Future corporate story trends - A Storied Career interview

Q&A with Two Story Gurus: Graham Williams and Dorian Haarhoff: The Story Net Will Spread Wider and Deeper
By Katharine on October 20, 2011 Comments (0)

See a photo of Graham and Dorian, their bios, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.


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Q&A with Graham Williams and Dorian Haarhoff, Question 4:

Q: What future trends or directions do you see for corporate storytelling? What would you like to do in the emerging story world that you haven’t yet done?


To lapse into linear time for a moment, we expect that the storytelling movement will continue to grow exponentially, that cross-country and cross-culture collaboration will increase.
To different degrees, corporations are already deriving the benefits of using story to present their corporate history and values, inspire employees, enliven training, formulate scenarios, engage and emotionally connect with customers through depth marketing, elicit metaphors, sell products and services, co-create marketing launches, capture knowledge-management information and wisdom, build community and internal relationships, harness diversity, build social and emotional intelligence, develop mindfulness and imagination for innovation…………..This story net will spread wider and deeper. And more and more educational institutions will offer storytelling and story-listening programmes.
As the movement grows we predict calls for professional standards, controls, and conformance. In a sense, this is disturbing because story demands freedom and should be driven by personal ethics.
As to what we would like to do — fewer “quick fixes” in the form of workshops and limited coaching and mentoring — and more depth interventions that lead to the instilling of a sound corporate story culture and practices.

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