I love the idea of rabbis holding a workshop with Hollywood writers - picture the intersection of “Desperate Housewives” and Moses - to strengthen their storytelling in front of their congregation. 

The point is, business storytelling benefits from other vantage points. 

That’s why I welcome today’s perspective from Nancy Dodd whose credits range from screenplays to her latest book called the Writer’s Compass which guides aspiring novelists through the storytelling process. Nancy also teaches at the Graziadio School of Business at Pepperdine University where she’s gained first-hand experience in exploring storytelling in a business context. 

In today’s post, she tackles kickstarting the creative process.

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By Nancy Ellen Dodd

Storytelling is about creating and developing ideas. Most businesses do the same thing. Why not use the same tools storytellers use to stimulate business ideas?

In my role as an academic editor in a business school at a university, and as an adjunct in the creative writing department, I’m exposed to very different forms of writing. Academic writing is formal, stiff, and usually difficult to read, understand, or at the least to decipher. Why say it in one sentence when you can stretch it out to a paragraph of multi-syllabic words that are seldom used in every day conversation. Business writing is just the opposite: crisp, clear, direct. Creative writing is about flourish: developing ideas into storytelling. Because I work with all three forms, my interest includes developing crossovers, one of those the ways that businesses can use storytelling and creative writing tools to enhance their thought processes.

The following exercise is a way to stimulate idea generation as well as a way to learn how to express a new idea. This can be done as team exercise or by an individual.

Clustering

Clustering for ideas, also called mapping, is a storytelling technique developed by Gabriele Rico, Ph.D., which she presented in her book Writing the Natural Way. The process is a way of playing with language to create a cluster of tightly or loosely associated words that will then begin to form the genesis for idea development.

Start with any word in the center circle, nouns or verbs are best, although it might be a concept such as “love” or “freedom” or “enterprise.”  Around that word create new circles with secondary words brought to mind from the center word. Around the secondary circles, create new circles with a third tier of words that are associated with the secondary words. For example, if the center word was cat, secondary words might be hair, disdainful, string, tongue, cat food, windowsill, mouse. Around hair might be fur; connected to disdainful might be arrogance and aloofness,

A roughly drawn cluster might look something like this, with a word in each circle:

Off the top of my head, the story I might write about the cat could involve an unwanted visitor who the cat sitting in the windowsill sees coming to the door. The man breaks in to burglarize the house, which is full of cat hair, to which the burglar is allergic, and the cat seeing the man begin to sneeze things the glove he is wearing is a mouse and attacks the unwanted burglar. Now this is a silly little story, but if I keep drawing this idea out, I might find the genesis of a story.

Exercise

The first part of this exercise is for you to create a cluster of words. Now look at these words, as you were writing them, what thoughts came to mind? What random associations could you put together to create a story? Try writing a story, any story. Even a weak or an abstract story is a starter.

The second part of this exercise is to use what you just learned about writing a story to develop a business idea. This is the scenario. The CEO of the company you work for has just come to you and explained that the board of directors would like for your department to come up with something new. Either a new product, a new service, or a new way of doing a task better that you are already performing. The CEO needs a one-page synopsis for a proposal from you right away for the board members to look over.

1. Start with clustering some ideas using related words for your company, product, service, or particular department issues.
2. What relationships did these words make you think about? Did any new ideas occur to you?
3. Write a brief summary for putting these ideas into action.

The first part of this exercise is to help you to see ways to develop a story from word associations and to experiment with creatively expressing your ideas. The purpose of clustering in the second part of the exercise is to help you pull together random ideas that may be in your head, but not clear to you, and to see their associations. The third part of the exercise is to use the storytelling technique to help you express those ideas.

For the more analytical person, sometimes this exercise works better in a group where people with both analytical and creative outlooks can combine and synergize ideas.

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Nancy devotes her blog to the craft of writing and finding your audience. She can be reached at nancy.dodd@pepperdine.edu.

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I had the pleasure of speaking at Compass USA’s communicators’ conference in North Carolina this morning.

As one of the largest food service companies in the country, Compass has a good story to tell. 

With all due respect to my technology brethren, it was liberating to discuss storytelling in the context of banana bread, grilled salmon and all things food. 

It turns out that Compass and its various brands have already spiced up their content - sorry, couldn’t resist - through storytelling techniques. 

During the discussion, I highlighted the following example of owned media from the Wolfgang Puck brand. 

 

(Click here for full piece)

The format draws from the same journalistic approach one would find in a magazine. 

Notice that Scott Drewno isn’t trying to weave the company’s messages into his answers. 

