In this episode, I unpack the lessons from “The Story Cycle” by Robert Carnes.
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Full Transcript:
There are a few simple steps that must be followed to keep the story cycle spinning. Your organization must first capture a story, then craft it through assembling the pieces and editing them together, before finally sharing the story with your audience. Once the audience experiences the story, they should be called to a clear and compelling action to experience the life change that your organization offers. This is Stacking Knowledge. I’m Mickey Mellen and that was a little bit from Robert Carnes’ book, The Story Cycle. At high level, the cycle he’s referring to is story listening, story building, and then story sharing and how that kind of
repeats, you’re going to tell good stories with your organization. So let’s dig in. He starts by saying that not everything is a story. You need to prove to your audience that you understand their story and see if there’s actually a story there. And really storytelling is more than just using the right buzzwords. know, can use buzzwords in a story if you want, but there’s more to it than that. He likes to lay things out with the four C’s of storytelling. The four C’s being context, character, conflict, and change. So context, he gives the example of the great Oreo tweet during Super Bowl 47.
where they said you can’t dunk in the dark, if you remember, during that Super Bowl right after halftime, I believe it was, all the lights in the stadium went out for 10 minutes or something like that, and during that time, Oreo tweeted out their infamous you can’t dunk in the dark tweet, which was fantastic for a lot of reasons, but it was a great tweet. Talk about character, the second C is character, like Smokey the Bear and only you can prevent forest fires. Every good story needs a character. Tell the story of someone the audience can resonate with. Conflict.
I like the Domino’s Pizza turnaround. If you follow the history of Domino’s Pizza, they got pretty bad for a while. ⁓ In recent years, they went all in on quality and improved it quite a bit. And so he talks about how conflict’s inevitable and stories can’t exist without conflict and neither can your business. And then the fourth C is change, like how the Swiss Army Knife Company made changes to keep up. And he tells the story of that, how it’s not always been the same. They had to make some changes to keep up over the years. So the four C’s, yeah, context, character, conflict, and change. Next he digs into how
Stories are living things. He says stories have a natural lifespan that depends on their impact. Stories are alive, and he says they’re living things. They have a symbiotic relationship with human beings. Every time a story is shared, it grows. Stories enrich us as we enrich them. And as long as there people to share them, there will be stories living within us. So seeing stories as living things is a great way look at things. Next, he talks about organizations. He says organizational studies.
Next he talks about organizations. says, or organizational stories are unique. ⁓ the big key here, and I love that he talks about this is your organization isn’t the hero of the story. You get to be the guide for your audience. ⁓ businesses who tell compelling stories about their customers are more likely to attract more customers. Your company is not the hero of the story. When you focus only on your organization, you fail to invite the audience into the narrative. You see this a lot with companies and heck look at most company websites and you’re going to see on their homepage. We do this and we do that and we serve this and we serve that and we, know,
that that’s kinda wrong approach to take you should be saying here’s how we can help you and here’s the problem you have here so you know focus on that He gives a lot of examples from movies about famous guides and so you think the hero of the story but really the hero only makes it because the guide and so he gives seven examples he gives from that which are great. Gandalf in Lord of the Rings Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda both in Star Wars Morpheus in the Matrix Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid
Aslan in the lion the witch in the wardrobe and Rafiki in the lion king All them, you know, they were the guide to make the the main character the hero actually successful and that’s what your organization should be you should be the guide to make your clients the heroes and I mean all these people you’ve heard about Gandalf and Dumbledore and mr. Miyagi like they’re all well known and well respected for the role they played and that’s what your organization should be ⁓ In the book Robert says quote by establishing yourself as a guide you position your business to earn your customers trust and help make their lives better so
The second part of the book he gets into your organization as the story guide, so what it looks like. He starts with saying you should capture the story, which is good first step. He says before you can tell great stories you must listen for them. So he says listening for other people’s stories should always be an active occupation. You should do four things he says. You should focus on what they’re saying, take written notes, record the story in either audio or video, and go back and review the story later. And I like that he says you should take notes but also record it. And a lot of people like to do one or the other.
