Tell a Big Story (1)
Mythologies, pitch decks, tales of caution and motivation
At several points over the last 10 years, I traveled to San Francisco to raise capital for a startup. On one of these trips, I sat down with a CEO to ask for advice. After reviewing my pitch deck, she said something that has stuck with me. "Tell a bigger story."
Before my application of her advice began to improve, I had to become more attuned to the narrative arcs of stories, their fundamental structure, their patterns, the emotions they sought to trigger, and their target audiences.
To tell stories well, whether big or small, became an area of fascination, as well as a daily personal challenge in the context of company building, where I found myself in a constant effort to see and re-see the company's story through the eyes of our customers, our colleagues, and our values.
Three Writers
Soon after this encounter, I read three books. Each served to create a foundation for thinking more effectively about stories in the contexts of company building, technology & history redux, and navigating the future.
Harari <> Why we tell stories
In his now famous Sapiens, Harari argues that storytelling represents the biological infrastructure on top of which all human collaboration depends. The main thesis states that 'homo sapiens are more dominant than all other species because they are the only species capable of collaborating with flexibility and in large numbers.'
This unique collaboration capacity is a derivative of an even more unique language capacity – subjectivity – the ability to use language to gossip, lie, weave truths, offer opinions, and ultimately to create worlds (real, as well as imagined).
From subjectivity emerges stories. Stories evolve into myths, and myths into mythologies. Mythologies, most notably money, religion, nation-states, economic systems, and philosophies become the most powerful forces in the world, serving as the interfaces through which we collaborate and transact.
Campbell <> How we tell stories
Hero with a Thousand Faces examines the journey of the archetypal hero across many of the world's great myths and suggests that there is a consistent structure to the hero's journey across every story.
This fundamental structure Campbell called the monomyth, writing, "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
Duarte <> The patterns of good stories
In her book Resonate, Nancy Duarte encapsulates Harrari's thesis, that storytelling is essential to collaboration, and Campbell's thesis, that there is a fundamental narrative structure with an archetypal hero, to present a playbook for the consistent production of quality story architecture.
Her book is one of the most useful business books I've ever read for its reminder that the best stories have a single element in common: they position the intended audience as the hero in the journey.
To achieve this, the storyteller's charge is to identify the audience's location along the monomyth axis, and from there, to calculate whether the audience needs a tale of caution or a tale of motivation.
Suggesting that there are 5 plots in the context of cautionary tales, and 5 inverse plots in the context of motivational tales, Duarte coaches business leaders, coaches, and writers to use warning stories when audiences are stuck or sliding in the wrong direction, and motivating stories when audiences are adventurous and energetically pursuing a goal or dream.
Tell a real story
Several years ago, a friend and I discussed a situation in which a person on our team had been recruited by a large tech company and offered a job with double the base salary. The colleague who’d received the job offer was conflicted about what to do and felt that there wasn't a clear, right answer.
I badly wanted this person to stay at our company. He was talented, positive, and constantly coming up with good solutions. Furthermore, he was additive to our culture and was well-disposed to high ambiguity with little to no historicals.
I asked my friend what to do, and she returned the question, "what do you plan to do?"
I suggested that I would try to walk through the differences between the two companies and cultures under consideration.
One was a big tech company. The logo alone on the employee's Linkedin profile would create the halo effect of elite credential and serve as a highly predictable job finding accelerant.
On the other hand, sticking with my startup, though without the brand-name recognition, could lead to accelerated learning, given the employee would wear more hats and enjoy a broader surface area of responsibility.
My friend thought for a moment, and then said, "I think that's fine enough, but it doesn't seem like you're thinking about this through the perspective of your teammate."
"Go on," I said.
"Your job is two-fold: 1) help your teammate establish which opportunity is best for his career based on the values for which he's optimizing (e.g. autonomy, stability, etc); and 2) describe only what you know, which is not what the other company will be like, but what your company will be like.”
I began to respond, but then she interrupted me with this kicker.
“And all you know about your company, and all you can promise, is the ambiguity and the intense effort of early stage. If the person is optimizing for risk of this nature, your startup may be the right opportunity for him. If he's not, then perhaps the big company is a better fit."
The lesson I carried from this advice was different than the lesson I'd carried with me from the founder meeting in SF. Whereas "tell a big story," was a call to express the scale of an imagined future, this advice was a call to ignore the imagined future in favor of building toward an infinite relationship with another person.
This is part 1 of a 2-part series on storytelling.
In the next post, I’ll take a look at several extensions of storytelling that have been intriguing me:
The formative stories of a group of American 30-somethings
Generational differences in values and source material that inform the stories of a specific era
The degree to which the studied group of 30-somethings has been formed by cautionary tales vs. motivational tales.
👏 No love for 7 basic plots? 😂