If there was a professional field that would understand the power of stories and use them effectively, it would be the Communications Field. Alas, this is not the case. As an off-shoot of my post on Narrative in the Marketing Context, using narrative in the communications field takes its rationale from the argument that to capture a readers/listeners attention, one needs to use stories. This rationale is applied in various communications contexts:

• Speech writing
• Newsletters
• Websites
• Brochures
• Press Releases

A brief look over some examples of the communication outputs listed above will reveal that the field is more "fact reporting" driven than "storytelling" infused. Case in point: I was an audience member at an event where Cynthia Carroll (the newly appointed Anglo American plc CE) presented the opening address. I was eager to hear her speak ...  read more »

I recently had a bit of a professional debate with a colleague about an issue that pertained to the inner workings of a project we are working on. The "debate" ensued after I sent out an email (after numerous attempts to get the issue I was perturbed about resolved) to the entire project team to escalate the issue. My colleague did not take too well to this ploy and accused me of "creating unhelpful noise within the system" (the "system" being our project team) and that such a ploy was not effective is moving towards a resolution (because he was miffed that I sent the mail).

Through the course of our lively "debate" I mentioned to him that, despite his apt criticism, I was quite happy to create a certain amount of noise within the system ... that in fact, I was aiming to create a controlled amount of noise to elicit a movement towards resolving the issue. Whether not my noise was effective in resolving the issue I'll leave to a caveat comment at the end of this post ...  read more »