I’ve been given a brief recently for chief exec’s AGM speech and it’s a hodgepodge of things that the company has done. It’s a hodgepodge of ambitions and it’s just like a big pot of stuff and it’s not connected. None of these things are connected. There’s no big re-tellability in it. A good story is re-tellable without it being warped or disrupted or distorted in the retelling, and it doesn’t emotionally get people here and it doesn’t change people’s action. Otherwise you’re just telling them about a bunch of things that you’ve done or that you’re trying to do, but not where they fit into a strategy and not where they fit into the drive of the company. Not where they fit into the whole purpose of the company. And stories do that. Stories help make nonhuman things human. They make them relatable. They make them re-tellable. They make them memorable and a speech is just noise unless it changes behaviour. If it changes behaviour, it changes attitude. If it triggers action, then it’s a speech worth giving. Most PowerPoint presentations, most presentations and most speeches do none of those things. Stories help do that.
