RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

‘Story’ is defined as ‘a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader’. This limiting definition sells ‘story’ short.

Traditionally, in business and career development, we’ve primarily used our stories as communication tactics — ways to get people to see us — while overlooking the opportunity to leverage them to help us see ourselves more clearly.

Far from just being a way to differentiate us, our stories can help us to decide, plan, lead, sell, inspire, influence, persuade, rally, create value, build trust, foster connection and succeed by building better, more purposeful organisations and lives. Our stories can shape who we are.

— Story Driven: You don’t need to compete when you know who you are by Bernadette Jiwa

Source: Amazon Kindle

Related Stories and Excerpts:

  1. A person’s identity is formed by integrating life experiences into an internalised, evolving story that provides him or her with a sense of purpose. We make sense of who we are by piecing together stories from our reconstructed past, perceived present and imagined future. ‘In personality psychology, what mainly counts when it comes to the idea of a life story is the narrator’s subjective understanding of how he or she came to be the person he or she is becoming — that is, the person’s narrative identity.’ — Story Driven: You don’t need to compete when you know who […]
  2. So what do you do when there is a real need for a culture change “…”? Ideally, you introduce a new story while also valuing and honoring the old one. This is a little like having one brand identity while recognizing the power of the category essence. An organization’s fundamental story is usually derived from its product line, its founder, and early decisions that were made and encoded in an oral history that becomes its story. Over time, the company hires people who have the right chemistry—meaning that they live by the same story. You can introduce new stories, […]
  3. Use tools to collect data and process it into conclusions and actions. Imagine that virtually everything important going on in your company can be captured as data, and that you can build algorithms to instruct the computer, as you would instruct a person, to analyze that data and use it in the way you agreed it should be used. In that way, you and the computer on your behalf could look at each person and all the people together and provide tailored guidance. — Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio Source: Amazon Kindle […]
  4. As we work to get our ideas out into the world and try to find and engage the people those ideas will resonate with, it’s easy to fall into the trap of skimming the surface of our story for the facts we believe will give us some tangible advantage. But if we want to give ourselves the best chance of spreading our ideas and creating an impact, we have to get better at telling our real story and living our purpose. We need to invest the time to reflect on why we began on this path and how our […]
  5. Archetypal brands are classless, ageless, and regionless, and their deep meaning must be inviolate. That’s why it matters that the brand’s story (not just its advertising, but the whole myth or legend surrounding the brand) must be congruent with the brand’s core archetype. Brands are trusted to the degree that everything they do is consistent. Products seem right when everything about them is aligned with their informing archetype. This obviously includes the product’s logo, tag line, product design, packaging, and placement in stores, as well as the design of the story, the environment surrounding the sale of the product, […]

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