Illuminating the Future:

Stories and Scenarios

Best-selling books are a key factor in the world of thought leadership. After all, you never know when your CEO is going to pick up a good book in the airport and have what I like to call an "airplane epiphany."

The success of a book, however, often is highly influenced by who praises it on the back cover. Big name testimonials -- from Oprah in fiction or Seth Godin in marketing or Tom Peters (!) on just about anything -- matter quite a bit.

So it was interesting to hear Geoffrey Moore, who is most famous in high-tech marketing circles for his book Crossing the Chasm, speak recently about book blurbing in the Wall Street Journal. As he explained:

There are three reasons you'd do a blurb. The first is you know the author and are completely in support of their agenda. Then, there are publishers and agents and others -- sometimes they do favors for you, and periodically you should probably do favors back. The third reason is when I don't know the author, but know they are addressing an issue that is really important.

He says he gets asked to blurb about six to eight books a year and usually blurbs about three to four. I'm not sure he actually reads them though. "I am not a big reader of nonfiction," he tells the interviewer. "I read a lot of fiction and a lot of science books. Now I'm reading a lot about the biology of the cell."

I guess we all can understand just how fascinating the biology of the cell can be in your off hours. But why does he read so much fiction? Does he spend time with fiction, he is asked, because it is fun to read or relevant to business?

For both reasons. If you think about how problems get solved at a strategic level in a business, it's all around some version of scenario planning. And if you ask, "What is scenario planning?" It's story telling. What you're trying to do is come up with plausible stories that represent in your mind the best distillation of the economic currents and competitive dynamics you've been witnessing.

So there you go. It comes down to story telling. You want to win in the marketplace? You want to cross the chasm? You want a blurb from Geoffrey Moore? Tell a great story.

Storymaking vs. Storytelling

In his most recent book All Marketers are Liars, Seth Godin masterfully explains the power of compelling stories in a "low trust world." With his own stories stretching from Longaberger Corporation (which lived its "obsession with product" by turning its HQ into a giant basket) to Georg Riedel (who sells $20 wine glasses that people believe will make their wine taste better), Godin persuades us that we will become "irrelevant" in the absence of great stories.

The only problem with his thesis is the emphasis it places on the "telling" and his celebration of the "tellers." The trouble with "storytelling" in the realm of marketing is the suggestion that the prospective buyer is a passive participant in the process -- the one who listens to the story teller. Godin, to his credit, recognizes that buyers are not passive. They tell themselves stories, he notes, and actively embrace the stories they want to believe. Then, they pass the best stories on to their colleagues, friends and family members.

So the problem is the term itself: storytelling. It's the same problem that critics of conventional education have leveled at today's under-performing schools. Their model, too often, is the sage on the stage, lecturing to a passive (and bored) group of students. Salesmen are guilty of the same kind of behavior. They often "show up and throw up" on their prospects or, as my friend Jeff Thull memorably puts it, they suffer from "premature presentation."

We don't need great storytellers who force us to quietly listen to their story. We need storymakers who can collaborate with us to create our story. While consumers often purchase products based on fads and fashion, the storymakers I am addressing here -- who play in the market for complex, high value solutions -- must think longer term. To be successful with stories, we must be three things:

Inquisitive. If you want to create a compelling story, you must first learn (and deeply care) about your customer's concerns and priorities. You have to get inside your customer's world if you are to portray your offer in a way that is consistent with that customer's worldview. You have to know their pain and problems, and the consequences of not addressing them. You have to diagnose before you prescribe. Craft the story before you tell it.

Collaborative. Yes, we do have the elements of our own story. We must position ourselves in clear and consistent ways. But that's at a high level. At a ground level where deals get inked and business gets done, we no longer own the story. We are collaborating with our clients to create new stories. These customer stories, by the way, will become the most powerful elements in our overall marketing endeavors. Ultimately, customer success is a more powerful attractor than any actions we might take with products, placement, promotion and price. But we must collaborate with our customers to achieve this success and then, develop the stories around it.

Results-Driven. In order to sell complex solutions in our highly competitive era, it is vital that our stories be interwoven in a sophisticated business case. We must fully evaluate the costs and consequences that justify change. We must then demonstrate our ability to deliver the value being sought. And, over time, we must show that the value we promised is indeed being realized by our clients. That is what gives our stories credibility, not flash-in-the-pan theatrics, not dogs and ponies, not a slick appeal to momentary fashions. The business case is the story that decision teams must confront as they consider an investment in a complex solution.

I get Godin. He knows that controversy makes for a great story so he put a title on his book cover that would stir it. My concern is that the book title and, more importantly, the emphasis on "telling" in the subtitle will confuse rather than clarify the issues. We don't really need great storytellers (or great liars, for that matter). We need great stories -- and we must make them before they can be told.