Saturday, August 27, 2022

Apply the art of Storytelling. Everywhere.


Classic Fairytales > #Data & Spreadsheets

I was teaching my son the following expression in algebra -
x(y+3)= xy+3x,
however he was only multiplying x with y and leaving 3 separate. I told him multiple times via logic, bodmas etc but he kept repeating the same mistake.

Then my wife told him a story - A guest is ringing a doorbell of house, he is standing out of the house(x). In the house, y and 3 stay together (y+3). When they open the door(brackets), both y and 3 meet the guest x (multiplication) and they spend good fun time together.

The result was astonishingly strong, he didn’t do any further mistake! I realised the power of storytelling even in algebra.

Similarily at work or in life, it’s important to harness the power of #storytelling vs keep sticking to spreadsheets. Now, more and more organisations are switching to #narrative  writing vs power points or just tables as exemplified by Amazon  with the doc writing that crystallises everything from mind to the 6 pager what, why, how, who etc).

And to learn from classical fairy tales, there is always this broad structure at work as well-

- Beginning - Once upon a time | Market was like this…
- Context - There was a king and queen | We did a,b and c
- Problem - But they were sad because of | however the kpis didn’t move
- Solution - Then the hero did this | Then we took actions x,y,z
- Evaluation - And they lived happily ever after | Resulted in kpi movement
- Moral of Story - Learning | Learning’s and way forward

Do you have more such insights out of plain logic vs #stories experiments?

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