Uncategorized

The Primal Patterns of Story

admin
There’s a cutting edge, former advertising agency in New York that is 100 percent focussing its business on story. Story Worldwide has rebranded itself to be ‘post brand’ and ‘post advertising’.
In today’s ‘opt in’ culture, interrupting narrative with brands as we have traditionally done with advertising just simply no longer works. Today, to let people know about stuff, you simply tell a story.
Communication I believe has now come full circle. Scientists are clear that we created stories to survive very early in our evolution. The difference in interpreting a pattern of a rustle in the bushes as either being wind, or a predator, taught us to create stories for patterns as a simple matter of life or death.
This hard wiring for story still exists in us today. We create patterns constantly to make meaning of our surroundings. Storytelling keys right into this primal urge to understand to survive.
It is much less natural to analysis and be skeptical. We prefer the pattern and the story, and as TED speaker, Michael Shermer says, we even unwittingly live our lives by patterns, and prefer to ‘believe’ than question.
I believe embracing story as our primary means of communication will match our natural way of learning and understanding. With the right intention, using story to connect and convey information will hit the mark, because deep in our brain, we are wired to understand this way.
Powerful storytelling is authentic, intimate, and delivered integrating heart and mind, and this way connects with others deep in their brain and their instinct.

Hard Wired for Story

admin
There’s a cutting edge, former advertising agency in New York that is 100 percent focussing its business on story. Story Worldwide has rebranded itself to be ‘post brand’ and ‘post advertising’.
In today’s ‘opt in’ culture, interrupting narrative with brands as we have traditionally done with advertising just simply no longer works. Today, to let people know about stuff, you simply tell a story.
Communication I believe has now come full circle. Scientists are clear that we created stories to survive very early in our evolution. The difference in interpreting a pattern of a rustle in the bushes as either being wind, or a predator, taught us to create stories for patterns as a simple matter of life or death.
This hard wiring for story still exists in us today. We create patterns constantly to make meaning of our surroundings. Storytelling keys right into this primal urge to understand to survive.
It is much less natural to analysis and be skeptical. We prefer the pattern and the story, and as TED speaker, Michael Shermer says, we even unwittingly live our lives by patterns, and prefer to ‘believe’ than question.
I believe embracing story as our primary means of communication will match our natural way of learning and understanding. With the right intention, using story to connect and convey information will hit the mark, because deep in our brain, we are wired to understand this way.
Powerful storytelling is authentic, intimate, and delivered integrating heart and mind, and this way connects with others deep in their brain and their instinct.

God Just Never Gives Up- Ever!

admin


Today for the first time in my life, well directly anyway, I am moved to write about God.

In all the talk we hear on the planet about God, what ever religion, we always bring our basic day to day thinking to what God is all about. He/she gets personified, likened to a human. Even thinking of God as a he or a she is starting off on the wrong track.

Where God has meaning for me in life is as a presence. Now I will never know if that presence is something I have just made up in my head and heart, or whether there is a specific entity, or energy that is God that is teaching me this.

In fact the only thing that is important to know about the source, is that it is love. Pure Love. Never ending love. That is really hard to get our heads around. Unwavering love.

Our minds come and go from everything. Little seeds of doubt can enter our minds about love, others love for us, and ours for theres. When life gets hard, we think God, the universe, the world or whatever has halted love for us. Otherwise life would not be hard.

What I am starting to learn is that God never falters, never doubts, is beyond our human conception and thinking that thinks are fallible.

To make my dear little human brain and heart get an understanding of God, I can look to nature.

It is permanent, beyond life and death, just as God is. God is love, God is our planet.

Human, planet and animal life may come and go, but nature goes on. God goes on. People go on through generations.

This is remarkable and infinite, just as God is.

To grow in Trust of God is to find that ever elusive Meaning of Life and Happiness.

He/She/It will never give up on us, never remove their Love. It will be with us always, before and after death, infinitely. Our biggest challenge in life is to be at peace with the infiitnite.

We have spend that last few thousand years getting clear about making things finite, wanting and gaining control over aspects of our lifes, to the loss of the infinitity of Love.

Bad Coffee, 3D TV Turn off and the Marvels of the IPad

admin

I was meeting a couple of business contacts in a soul less Auckland Westfield mall yesterday. We were looking for a place for a coffee, disappointed our favourite spot had been taken over by yet another coffee franchise that sells expensive buckets of scalded brown milk.

Sadly, we ended up at another coffee franchise spot, at least it was a good place to stop and talk, and the mall, antiseptic as it is, is close to home.

We came across a mall display of the latest 3D TVs, all with $250 glasses set up in front like those pole-mounted binoculars you get at scenic spots.

We all agreed what a turn off the whole thing was. How annoying would it be to constantly have the whole family having to wear three D glasses in the living room? Not to mention $1000 for the four pairs for an average household. What happens when you switch channels or hit a non 3D programme? Glasses on, glasses off. What will it do to interpersonal skills in the home if everyone is wandering around with 3D glasses on. And then how much better is the 3D anyway in terms of viewing experience? Not much, and it looks terrible without the glasses. How will that work as you sit in the lounge browsing magazines, your laptop, the remote, your cup of tea?