Just like a journalist interview, the idea is for the answers to spill out naturally. 

Along this line, Scott comes across as genuine, perhaps even looking to trigger a reaction on the part of the reader: 

Q: What’s your new favorite ingredient? 

A: Chicken feet 

Does the vignette tell a story by the truest definition: A hero overcomes a quagmire for a happy ending? 

No. 

But applying storytelling techniques like anecdotes, the unexpected - Scrapple in his fridge - and fun with language leaves you feeling like you know Chef Drewno and through him, the company. 

You can’t personify a company through a pork dumpling (even with a dash of Sriracha).  

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We posted our infographic called “Storytelling vs. Corporate Speak” last week.

In brainstorming a communications push behind the infogrpaphic with social media guru Steve Farnsworth, he suggested developing supporting assets like a video.

Rather than put me on video pontificating about the infographic - not good TV, to be kind - we decided to take a more creative approach.

I particularly like the vignette that kicks off “But for some reason, business communication often goes terribly wrong.” Hopefully, we didn’t violate any copyrights by borrowing from Seinfeld. (If we did, I’m sure I’ll be hearing from Kramer,)

Kudos to Sheri Baer and Tom Wohlmut who created the video.

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Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried the story, “A Kenmore Fridge, at Costco?”

No, I’m not tracking the white goods sector with a keen eye.

It’s the sourcing of the story - Sears plans to sell its Kenmore brand of appliances through other retailers - that got my attention.

How does the Journal know this?

Check out the trigger:

According to a LinkedIn job posting, Sears is seeking a chief marketing officer for its appliance line whose responsibilities will include promoting appliance purchases through “external groups,” such as Costco Wholesale Corp., which recently struck a deal to carry the Craftsman line. According to the posting, which was confirmed by Sears, the executive would also “evaluate evolving marketing landscape to identify new, emerging ways to reach current and future target audiences.”

Nothing particularly clever about this.

Journalists have been raking the classified ads in search of the almighty story for years.

And we know journalists increasingly use LinkedIn as a sourcing tool since the folks at LinkedIn spoke at our office last year and revealed a training program focused on the media.

Here’s the point.

The communications function should be putting this same dynamic to use in building one-off stories.

The key lies in creating the right content captured in the following chart

Needless to say, the opportunity for storytelling lies in the upper-right quadrant.

It’s all about the content NOT in the public domain.

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Sheri Baer, the Agency’s broadcast practice leader, regularly contributes to this forum, last taking readers behind the curtain of Bloomberg TV. 

In her latest take, she makes the point that leaders lead regardless of the market conditions. 

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This is the wrong time of year to own tech … And if you didn’t believe me before, just take a look at Novellus Systems, Inc. … the semiconductor equipment manufacturer that got run over by a truck today.

Wow.

That’s hardly the introduction you’d want to hear if you’re a CEO about to appear on “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer. But despite announcing a pullback and disappointing guidance, Novellus (NASDAQ: NVLS) CEO Rick Hill still accepted Cramer’s invite to appear on the July 12 show following the company’s Q2-FY11 earnings call. 

As a CEO, Hill is as transparent as they come. He’s a “call it like I see it” kind of guy. And back on July 12, he told Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview he didn’t like what he was seeing:

What I’ve seen is an increasing feeling of economic doom on the part of corporate leaders almost anywhere I’ve been visiting. I think that’s giving many corporate leaders pause that they don’t want to be the last one to be holding all the inventory.

Hard to believe, but Hill’s forthright take on the market even surprised Cramer a bit, provoking a lengthy exchange which you can see below.

The segment ran over eight minutes with Cramer playing back excerpts on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” the following morning, triggering another four minutes of discussion with his fellow hosts. After acknowledging that Hill’s “track record with us is great,” Cramer also commented: “Rick was too downbeat.” 

Fast forward a few weeks -

Hill’s prescient comments certainly show his track record to be intact, reinforcing his business smarts and keen market insight with both Cramer and CNBC viewers. It should be noted that there was some internal questioning as to whether Hill should go on the air, given the volatile market conditions. The comment back was, “Trading rooms and institutional buysiders have their screens tuned to CNBC and Bloomberg all day. They’re bombarded with investment ideas 24/7, so airtime and exposure are good for us.” The takeaway: As a proven thought leader, Hill garners even more respect for putting it out there - in good times and bad.

Back on August 12, Hill also commented:

There’s always going to be some demand. This is a temporary pause. It’s not a permanent pause.

No doubt everyone from Wall Street to Main Street are hoping those words from a proven thought leader will also be on track. 

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