Story Experts from Simon de Deney on Vimeo.

Story Experts from Simon de Deney on Vimeo.

So why mention Diane James? Well, simply that she demonstrated with devastating ease how to make an impact in 20 seconds on Britain’s most listened to and influential morning magazine show. She told a story about one of her potential constituents, a young man, who hasn’t been able to get a job for ten years. He had come from the Job Centre and told her that twelve people had been competing for the same job as him, all of them European.

Now, leaving aside whether the story is true or not, Diane James managed to play on the fears of all those who have the Daily Mail where their souls should be. She didn’t quote statistics, she didn’t construct an argument, she just told a story, simply and powerfully.

The who, what, what?
In the new brief there was a lot of the usual marketing preamble but the most interesting part came at the back, where on one page (perhaps the management didn’t feel confident about “creatives” ability to be able to read more than one side of A4, there were just three sections. These were entitled “Who?”, “What?”, “What?”. To put it a little more fully, the questions that the brief set out to answer were: “Who are we talking to?”. “What do they currently think and feel?”. And “What do we want them to think and feel?”. This was an admirably simple model. However, even this step forward lacked one crucial element of effective communication.

Wallpaper versus artwork
What the brief lacked was the realisation that, unless the communication (in this case the ad) cuts through the information storm that engulfs each and every one of us every day, it will be, no matter how diligently crafted, no more than industriously designed wallpaper. If you want to attempt even the modest task of changing someone’s attitude, they have to notice that you’re trying to do so first. That we miss much of what we believe we see has been famously demonstrated in Daniel J Simons’ famous experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo. So what is needed to cut through?

The WTF factor
We have evolved to ignore information that neither rewards nor threatens us. Therefore, anything that falls in between those two is likely to be ignored. Why waste valuable calories on the unimportant? However, if we come across something that surprises us, that even for a moment leads us to believe that our environment is different from how we’ve experienced it and from what we expected it to be, we will take notice. What has been your most successful surprise either one that you experienced yourself or one that you gave your chosen audience?

The reason for my kitten healing? Well, I’ve just been training a number of large organisations, helping them develop their social media. It’s been a real eye opener (Not dissimilar from Puss in Boots in Shrek).

There is an excitement but also a fear of what social media can offer in terms of marketing and customer relations.

The social media waterfalls

The fear seems to come from the idea that social media is something that people can’t control. For many organisations, with centralised authoritative structures, that’s understandably scary. But, it’s also due to the fact that many of the people, senior enough to need to use social media don’t feel equipped to be able to understand it. There’s a stomach-gnawing feeling that the younger generation has turned on a waterfall that is sweeping away their elders.

There’s also the assumption that the organisation they’re working for is afraid of social media. Even when they appreciate the benefits, staff feel that it’s impossible for them to change what feels like, and probably is, giving up control.

On the plus side, when you work through various practical case studies and exercises, the ease with which people pick up the right way to use social media is breathtaking.

What was particularly uplifting was how people from these very large and risk-averse organisations took so naturally to creating social media content (Instagram images, YouTube videos etc) that captured the spirit of social media without stamping all over their organisation’s corporate guidelines. On one occasion, the content even included a mock suicide and getting trapped on a train. And all in the best possible taste.

GSOH essential. Period.

When you show people some of the most successful campaigns from the last year or two, it won’t surprise you to learn that what they picked out as being essential for great social media campaigns are almost identical to what make good stories. So, for example, the element of surprise is always there. It’s so unexpected that organisations respond to ordinary people’s sense of humour with a sense of humour themselves, it seems to delight us. As it happens so rarely. However, from a large organisation’s point of view, the opportunities to be able to use social media to gain great publicity and build strong relationships with its customers is actually an easy win. Take a look at this ad from Bodyform. Not a company known for its self-parody. And, possibly because of this, the film had 3 1/2 million views on YouTube within the first six weeks of it being released.

The evidence seems clear. Matching customer’s tones of voice, particularly when light-hearted, appears to be more important than the organisation preserving its own.

Well, partly it may be because there is an attitude that it’s not a “proper job”. Therefore it’s legitimate to sneer slightly. But I think it’s also something to do with one of the tools that an actor has to be highly skilled in, namely emotion. No other profession involves the creation and manipulation of emotion and displays the results in front of people. It is, quite frankly, disturbing.

However what is even more disturbing is that the latest thinking in evolutionary psychology as well as studies in neuroscience provide strong, unequivocal evidence that emotion is far more important to us as a species than we would traditionally like to believe. The research suggests that the ways in which we are unconsciously affected by our feelings may even remove the basis for free will and personal responsibility.

Without going into a jurisprudential debate here, the implications for organisations and individuals within them are profound. The ability to think, and even more importantly, to feel like an actor In terms of building strong relationships and communicating powerfully appears to be fundamental. So fundamental that, perhaps, it even trumps logic. Which means that whether you’re a bizzinessman, a marketeure, teechuh, yournalist or pro-ject manager, it’s time to get in touch with your inner thesp.

