The Growing Value of Story

In his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink discusses the growing importance of narrative and story over purely isolated facts and figures.  ”Stories”, he writes, “are easier to remember – because in many ways, stories are how we remember.”  He goes on to quote a cognitive scientist names Mark Turner, from a book entitled The Literary Mind: “Narrative imagining – story – is the fundamental instrument of thought.  Rational capacities depend on it.  It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining… Most of our experiences, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories.”

Imagine my lack of surprise this morning then, while sitting in an exam room with my wife while we waited for our midwife to arrive for a check-up, when I noticed a magazine in a bin on the wall.  The title?  Motherwords:  Every mother has a story.  What’s yours?

An entire magazine devoted to the stories of motherhood.  Narrative is a product for this company.  It deals in the importing [receiving narrative from readers] and exporting [publishing online and in print] of one valuable commodity – story.

So…what’s your story?  Do you own or manage a business?  Maybe it’s time to sit down and discover how you can incorporate story into your business.  Do you handle large amounts of clients, or visitors, or patients?  Perhaps you need to create a library of testimonials that you make available to potential clients, visitors, and patients.  Or maybe your website needs that narrative touch.

Narrative adds value.  It adds a “connection” with those we are trying to reach.  It is communication in it’s most primal form.  And it is a skill we should all learn as we enter the Conceptual Age.