Story Dash: Find, Develop, and Activate Your Most Valuable Business Stories . . . In Just a Few Hours

by David Hutchens

Overview

Storytelling is humanity’s oldest way of connecting to others. But for businesses and managers, it can also be a powerful tool to help organizations grow and thrive.

A leader’s role is to create engagement and belief so that people will act. And there’s no more powerful way to grab attention, be remembered, and engage action than by telling stories—about who you are, what you do, and why you do it.

Today, “storytelling” is a hot topic in organizations… but most leaders still struggle to act upon it. How do we find and tell our stories quickly, in an environment of urgency where we can hardly pause to catch our breath? For more than a decade Hutchens has tested his method of rapid and strategic story development with innovation teams in Silicon Valley, across global Fortune 100 leadership teams, and more. Hutchens has honed a unique process that is active, potent, and strategically focused . . . and also a lot of fun.

In Story Dash, Hutchens shares a repeatable process to find, develop, and deploy your “narrative assets”—that is, your urgent core stories that hold value. Even better, he will help you do it FAST; often in less than a day.

Story Dash will help you to:

Access your natural capacity for storytelling

Find your stories—and figure out which ones to tell

Build your narrative so it lands with unforgettable impact

Find your own voice of authentic leadership

Bring more of who you are to your teams and your markets

Fully illustrated and written in a clear, sharp voice, Story Dash shares the fastest way to find lots of stories that will create action around the work you care about most.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950665990
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	08/24/2021
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	642,068
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Hutchens has been exploring the intersection of narrative, leadership, and complex systems change for more than 20 years. A bestselling author, business writer and learning designer, he creates solutions for The Coca-Cola Company, PayPal, Wal-Mart, IBM, L’Oreal, The US Olympic Committee, and others. He speaks to organizations and thousands of leaders all around the world on the topic of storytelling as an organizational capacity. As an executive speechwriter, he has developed mission-critical messages for the CEOs of The Coca-Cola Company and the global Dentsu Advertising organization.

Table of Contents

1 Make Me Believe 1

2 Discover Your Narrative Assets with Story Mining 21

3 Build for Impact with the Story Canvas 41

4 Breathing Life via the Tell Test 67

5 Activate! Story, Data, and the 30 Percent Hypothesis 83

Epilogue: Something Older than the Tides 97

Appendices

1 The Story Dash Cards: Stories of Continuity, Novelty, and Transition 103

2 Frequently Asked Questions 117

3 How to Facilitate a Story Dash: Notes for Learning Leaders 129

4 How I Story Dashed Story Dash 141

Acknowledgments 157

Index 161

About the Author 171

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Story Dash is a modern classic . . . I will recommend it with no hesitation for engaging any business audience, anytime, anywhere.” —Dr. Yvonne Sum, APAC head of transformation, leadership, and culture at L’Oreal

“This guide is perfect for me to use as a product discovery coach with my teams. I feel completely prepared!”
—Laura Ward, principal, design, and research in product discovery at PayPal
 
“We brought David Hutchens’ story dashes to our teams all across the USA and Canada to build our culture around our values . . . It’s been awesome and fun, and all of our employees have moved from an anxiety state to an excited state. We have found no faster way to unleash our culture than through our stories.”
—Aaron Frazier, senior vice president of operations at VCA Canada
 
“While members of our community have won Oscars, hit New York Times bestseller lists, and more, there are few who truly grasp the power of story to shape organizational narrative. David Hutchens does, perhaps better than anyone else I know. This is exciting content that you can immediately put to work!”
—Harris III, founder and CEO, Istoria Collective
 
“Story Dash is a masterpiece in its simplicity, beauty, and moving stories. It is a master class in leadership, storytelling, and organizational change. This is not just a helpful book, it is fun to experience.”
—Becca Stevens, entrepreneur, founder, and president of Thistle Farms