Filmmaker’s advice for great business storytelling

Filmmaker Peter Guber (Rainman, Batman, The Color Purple) once used storytelling to win Fidel Castro’s support for filming in Havana Harbor. The official application form had been torpedoed, but El Presidente enthusiastically endorsed the project once he heard Guber tell of the harbor’s historic significance and Castro’s responsibility to the world to share that piece of history.

By comparison, my job as an organizational communicator is easy. Still, I have a well-drawn gameplan, thanks to Guber’s article in the December 2007 Harvard Business Review (you can search for it on my public Evernote folder). His four key principles:

The story must be true to the storyteller, reflecting his/her core values:

“He must enter the hearts of his listeners, where their emotions live, even as the information he seeks to convey rents space in their brains. Our minds are relatively open, but we guard our hearts with zeal, knowing their power to move us. So although the mind may be part of your target, the heart is the bull’s-eye. To reach it, the visionary manager crafting his story must first display his own open heart.”

The story must be true to the audience:

Every storyteller is in the expectations-management business and must take responsibility for leading listeners effectively through the story experience, incorporating both surprise and fulfillment. At the end of the story, listeners should think, “We never expected that – but somehow, it makes perfect sense.”

The story must adapt to the moment:

Intensive preparation and improvising are two sides of the same coin. If you know your story well, you can riff on it without losing the thread or the focus.

The story must elevate:

Even in today’s cynical, self-centered age, people are desperate to believe in something bigger than themselves. The storyteller plays a vital role by providing them with a mission they can believe in and devote themselves to.

Tellingly, the guy from Hollywood says the story has its own power, regardless the medium:

It isn’t special effects or the 0′s and 1′s of the digital revolution that matter most – it’s the oohs and aahs that the storyteller evokes from an audience. State-of-the-art technology is a great tool for capturing and transmitting words, images, and ideas, but the power of storytelling resides most fundamentally in “state-of-the-heart” technology.