The storytelling seems to be becoming a lost art. It’s one of the fastest and the agilest way to connect, inspire, mobilize, get your message across, enable cohesion, and visualization.
Now let’s say you have an idea, can you share that in a story? When you share your idea through a story, you will realize that you have in essence created a blueprint for execution that connects realistic need to viable solutions. You will also recognize that you have mobilized characters by showing them a vision and a real purpose. It’s also at the gist of agile thinking. Ironically, humankind for generations, and probably since it’s existence, passed along knowledge through stories. The most effective way to inspire towards action. A story then, when in execution, is nothing but a play that each character enacts.
The five essential ingredients for a story is –
The Characters – The characters are for whom the story is about. A few of these characters are there because they have a problem, a few are there because they think they have a solution, a few are looking for a direction, and a few are clueless, while there are others to entertain and motivate everybody else
The Setting – This portrays context/environment. No problem exists in a silo. It’s always part of a situation, e.g., anxious customer stuck at the airport in a long check-in line. Now, when you look at this person at the airport what else do you see around him/her? Is he/she anxious because of the long line or something else in his/her environment? Where do all characters around him fit in? What’s the real problem now within this context. There is a context to every issue that idea, told in a story, always uncovers
The Plot – A plot is a theme, a plan, that leads to actions by your characters. It is like the glue that keeps everything together and guides all characters towards the end goal.
The Conflict – The conflicts are like necessary evils in a story. For any viable idea, this is everything that’s not in your characters control. They will have to find ways to deal with them as they move along. The conflicts are a must to validate and free your characters from assumptions towards issue resolution.
The Resolution (the solution) – This is the solution – a vision that your story ultimately culminates to. The resolution on its own has no meaning. But it’s supporting cast of characters, setting, plot, and conflict will manifest a vision & the imagination that’s most likely will have a potential to inspire towards actions.
The best we can do to get our ideas across is through stories. An innate trait that inspired us as a child when we heard stories from our parents, teachers, grandparents, or anybody else. It encourages action even today within us, then why not give it a try for our ideas too. It’s important to remember that people don’t care about the idea, but about the story, that idea is part of because stories instigate imagination and imagination let us visualize future, some people also call this vision.
