MODERN BUSINESS
The patterns became clearer , and five factors emerged that have the biggest impact on team performance …
Now you would share the five factors that affect team performance .
This story would then lead to the next obvious question , which is how to get these norms established in your team . Again , you might tell the discovery stories of the trials and errors that led to very practical approaches . Or you could tell the story of how one manager did something so simple , yet it had a significant impact on psychological safety .
People want to hear how you made a discovery . It adds plausibility to your results . If there isn ’ t an obvious story in the data , then tell the story of how you discovered the insight .
STORY-TRIGGERING Sometimes your data is so remarkable and so against the dominant story that people just don ’ t believe what you ’ re saying , despite how good your data and story are . In 1984 , Dr Barry Marshall faced this challenge . Back then , the dominant story about stomach ulcers was that they were
caused by stress . The crazy lives of executives caused more acid to be in their stomachs , which resulted in ulcers . Barry Marshall had discovered through his research that ulcers were actually caused by bacteria . But when he presented his results , no-one believed him .
He needed to trigger a new story that was so remarkable , it would replace the dominant story .
Marshall took the radical step of brewing a batch of the ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori bacteria and infecting himself with it . Over a period
of several days when he became incredibly ill , Marshall tested himself for ulcers , which were confirmed in abundance . Then he drank his antibiotic antidote and the ulcers disappeared . The media found out and reported his findings under the headline : ‘ Guinea-Pig Doctor Discovers New Cure for Ulcers ’. Medical opinion changed overnight , and in 2005 Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for this groundbreaking work . If you find something remarkable in your data which goes against the grain of what ’ s regarded as deeply
true , then test your results by doing something so remarkable that it will trigger a story . That said , please don ’ t drink a flask of poisonous chemicals !
CONCLUSION It ’ s true that storytelling can help bridge the gap between discovering an insight in the data and influencing decision-makers to use that insight to take action . But we are leaving so much on the table by just thinking of story work in these narrow terms . Story is fundamental to all parts of the data analysis process .
Hopefully , we will give more thought to the role story plays before , during and after data analysis . And when stories are told about the data , we will look at the multitude of ways in which they can be told , and the most effective story patterns to employ to have the greatest impact .
Shawn Callahan is business storytelling specialist and founder of Anecdote . Shawn works with leaders and sellers around the world helping them find and tell oral stories to spark action . He is the author of Putting Stories to Work : Mastering Business Storytelling ( Pepperberg Press ). For more information visit www . anecdote . com or contact people @ anecdote . com
October 2016 ModernBusiness 35