From our experience of working with other trainers and their programs, We suspected that there was often a fatal flaw with even the best of them. This flaw could be described as ‘ the training buzz’. It’s that high you get at the end of a brilliant day’s training, which makes you feel invincible. And, like most highs, it wears off. You’re left, perhaps weeks and months on, doing exactly what you did before that one day’s great training. It seemed to us that there had to be a better way of doing things

So what we did was simply this. We looked at the latest research and science on how human beings actually learn. And we based all our exercises in the workshops that we run on the science rather than on received wisdom. So, Just to take one example, one of the most accepted approaches to learning is something called “learning styles”. It’s sometimes abbreviated to VAKT. The initials stand for “visual”, “auditory”, “kinaesthetic”and “tactile”. The idea is that all of us have a preferred learning style and that trainers and teachers need to accommodate the different styles when they are teaching or training their students.

What’s interesting is that this approach “feels” instinctively right to most of us. We’ll hear people say things like, “I’m a visual person”. And that instinctive feeling will determine how they believe they can best learn. However, as a recent, very thorough report on learning styles from the Learning and Skills Research Centre, Indicates, the issue is rather more complicated, http://itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/LSRC_LearningStyles.pdf. It’s quite a dense read, but it’s accessible and a real eye-opener. It’s particularly useful if your nearest armchair expert starts bandying around terms like Dunn and Dunn or Myers Briggs. It turns out that the only people they may be blinding with science are themselves.

So we decided to design all our training programs and workshops using rigorous, scientific methods rather than accepted wisdom. Thankfully it turns out that rigorous, scientific methods actually involve enjoying oneself. Otherwise our workshops could have been rigorously dull indeed. Less slide rule, more slide on a tea tray.

Particularly odd in my case, as, ten years ago, I thought the last thing I’d end up up to my neck in was training people. Being rude about people training people, yes. But not actually doing the thing I was poking fun at. Because following a number of years writing sketch comedy at the BBC, I had decided to write a sitcom. About trainers. Specifically life coaches.

One of the unlooked for joys of acting is the number of other things you do ‘in between’. It gives you a chance to lift the bonnet on various businesses and industries that you otherwise wouldn’t touch with a proctologist’s glove/have a chance to explore (delete as appropriate). And having done time in a number I was struck by the observation that most organisations seem to be inversely good internally at what they’re supposed to be doing for their customers and clients. So, if you work in advertising, no-one talks to each other. In law firms, staff are hideously (if borderline legally) exploited. In management standards’ firms, you guessed it, the management make David Brent look like Tom Peters. Call it Simon’s Law.

So, if you wanted to write a sitcom about people whose lives were disintegrating while they maintained a micro-veneer of zen-like calm, life coaches would have to be at the top of your wish list.

But with one of life’s delicious ironies, my training people tuned out to be rather more successful than my savaging trainers. The script is safely in the bottom drawer (or whatever the Mac version is), while I’ve continued to enjoy training people.

Obviously, given Simon’s Law, my life must have descended into an alcohol-drenched pit of misery and self-loathing. It hasn’t. But then I’m an optimist. Perhaps it will in the next ten years.

First of all he is reading his resignation statement. (Compare that to Chris Patten who immediately follows on and speaks without notes).This immediately takes away from his impact as he is looking down a great deal. Imagine how more effective it would be if he looked the journalists in the eye as he made these comments. Also as he looks down his voice fails to project as confidently as it would have done.

Even when he is looking at his audience, he often closes his eye for a few seconds at a time.  Have a look at 1 minute 10 seconds where he says “I am confident (the issues) will be addressed by the review process”. He closes his eyes on the word “confident” which is a huge indication of his real feelings.

Can you see the paper he is holding is shaking slightly? If you are reading from notes, it is always a good idea to use cards, as the slightest tremor in the hand is easily transferred to a thin sheet of paper.

And finally, while Chris Pattens speaks, he has to stand there and listen. He should take his hands from behind his back so he doesn’t look as if he is in hand-cuffs… And staring at the ground makes him appear weak and apologetic. Much better would have been to look at Chris Patten while he was speaking.

Should it matter that an honourable man is an ineffectual communicator? Maybe it shouldn’t. But, unfortunately for his career, it does.

One of the teachers, Daniel told the group of how he told a ghost story to his class while on a trip to Wales. They were enthralled, including one of his children, Ted, who has ADHD and rarely sits still or concentrates. On their return to school, Daniel tried to get Ted to do a piece of writing (always a struggle and Ted never writes more than four lines). Ted pleaded with him instead to tell him the ghost story again. Daniel, sensing an opportunity, said, “Why don’t you write it?”. To his surprise, Ted did exactly that, producing two full pages rather than his normal four lines. When it was assessed, it was two levels above Ted’s usual standard. Effectively he had made one year’s progress in a week.

There is almost nothing more important than exciting children about learning and increasing their chances in life. So here at Infinite Space, we’d like to set up a ‘story bank’ for teachers, to help spark ideas on how to use story in different subjects to inspire children. We’d love your thoughts.