And if you do that, if you know you’re getting a good audio or video recording, your notes can be different. You can just write down the highlights of what you want to say. You’re not having to be take verbose notes, which is problematic because then you’re not really focused on what they’re saying. So if you’re able to record it and know that it’s being captured, then you can focus on what they’re saying, take notes about important things and other follow up questions and really do a good job and then go back and review the notes with the full context of it later. It reminded me a little bit of the idea of homework for life from the book Storyworthy. And there he has an idea. He says, quote, if I had to tell a story from today,
A five minute story on stage about something that took place over the course of this day, what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most story worthy moment from my day? And this is something I’ve started doing, this homework for life from Story Worthy from a different book here. He says, every day you should try to do that. Write down just a couple words, a sentence or two about if you had to tell a story from today, you may think there was nothing exciting today, but if you were at gunpoint, someone said, tell me a story from today, what would that be? And there’s always something you can tell. Some days are certainly better stories than others, but.
Getting in that framework, you’re always listening, always being aware of stories around you can make a big difference. And if you write down enough bad stories, you’re to find some good ones in there too. Next he talks about crafting the story. He says, you can’t share a story in its raw form. You must polish it first. But I like where he goes toward the end of this chapter. We’ll get in a minute. He says, every story begins somewhere and that somewhere is always objectively worse than the final version. He referenced Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. She has this idea called shitty first drafts, ⁓ which she says you need to those out. Like you should start crafting somewhere even if it’s bad.
So from Bird by Bird, the quote about that I love, she says, this is from Anne Lamott’s book, she says, quote, perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a whole lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to a whole lot better than you are and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it. So again.
Separating just getting something on paper not trying to make it perfect and this is something I’m pretty bad about I like to get things on paper and make it perfect as I go and that’s not a great way to do it ⁓ Let’s see Robert says yeah He says crafting a story is about discovering the core of your story polishing that until it shines So again get that core out there and polish it He also says you can continue to edit and craft the story even as you tell it And I like at the end of this chapter though He talks about assembling versus editing it and never really saw those as two different things, but they they clearly are He says every story needs to be assembled
but they also need to be edited. And again, when I’m writing blog posts or whatever, I tend to assemble and edit at the same time. And that’s not the great way to do it. You should be dumping your thoughts out, just letting it pour out in assembly and then go back through and edit. he kind of gives some examples. He says, assembly is a jackhammer, editing is a hand chisel. Again, big chunks, little chunks. Assembling is a paint roller, editing is a fine paint brush, or assembling is the big picture, editing is the small details.
So keeping those separate can be very useful for a lot of people. Just let the story flow out of you and then go back later to edit rather than slowing yourself down and trying to edit as you go. The next step he talks about sharing the story. After listening and crafting, the story is ready to be shared. He talks a lot about Ted Talks in this chapter. You can dig into that, about how great stories inspire more great stories. He says also stories come to life when they’re shared with others. I like this other quote about sharing. says, quote, there’s a fine balance between undersharing and oversharing a specific story.
but most organizations under share. Perhaps that because…
Perhaps that’s because they’re not confident in the qu- perhaps that’s because they’re not confident enough in the quality of the work or they’ve grown bored with the story themselves. Remember that once you’ve heard the story internally a few dozen times, it likely means your audience has only heard it once or twice. Keep sharing. This is why I’ve had to re-hear this thing from him a few times too, because I’m bad about that. I’ll say, hey, we shared the same thing to our audience 10 times. We need to change things up. But at this point, they’re not all seeing that, especially with social media algorithms and all the stuff at play.
If you post something 10 times, you’re lucky if people have seen it once or twice. Keep sharing it. Don’t feel like you need to reinvent all the time. ⁓
I also like in this chapter, he kind of broke down some thoughts and the most interesting man in the world, the Dos Equis guy, you know, the line there, I’ll just read what Robert said. Robert’s quote says, he said, I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. You know, we’ve all heard that. But Robert’s breakdown then is they had the clarity to know that a guy this interesting is going to prefer tequila. He’s not going to tie himself to one beer brand. They have enough humility to keep it realistic, at least as realistic as a guy who lives vicariously through himself. So I love that. They say this kind of guy, he’s going to drink tequila. Let’s not hide from that.