A definite 0 out of 10 for first generation 3D TV.

Ahh, now contrast this with our next technology experience over coffee, the IPad. Now I had thought, really, isn’t it a toy, and how much do I need one as well as the Iphone, the MacBook and the I Mac?

Well I do.

Sorry, it is amazing. Its potential for me to use in business and to research things I like and care about is fantastic. Gone will be the days of bringing up sites and pressos and info on a laptop and clumsily swivelling it round across the cafe table or board table for people to look at. Gone are the days of scribbling models and plans in a moleskin or notebook. All this will be done on the Ipad. Magazines such as Wired and Popular Mechanics have great apps for their mags. They give the magazine browsing experience a whole new dimension.

And then of course reading books, surfing sites etc etc is just a whole new experience. Another toy, another gadget. Yes, but in our, lovely post modern world, toys, gadgets, work, fun, passion and inspiration continue to converge. Isn’t that what evolution is all about?

All Things Bright and Beautiful

admin

“ Storytelling reveals meaning without commiting the error of defining it.” ….Hannah Arendt

People, what ever walk of life hold great knowledge. In the western world we have divided people up according to the their education, their intellect and their wealth. Those that have, and those that have not. Those who are bright, and those who are dumb.

When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, and I imagine still today, parents put a great deal of stock in a child being bright. Bright was usually defined as doing well at school, reading a lot, having a good vocabulary and comprehension, or often being ‘ahead of your years’ in numeracy or literacy.

I think this is a rather narrow definition of brightness. Bright is about light, about shining. All human beings can shine given the right environment.

If we see humanity as having endless potential, then all can be bright. The old Christian hymn, went :

“ All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, the Lord God Loves Them All.”

So when one stops to think of the people of the world as having limitless potential, more and more untold stories emerge.

My great passion as a journalist, and still today, was to find the story in any person I dealt with. There was never ‘no’ story. In fact our training as journalists in the 1970s created a culture where it was completely unacceptable to come back from an assignment with no story.

Not only did you need to turn up with a story, it had to have a fresh angle, one that no one else had. So it had to be an untold story, with facts, and turns of phrase that were new. In radio, one was always hunting for the unique, or ‘telling’ sound bite. I taught myself to scan a conversation or an interview for fresh turns of phrase, that sound bite, that aphorism, that anecdote, that recollection that would sum up a whole story and strike a chord.

I was teaching myself to create an environment to enable anyone to be ‘bright’ about their story; where their conscious and unconscious met, and they spoke unfettered, with honesty and authenticity. This was great fun with politicians and business leaders who went to great lengths to obscure the truth, to control what they said consciously to the degree that there is not depth, validity or authenticity to what they say.

Tellingly, it was the man on the street or eyewitnesses to events that produced the most colourful and authentic interviews and soundbites. They told it like it was.

The art and science of great story encourages all in leadership to give up this control. It is ineffectual. No one believes it. The most effective leaders are ‘comfortable in their own skin’ and so when they speak, when they communicate, there is no separation between conscious and unconscious. They trust and are therefore trusted. They allow themselves to shine, to be bright, they do not obscure, and they achieve the results that they wish for.

Hard Wired For Story

admin

I read the other day about a teacher who asked their young class whether they would like a story read to them, or a story told to them. Without pausing to think they all said ‘tell’ us a story.

Excuse the pun, but that is very telling. I reckon they instantly and instinctively knew that being told a story was going to be more engaging, and an experience, rather than something being read, more by rote, to them.
Our relationship to story is primal and it strikes a note at the heart of our brain, in the limbic system. Rational and more linear information does not sink in the same way.
So our brains are ‘hard wired’ to accept story as the most powerful way for us to learn.
Scientists believe this goes way back over many millennia to when we first evolved to become mammals. Esteemed American psychologist Renee Fuller says that we learnt what is called ‘object constancy’ where we became aware of stimuli that enabled us to distinguish danger. We eventually came to form language, with nouns to describe this stimuli and then developed verbs to describe actions, so snakes bite and lions attack. These linkages of object to action in ancient times were critical to our survival as they warned us of danger, and alerted us to the presence of food.
These cognitive links for humans became the way we formed story.

Based on a True Story

admin
The blurring of fact and fiction in all forms of media is rife. How do we discern what is true and what is not?
We are in a fascinating era where access to information is going through the roof, we can find out endless streams of information at the click of the mouse. But is it true and is it useful?
The key to discerning what information is accurate, relevant or useful is our intention when we search for it. That sets our pathway.
What and who are we gathering the information for? How does it line up with our values and beliefs?
Since time began, we have been storytellers. And stories in their retelling have always varied, depending on the intention of the teller. At our lowest, we have created propoganda to win wars. At our highest we have created beautiful factual and ficitional stories that have lifted our souls.
It is a tired old joke about the media that you should ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good story.’ Perhaps we should flip this to say never let a negative intention get in the way of a good story.
I had lunch with a good friend the other day and we got to talking about stories, and laughed at how often the phrase ‘based on a true story’ gets bandied around to attempt to add value to a film, television programme or other media story. We really don’t know which bits of most stories are true. So we must build our capacity to discern through developing our own honest and authentic communication and seek it in others. As Jeff Jarvis says in What Would Google Do, these days in social media, we develop our stories warts and alls, own up to inaccuracies, and get honest about the ‘fact’ that truth is a work in progress.

