Dare I say storytelling has become trendy in the business world?
Rake through the transcripts of quarterly earnings on Seeking Alpha and you’ll find CEOs espousing the company’s unique narrative. When a CFO starts talking about a decline in earnings per share due to a pesky protagonist, we’ll know things have gone too far.
While storytelling and religion have always been intertwined, an NPR story notes that like the corporate arena, rabbis have decided to up their game:
For rabbis, the Jewish High Holidays are a ratings period. Synagogues are packed with people — many of whom attend only a few times a year — expecting to be impressed and even entertained by the sermons. This year, some rabbis are getting help from Hollywood.
That is a killer lead.
If there was an award for story opener (10 words or less), there’s my nomination.
The NPR piece goes on to share that the Board of Rabbis of Southern California organized a workshop that mixed Hollywood writers with local rabbis. The workshop even included one of the writers from “Desperate Housewives,” which I suppose could give a fresh twist to the basic concept of “atoning for one’s sins.”
If there was one upshot from the workshop, it’s the same one that surfaced in the Max Swisher interview, the Millie Garfield interview, and Peter Guber’s book “Tell to Win” —
The best stories emanate from personal experience.
A quick “thanks” to Evelyn Lee who works out of our Shanghai office for sending the NPR story my way.
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