This morning, my son cried.
This is a fact. I have witnesses to back me up. There were tears streaming from his eyes and a big frown on his face as he reached out for a comforting hug.
But this fact alone, creates a lot of questions, for which you so far have not received any answers.
Why did he cry? What happened after he cried? Was this normal for him?
These questions arise from your patterning instinct. Your innate desire to decode meaningful patterns in the data that you receive from the world around you.
A fact alone is not meaning. It requires interpretation to deduce meaning. But some people are able to interpret more from a single fact than others. It all depends on how finely tuned their patterning instinct is for this type of data.
For example, a child psychologist could interpret a lot more from my son crying than me. They’ve spent their entire careers focused on children. Their patterning instinct has been honed to interpret patterns coming from children. Despite the fact that it is my son, and I was there and the child psychologist was not, the child psychologist could interpret a lot more from this single fact than I could.
But the child psychologist would need a bit more information in order to interpret what was going on, and this is the first thing stories do that facts cannot; they provide context.
Why did my son cry? It was because I had put on my coat, shoes and backpack, walked to the door and said to him “Daddy’s going to work now. I’ll see you later.” He told me to take my backpack and shoes off and come play with him, but I insisted I had to go to work, and then he cried.
Context is all about the journey to and from a goal. It is the cause and effect chains that lead to a person forming their goal (my son’s goal being to keep me from leaving), and the cause and effect chains that led from that goal (so my son cried, and my heart melted).
As the child psychologist listens to the context, they are contrasting this data with their reference bank of norms. They are looking for change and difference, anything that deviates from the healthy norms. They are interpreting if this behaviour is normal, or if it is not.
This is the second thing stories can do that facts cannot; show change and difference.
Sure, two facts or sets of data laid side by side are contrasting by themselves…But facts and data don’t do that naturally. They need people to intentionally lay them side by side, to show that contrast. Facts and data alone exist in a meaningless vacuum. They need people to pluck them from that vacuum, and then transport and position them into the realm of meaning.
Let’s change to another example.
You’ve just been for a blood test, and the clinic has emailed you your results. You open the report and see a long list of numbers and labels. What the hell does this all mean?
You go to the doctor for a consultation. The only reason you need this consultation, is because they are able to interpret the patterns in this list of numbers and labels and you are not.
They use contrast to show you which numbers have deviated from the norm, and which ones haven’t. They explore context with you to identify what caused those numbers to deviate from the norm. They discuss with you what solution you need to take, and show you how to take it.
Answering Questions
Stories answer the questions that facts present. They essentially answer three types of question; Why, What and How.
Why is all about context. Why did this happen? What caused this? Why does this exist?
What, is all about contrast. What’s the significance of this? What does this mean? What matters here?
How is all about the response to change. What should we do about this? What action should I take? How do I do that exactly?
The more of those questions your audience are unable to answer, the more you need stories.
Everyone has a refined sense for certain patterns. Child psychologists have a refined sense for patterns relating to children. Doctors have a refined sense for patterns relating to their field of medicine. CEOs have a refined sense for patterns relating to their global business strategy, but perhaps not for local market conditions.
For example, you are the General Manager for the Chinese branch of a US company that sells backpacks for school and work to consumers. You helped set up this branch office one year ago, and you report to the CEO of the US Headquarters. That CEO has now flown to your office for the annual report.
You present to them data about sales for your region over the last year. You show them how you started with very few orders in the first few months. In August there was a sudden increase in orders that persisted for the rest of the year. And in November there was one massive spike in orders.
As you prepared this presentation, you thought about these Why, What and How questions. You considered which ones the CEO could answer by themselves, and which ones they couldn’t.
Why were sales so slow in the beginning? They can answer that. That’s normal when you first enter a new market.
Why did sales increase from August onwards? What was significant about August? You will have to explain to them that this was when you set up online stores on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Your CEO has an expectation that if the company has a good website, and does lots of SEO, then people will buy directly from the company website, because that’s what happens in other countries. But China is different. No one visits your company website, or any other company’s websites for that matter. Every one buys things through the local e-commerce platforms Taobao and JD.com. You will need to show data from your competitors, contrasting how many sales they generate through their own websites and how many they generate through the e-commerce platforms to really help your CEO see for themselves how different the China market is.
Why did sales suddenly jump in November? What happened in November exactly? They probably don’t know the answer to that. In China, Singles day on November 11th is the largest shopping day in the world. Online retailers offer special discounts for that day, and most achieve their highest level of sales for the year on that single day.
You think a bit more about your CEO’s goals. You realise they are also looking to plan for the next year, and they are looking to launch several new products into the China market in February, and also aggressively drive sales growth, which means a new performance management system that ranks people in order of performance, and fires the lowest performers.
You realise they don’t know what happens in China in February. It’s the Spring Festival holiday, where everyone goes home to spend time with their families, including your staff. If you force your staff to work through that period, adapting promotional materials for the new product launch to the China market, then you will be breaking the local labour laws.
You realise they don’t know anything about the local labour laws. They want a new performance management system that fires the lowest performers, but this will also be breaking the local labour laws.
You will need to explain how to adapt their expectations to China’s Spring Festival arrangements and the local labour laws.
When you start to think about the patterns they can and can’t recognise around the Why, What and How questions, you will start to recognise where you need to use storytelling.
Summary
Stories answer the questions that facts present. If your audience does not have a highly refined sense for patterns around the data you are presenting, then you will need to use more stories.
To use stories to deduce meaning from facts, consider the following questions, and use storytelling principles to answer them:
– Why?
– What?
– How?
