“Great stories happen to those who can tell them”
- Ira Glass
The Story Rules Content Hub
Welcome to the Story Rules Content Hub – the best place on the web to learn all about storytelling techniques for work. Here’s where you get rich storytelling examples, analyses, viewpoints, interview nuggets, visuals, quotes, and much, much more. To find out how you can make the most of this resource, please watch this 12-minute video.
You can explore this (for now free!) resource in four ways:
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E07: Praveen Gopal Krishnan: Writer of India’s largest paid newsletter
The one email I look forward to reading every week During the pandemic, my daily newspaper reading habit was replaced by India’s finest business-news subscription product: The Ken. Very soon, The Ken became a habit. Every weekday morning at 7 am, I look forward to their daily newsletter, ‘Beyond the First Order’. Then at 8 am is the email introducing their long-form article of the day. But there’s one write-up by The Ken that I look forward to the most – a weekly newsletter called The Nutgraf written by the maverick Praveen Gopal Krishnan (a.k.a. PGK), COO at the Ken. If you’ve been a regular …
The seminal book on the history of innovation
Matt Ridley likes to mention an old joke: He adds to this: “All too often discoverers and inventors feel short-changed that they get too little credit or profit from a good idea, perhaps forgetting or overlooking just how much effort had to go into turning that idea or invention into a workable, affordable innovation that actually delivered benefits to people” This is a quote from a fascinating book that I’m reviewing this week. Welcome to my content recommendations and reviews for Aug-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a couple of videos. Let’s get started. 1. Booka. ‘How Innovation …
The ‘Game’ of Storytelling
I often think of storytelling as a game. Like every game, it has: – Two or more players, – An objective, – Barriers, and – Tools/techniques/hacks that you can use to tackle the barriers and win We are all playing this game in various capacities and contexts all the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to really understand these barriers and tools, so that we can play better and win more often? And wouldn’t it be nice if the story of the game is told in the form of, well, a story? Welcome to today’s blog: The Game of …
Five story lessons from an 800-year old tradition
On the 20th of July, a striking temple on the banks of a crescent-shaped river in a small town in southern Maharashtra saw an interesting event play out. The Chief Minister of the state (along with his wife) did the ritual puja at the temple to mark a special occasion. In a normal year, this temple would see several hundred-thousand devotees (4-500,000 as per an old estimate) make an arduous 250-km, 21-day journey on foot to visit it on this auspicious day to pray to their favourite God. But this year, because of Covid restrictions, only a handful were allowed to be present. …
E06: Prakash Iyer: Bestselling author and Leadership Coach
You know Deja Vu. But do you know Vuja de? “…there is deja vu. Where you see something new but you find it familiar, and you go to a place for the first time and you say wow, doesn’t this remind me of (something)…. or you meet somebody for the first time and you say, doesn’t he look like (someone)… and this attempt to try and take the new, and, and put it in boxes which are old and familiar for us – that’s deja vu. And … what can work for us is Vuja De which is the opposite …
Creating the software stack for the Knowledge Era (Part 2)
Two weeks back I wrote about how the Industrial Revolution had been propelled by a bunch of hardware (energy, materials) and software innovations (people and their skills). On the software side, the Japanese management principles pioneered by Toyota Motor Company formed the predominant stack that has powered efficiency and scale in the world of manufacturing (and now, fittingly, even software development)! But the world has moved from the Industrial to the Knowledge Era. An era which needs different hardware (computers, smartphones, the internet) and software. Now there are various aspects to this ‘software’ of knowledge work, but they can be divided into …
The Co-Warriors who could have saved America
It’s time for my content recommendations and reviews for Jul-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a couple of videos. Let’s get started. 1. Book a. ‘The Premonition – A Pandemic Story’ by Michael Lewis We are going through an epochal period – a period which will be studied by several historians for decades from now. Among the many questions they study, one prominent one would be: Could we have limited the impact of this pandemic? When they do that, this might be the first book they would pick up. Michael Lewis is among the most successful non-fiction storytellers in the world. Several of …
Creating the software stack for the Knowledge Era (Part 1)
About a month back, I had just completed an online course called ‘Building a Second Brain‘ (BASB) by Tiago Forte, on productivity and personal knowledge management. I had earlier written about a memorable moment from that course. As I was going through the course and reflecting on its implications, I realised something. As a student in #BASB12, I was getting a ringside view to something remarkable. Something that folks a few decades from now will herald as a breakthrough in personal knowledge management and productivity. Something that is essentially a revolutionary new software OS for the Knowledge Era. Here’s why. A revolution requires …
E05: Sowmya Rajendran: A Literary Torchbearer for India’s Gender Movement
Why should girls need rescuing? “So I used to tell her these fairy tales also, like Cinderella and Rapunzel and somehow when the story got to the part when Cinderella had to be rescued or Rapunzel had to be rescued, I would find myself changing the story because I didn’t like it. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up thinking that she needs to wait for some boy to come and rescue her and that she is going to be this passive person who doesn’t take charge of her life...” That is Sowmya Rajendran, a brilliant, thoughtful writer who I …
Chapter 2: The Human Immune System – Our Defense Forces
Phew, it’s finally ready! About a month back, I had published the first chapter of my e-book ‘Covid-19. Explained.’ on the basic science of Covid-19. I was quite overwhelmed by the response – thank you! Of course, the response just raised the bar for the next chapter for me. And, while working on the same, as I shared last week, I got a bit lost in the ocean of immunology. In this second chapter, I’ve tried my best to simplify an incredibly complex (and utterly fascinating) phenomenon – the human immune system and its response to Covid-19. Let me know what you think. Here you …
