Pink - Story

Making Sense of Story

Daniel Pink's sense of story is viewed as a necessary sense essential for Right-Brainers to rule the future.  Incorporating story in our existence can make for positive thinking and problem solving.

Some quotes that should be revealed in explaining the power of storytelling are:

“Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn’t run through the left side of the brain,” writes Pink. 

“We can see this yearning for self-knowledge through stories in many places.” 

He cites scrapbooks, webpages, and blogs as just a few examples. “The conceptual age can remind us what has always been true but rarely been acted upon—that we must listen to each other’s stories and that we are each the authors of our own lives.”

This is one of the most captivating of the senses to me, as we all think in pictures.  Story telling allows us to visualize ideas, and also helps to build the vital communications skills necessary to help sell our design solutions.  Back To The Caveman!

The first form of communication known to man are the cave drawings in Lascaux France. These can be argued as art, design, the foundations of literacy, but let's face it....These are stories first.  They are telling of great hunts, and giving us the visions that they used specific tools to hunt, shields to protect, and so forth.  It is these stories that allow us to understand what life must have been like for theses individuals, these stories allow us to "date" the era in which they were created, and also tells us a bit about what animals were alive during this times (i.e. mammoths).  For the record, I am aware that bones exist teaching us about animals as well.  But, in retrospect, doesn't the bones tell a story also?  We can tell so much from physical things as a form of a story also.  We can see how an animal died, when looking at the position of them.  We can vision so much through the art of story.

So how can this be applied in efforts to dominate the future?

An evaluation worthy of pointing out in regards to Pink: 

"Pink outlines how important storytelling is to business. Employees at 3M, the World Bank, NASA, and Xerox have begun teaching their employees “storytelling techniques.” 10 years ago such a pursuit would have been laughed-off by CEOs. Stories are helping businesses in a number of ways, from marketing, to building technical support documents." - David Hendron

I have heard the terminology used "Just give me the time, don't build me a clock."  Is this true today?  I believe not.  I think that people that are working in teams, need to understand how the clock is built and how it works.  They need to know the story of their product.  Not....How do I sell it?  Grab a bag of your favorite potato chips.  On the back of the bag, a story.  Point proven.