Decision making in our neocortex logic brain is hard work, and really, it doesn’t work.
I popped into a top end Queen St camera shop to find a camera to travel with. A guy working there, who obviously knew absolutely heaps about cameras took me through the bells and whistles of a range of brands and models. It all got complicated, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the shop and did not buy or want to buy a camera at all. Not a great piece of salesmanship. Two things were missing. He never asked me what I wanted the camera for in a way that told him what I was after. And he jammed my head with ‘too much information.’
A week later I am visiting Whangarei, a town in the north of New Zealand and a friend takes me to dinner at a favourite haunt. Have the pork chop he says. No ifs or buts, he said it is amazing, order it. And I did. The decision was quick and made on trust. And it was an awesome pork chop, with a great peppercorn sauce, garlic butter, a tasty gratin on the side. And the chop was huge.
So what happened there? My decision was made in the limbic brain, a gut feeling, and a trust of my friend.
At the camera shop, there was no trust, I was stuck in my head, in the neo cortex.
Great stories hit you in the gut, in the limbic brain. You feel them, your instinct gets them. Data and information wallow in the neocortex, where overthinking occurs.
We can have the best of both world’s and that is when stories really land. A story with characters and drama, as well as facts and figures woven in land powerfully in hearts and minds.