“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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My journey of reclaiming my life from my smartphone
You don’t own your smartphone. Your smartphone owns you. We all know about our smartphone addiction problem. This magic-device has taken over our lives and just doesn’t let go. Howsoever useful it may be, the hours of attention it demands from us (and the consequent loss of productivity) is too high a price to pay. What can be done? Cal Newport has some answers in his recent book ‘Digital Minimalism‘. Think of the book as a de-addiction program that will help you slowly reclaim your life. My Journey My own journey over the past few months (which is still work-in-progress!) may offer …
The SoftBank earnings deck: What was great (and what wasn’t)
t isn’t very often that the CEO of a $100 Bn fund (who’s been called “the most powerful person in Silicon Valley“), makes a public presentation, just a month after his biggest investment has suffered an embarrassing debacle. The stakes don’t get higher than this. What does the iconic Masayoshi Son do? Beat around the bush and ignore the core issues? Or come up with a detailed nuts-and-bolts plan to fix the issues? He does something in between. This post is my attempt at deconstructing the recent SoftBank earnings deck (released on 6-Nov-2019). Going past the initial shock… I got to know of …
Decoding the ‘Howdy Modi’ speech: A 1-slide summary
In front of 50,000 raucous spectators and millions more tuning in, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a historic speech to Indians and the world on 22nd September 2019 in Houston, USA. Acknowledged as a stirring orator, Modi used all of his rhetorical flourishes to mesmerise the audience. But apart from his oratorical skill, what impressed me was the speech’s content itself. Sure it had the usual suspects: the playing-to-the-gallery lines, the too-clever-by-half puns (“Energy at the NRG stadium is a witness to the growing synergy between the two nations…” Groan) and the exhortations for standing ovations… But if you look beyond …
Uber’s real business is trust: A driver’s story
When I recently booked a cab at Chennai airport, I was allotted one which was quite a distance away. “Sir, I’ll come to the airport, but please don’t cancel the ride. I’m coming from 10 km away”, said M in a sincere voice. On hearing his genuine plea, I decided to wait, trusting that he wouldn’t cancel on me! It turned out to be a good call. I normally don’t get into the typical cab-driver conversations. But in this case, somehow I did… And his story was fascinating. A tough professional life… Life for M hadn’t been easy. Aged about 40, this …
A vocab cheat-sheet for your data story
What is wrong with the below slide* (apart from the poor resolution)? Everything right?! Let’s start with the most glaring issue – it has no ‘message’ on top. A neutral header (‘Income levels’) does nothing to tell the audience what the slide is actually saying. Now, in a previous post, we have seen the importance of crafting clear, surprising messages from your data. Messages that get the audience’s attention, using the principle of norm and variance. When you attempt to do this, however, you may get stuck at the next hurdle: choosing the right adjectives. Adjectives? Do you mean like ‘good’, ‘bad’ …
10 guidelines to make impactful PowerPoint presentations
The phrase ‘Death by PowerPoint’ returns an inordinate 75M hits on Google. The reason? Many users just consider PowerPoint as ‘MS Word plus Headers and Bullets’ and end up creating dense, soul-draining slides. Perhaps that’s why Amazon did away with the use of PowerPoint presentations in its meetings… That’s a pity, because, if used well, PowerPoint is a great tool to tell a compelling, visual story. And you don’t need designer-level skills for that – these 10 guidelines are a great way to super-charge your presentation. I have divided these ideas into 3 sections: Narrative, Visuals and Delivery – Narrative: Your story in words …
Amazon’s 2019 shareholder letter: Top 3 storytelling lessons
Jeff Bezos published Amazon’s much-awaited annual shareholders’ letter on 11th April. It made the headlines for one particular inclusion: his ‘challenge’ to retail competitors, to match Amazon’s $15-an-hour minimum wage and employee benefits. Looking deeper into the document though, there are some critical storytelling lessons that can be gleaned. Here are my top three: I. Make it Surprising II. Make it Structured (here’s where we look at the 1-slide summary) III. Keep it real and relatable Let’s examine each one. I. Make it surprising I have blogged earlier about the value of surprise (using the principle of norm-variance) to get the audience’s attention. Bezos uses it multiple times …
Storytelling lessons from the world’s 3rd Richest Man
Warren Buffett may be one of the most envied guys on the planet – for his unparalleled wealth, that magic touch in picking stocks, and decades of consistent outperformance. But he also has a most unenviable task: to write a 12-page annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders – a document that is eagerly awaited by the investing world at large. Why should that be so difficult you may ask? Consider the facts. 75 companies, 365 days, 12 pages Berkshire Hathaway is not your normal holding company. It’s the world’s third biggest by revenues ($247B) that owns an incredibly diverse set of companies – seventy-five …
A 10-line cheat-sheet to craft your work story
Do you get stuck in any of the following situations: Your team has just completed a kickass project and wants to tell a story that does justice to their effort and outcome You are pitching your company/product to a key institutional client Your six-year-old never tires of asking you: “Papa/Mamma, can you please tell me a story” In each of the above situations, the issue is not that you don’t know what to say (ok perhaps in the third one it is). The issue is you don’t know how to structure your thoughts in a simple, engaging story format. If …
Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Yuval Harari have used this storytelling technique – you should too
What if I told you there is a foundational storytelling technique that all successful business storytellers use – one, however, that isn’t noticed by many of us? I have a name for this secret tool: “Norm-Variance”. Let’s look at some examples. The iPhone launch January 9, 2007 was an epochal day in our times: the day when the first Apple iPhone was announced. Steve Jobs was in his element, mesmerising audiences near and far with his pitch-perfect storytelling. One sequence that stood out for me in particular, was how he introduces the iPhone itself. Initially he toys with the audience indicating …
