t already have enough warring factions on social media and elsewhere."

"those who push culture forward and create new narratives for the rest of us—including the author’s beloved Jay-Z, the writers of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and so forth—are more than herd animals. They are making something new via the mysterious process of creation. Perhaps the product is, after all, sometimes more important than the messaging."

10 ways to improve your ads (with storytelling being a big part of it)

By Paul Zak. Excerpts:

"The most important thing you can do to sustain neurologic immersion is to go back to English 101 and always, always, build a narrative arc for your commercial. 

A montage of unconnected  scenes may seem like a good way to evoke emotional attachment, but our data show that with the montage approach, within 10 to 15 seconds, the brain "gets it" and there is little reason to spend the metabolic energy to continue to be immersed. Low immersion shows that the information is unimportant and will not be remembered.

On the flip side, more immersion means more sales - because the brain values and remembers the content. Your commercial has to grab and grow immersion to be successful. A dramatic arc that introduces characters who face a dilemma that they then resolve keeps the brain immersed and wanting more. The data shows that a complete story arc can be done in as little as 6 seconds, so you don't need Tolstoy to write your script - and we all know you usually have 15 to 30 seconds to get your message across. 

Regardless of the time you have, you do need to have product-story congruence.  That is, the commercial must weave the product into the dramatic arc in a natural way. Many commercials tell wonderful stories and then just drop a "buy now"at the end. This does not cut it. Tell a story and make your product part of the plot."

"The story and those who embody it need to express genuine emotions that are absorbed by viewers and get them to care about your product as much or more than the many other things they care about. Solid narrative and writing, good actors and voiceover artists, and thoughtful directors are all necessary to create a hit commercial."

"What does drive brand awareness and sales? High and sustained immersion.  For this, you need a story.  Including a family who expresses emotions in a story is the way to generate an emotional "wanting" for the same experience. "

"Build a story around a pet and you can sustain immersion." "The pet, product, and story need to be congruent so that the puppy or kitty or pony is tied to the product. This is how to turn "awws" into dollars." 

"stories rule and unrelated quick cuts drool. Client data show that nostalgic ads without a story do not sustain immersion and have little impact on sales. 

Nostalgic stories, yes. Nostalgia because you think it looks pretty, no."

Farewells Masquerade As ‘New Adventures’

See Is That Co-Worker Really ‘Off to a New Adventure’? Almost every goodbye message from a soon to be former colleague sounds like the start of something exciting. Don’t buy it by Callum Borchers of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The message just landed in your inbox or LinkedIn feed with all the cheer of a holiday greeting card:

I’m leaving to pursue new opportunities!

I’m excited for my next adventure!!

Can’t share the details yet, but stay tuned!!!

Sometimes, there really is something cool in the works, and the exit was purely voluntary. Often, the situation is a bit more complicated. 

People who’ve been pushed out—or need a change after burning out or hitting a ceiling—seldom admit it up front. And the old saw about spending more time with family…well, didn’t we all do plenty of that during the pandemic everything-at-home era? Better to frame the end of a job as a triumph, or at least a step in the journey toward self-fulfillment.

So many of us want our jobs to reflect a sense of great purpose, which can make it unbearable to suggest that change is anything less than destiny calling.

“It corresponds to how much people now talk about following your passion and being authentic to your true self,” says Adam Galinsky, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. 

Vague, euphemistic announcements about chief executive officers’ departures are practically an art form. Walt Disney Co. recently thanked Bob Chapek for his leadership throughout the pandemic and said he had stepped down as CEO. There was no explanation other than that the “uniquely situated” Robert Iger was returning to lead the company. A press release didn’t mention that Disney executives and investors had alerted the board of directors to concerns about Mr. Chapek’s management. 

Salesforce Inc. co-CEO Bret Taylor said a couple of weeks ago in a press release that he wants to “return to my entrepreneurial roots” and asserted that now—barely a year after his appointment—is the time to do just that. The abrupt career shift is hard to square with the company’s original plan for Mr. Taylor to help lead its next chapter, not to mention the tensions that had been growing between him and Salesforce co-founder (and now solo CEO) Marc Benioff, according to people familiar with the executives. 