Get That Stake Out of the Heart of Your Stakeholder!

admin

As a communicator I work with a lot of organisations in a field called Stakeholder Management.
I often feel uncomfortable with the term ‘stakeholder.’
It is often used to keep people and groups at arms length; disparate groups, often with ‘issues’ who may challenge an organisation going about its business. To suggest they be ‘managed’ often really implies ‘kept quiet’.
Enlightened organisations don’t have that attitude. They see the opportunities that can lie in so called stakeholder groups, and when people are outspoken on an issue, there is a powerful opportunity for them to participate in becoming part of the solution.
My point is that the stories these people have are the real untold stories of our communities, our publics, our stakeholders, our investors, our clients, our customers, our opponents and our competitors.
The more we look for the humanity and love and valuable stories in all of these groups, with their diverging views, the more robust we become in delivering our vision, our service, our products.
It is their passion, their heartfelt feelings that have people become vocal ‘stakeholders’. To relegate these voices to a nuisance factor is to drive a stake into the heart of their humanity.
If we learn to love our outspoken people, hunting for the value in what they say, we become more robust, as individuals, as organisations as communities to do what we are here to do.

JFK , Shakespeare and the Wisdom of NZ Maori

admin

I ended up browsing a biography of JFK in the library the other day.

I’ve always been curious about his speeches, and how they riveted the world.
Was it Kennedy or his advisors and speech writers that came up with “Ask not what your country can do for you, can do for your country, ask what you can do for your country.”
As with many great moments for great leaders, it was a collaboration. Kennedy had sought ideas and opinions from many about what he should say when he gave his inaugural speech on January 20, 1961. And in the end made his own call about what to say.
The key thing was that it was not all about him, it was about something greater, a coming together of ideas at a time when he was required to rise above himself, through the collaboration and collective support of others.
It struck me again how true Shakespeare was when he said ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’
New Zealand Maori have a sacred value called Manaaki. Manaaki is all about being of service, putting the needs of others ahead of one’s self, being of service.
It is when we focus on others and what we can provide for them, that we are at our most powerful. It is when our communication is most clear, most succinct, and connects.
We often ‘overthink’ how to stand out in what we say and do and be and can get concerned about whether our ideas, our thoughts our actions are our own, or simply following others.
That is when we achieve greatness in what ever realm we inhabit.

Dull Sex Politics

admin




It was fabulous that 40 to 50 thousand people marched against mining National Parks at the weekend. My heart lifted. Here was a huge bunch of people expressing themselves about something they really cared about passionately.
It was no mistake that two prominent figures on the march were Lucy Lawless and Robyn Malcolm, both women known for their roles as particularly spunky women; Xena Warrior Princess and Cheryl in Outrageous Fortune.
So these women, fictional or not, stand for strength of character and most likely good and lasting sex.
There type of leadership is a great contrast to the Premature Ejaculation economics being promoted by the government through Jerry Brownlee. Wham Bam, thank you Mam, instant cash from a hole in the ground. Just stick in the hole and go hell for leather til you strike gold.
And everyone takes a turn, sounds like gang rape.
And it also sounds just like Muldoon’s Think Big projects of the early 80s, another great example of PE economics. Think big, fast, and blow your load of non=renewable resources. And Aotearoa NZ is better off from Think Bit, exactly how?
It is bordering on the ridiculous to think this quick fix mining idea will have the NZ economy ‘catch up’ to Australia. Economies of scale people. We are just so niche here in NZ, I can hardly see the costly style of niche mining that would occur in NZ as doing anything at all to our bottom line.
Sad, sad, sad.
Now while we have the ‘ooops shot my load’ style of economics from Key Brownlee and the gang, there was our terrible sad calculated and unsatisfying orgasm economics of Labour. It was always by the book, the theory and strategy was right for good sex, didn’t matter your gender, sexual preference, it was all good, and fabulous on paper. But there was not heart, soul, or mongrel in it.
We need an economy that is like great sex that lasts; tantric economics, sustainable economics. Creative ideas, indivduality, niche products. Kiwi ingeunity from the bedroom to the boardroom to the cabinet table.
Who is going to stand up for this? Maybe the Greens? But I worry that they wallow around ‘in coitus’, perhaps addicted to the ‘feel good’ of sex.
If we are to continue to evolve as a species, we have to learn a brave new world of sex, of politics of economics that is sustainable. What’s the hurry? Well there is urgency but going harder and faster is not going to be the answer. Standing up for what inspires you is going to be part of the mix, getting out on the streets tosay what you feel is not a bad start.