So, but when he does though, know, Dos Equis is his beer. They kind of are humble enough again to do that, but also of course promote their products. So yeah, I don’t always drink beer, you know, I drink a lot of tequila, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis So I never thought of it that way before, like what they’ve really done, kind of that next level kind of rolled over on me. But this, I love that Robert pointed out in the book here. And then part three is connecting with the story’s hero. Storytelling helps the audience understand its world and motivates them to improve it. So again.
If the audience understands your story, it should motivate them to make the world better around them, which is ideal. So you want to create an experience. He says, your story must draw your audience into a memorable experience for it to make a lasting impact. The only way to truly understand someone else’s story is through an experience. And great stories invite you into their narrative. So going back again to Storyworthy, that book I talked about, he has a lot of tips in that book about how to invite people into your narrative. Robert kind of goes a little higher level on that stuff.
Pulling again from the book Storyworthy, I love, he has some tricks in that book about how to draw people into that narrative. So one he has here, he says this is from Storyworthy, he says, quote, that’s the trick, a simple one. Make sure that every moment in your story has a location attached. Every moment should be a scene and every scene needs a setting. And so yeah, lots of little tips in Storyworthy about how to make your story memorable and stand out and stuff. so yeah, having a scene, having a location for every story helps a lot. Like we were in the kitchen talking about this thing, we were on.
a road trip, we were in the front seat of my car, whatever’s going on. Good stories, Robert says back in Story Cycle, he says, good stories transport an audience somewhere else. So if you’re gonna transport them somewhere else, tell them where they’re going to be and it helps quite a lot. And then of course, as we sort of near the end here, he says, every story should point people toward a clear next step. Most of your stories, especially for business, should be leading people somewhere. He says, the most effective narratives have an end goal in mind and clearly call the call.
He says, the most effective narrative is…
He says, most effective narratives have an end goal in mind and clearly call the audience to do something. Great stories inspire action. He also says, your audience won’t take action if you don’t ask them to. If you don’t know what action steps your audience should take, don’t expect they’ll figure it out themselves. The more options you give people, the less likely they’ll decide at all. We’ve seen this over the years with various studies and things that say that’s exactly true. If you give people a lot of options, they may opt out completely. There was a story I’ve shared a few times before.
about a company that was giving samples of jam in a grocery store trying to get people to buy some bottles. The first time they had like 15 options and sold like four different bottles throughout that. The next time they had three options, they sold a ton more because people said, you these three flavors, let me pick one and go. The 15, they kind of got overwhelmed with choice and we’ll figure it out later and they just never decided. So this is true in a lot of things. The more options you give people, the less likely they’ll decide at all. So at the end of your story, again, you should have that clear call to action, but make it very clear what it should be. Not say, hey, here’s a bunch of ideas. Here’s what you do. Like, no.
The more clear you are, the better. then lastly, he says, you should inspire change change. Effective organizational stories provide a blueprint for transformation in others. So there’s three things. There’s the what, how, and why. Our what is our product or service. Our how is the processes we use to provide those things. And our why explains our purpose or vision for a better world. So a lot of organizations have the what down quite good, I would hope, their product or service. How is not usually pretty close as well. How do you actually put those things together?
But the why is one that a lot of organizations miss. What is your purpose or vision for a better world done through the popular service you offer? He says, any business that genuinely seeks to serve its community can tell stories of how they’ve inspired change. And you should be able to tell stories of how you’ve inspired change that people can follow and say, wow, I want that same change. How do I do it? And they can kind of hear your story to help them understand how it goes for them. So I encourage you to check out Robert Carnes, The Story Cycle is a fantastic book.
And again, those three stages to follow the cycle itself, yes, story listening, story building, story sharing. So yeah, listen for stories, build them out, go share them with others.
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