We nonbosses are carefully managing our farewell messages too, as if we were running investor relations at Me Inc. Controlling the narrative can feel especially important when many businesses are cutting staff, and as economists are warning of a looming recession.

“Nobody wants to appear injured in the marketplace,” or like damaged goods,  says Dale Gibbons, a management consultant in Louisville, Ky."

"CEOs and corporations, which portray every transition as smooth and well-planned"

"many professional breakups are recast as the beginnings of thrilling new exploits."

Two Studies on the Importance of Founding Narratives to Entrepreneurial Pitch Success

By Richard Gruss & Zachary A. Collier. They both teach at Radford University.

"Abstract

 

One crucial function of the entrepreneurial pitch is to alleviate investor uncertainty about committing funds to a startup in the early stages of development. New ventures rarely have sufficient hard data to substantiate their future success quantitatively, so investors often need a qualitative reason for putting their faith in the entrepreneur. Storytelling, as a powerful and time-honored method of transforming the intangible into the tangible, can go a long way toward establishing legitimacy and alleviating uncertainty. In this research, we empirically test whether the inclusion of an origin story in an entrepreneurial pitch significantly increases the probability of obtaining funding. This research consists of two studies. In the first study, we analyzed 486 pitches from six seasons of ABC’s Shark Tank and observed a significant relationship between the presence of a founder story and funding success. In the second study, we confirmed causality via a randomized controlled experiment. This finding has implications for entrepreneurs, in that it encourages them to concentrate on the narrative they are telling in their pitches. It also has implications for investors, in that it invites them to reflect on how important investment decisions might be swayed by presentational aspect of pitches."

3 Obscure Business Storytelling Books Every Leader Should Read Now

By Esther Choy of Forbes. Excerpts:

"For some time now, storytelling has been understood as a powerful leadership tool. When storytelling is promoted in a business setting, the main benefit ascribed to it is its potential to give an audience information in a quick and memorable way. As neuroscientist Paul Zak’s studies have demonstrated, stories give audiences “better understanding of the key points a speaker wishes to make and enable better recall of these points weeks later.”

However, storytelling has the potential to have an even greater impact. Since COVID, we have seen an increasing appetite for personal narratives and for taking a human-centered approach to organizational structures. As the popularity of Brene Brown’s leadership text Daring Greatly bears witness to: human connection is a vital ingredient for personal and professional thriving. Brown explains, “Connection is why we're here… it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”

It is a culture of storytelling that can drive this kind of connection that focuses on purpose and meaning. The three books on this must-read list below are for leaders who want to understand the full potential of creating a storytelling culture. Though these books are not obviously business storytelling books, if you read them, you will walk away with a firm understanding of why storytelling is a game changer for any organization that wants to empower its people to connect, speak up, and think creatively."

1. Career Counseling: A Narrative Approach by Larry Cochran (SAGE Publishing, 1997)

"This book effectively linked the power of narrative-making to the business world. Understanding how stories help us see and know ourselves will empower you to tell stories that create workplace connection and cohesion.

Cochran’s theory moved the field of career counseling beyond assessments and personality tests, by getting people to dig deeper to understand themselves through storytelling. With narrative-building tools, Cochran argues, people are able to investigate and understand the hidden web of influences that are shaping them into the people they are becoming. Without these narratives, we too often rely on cliches or what we’ve heard others say before to make sense of our own trajectories. Narratives can help us reflect on and understand our own intrapersonal choices. Though writing to an audience of career counselors, the frameworks are applicable to other areas of business leadership and intrapersonal awareness."

"2. Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence by Roger Schank (Northwestern University Press, 1995)

3. How To Be Interesting: In 10 Simple Steps by Jessica Hagy (Workman Publishing, 2013)"