On Communication

Today I started reading two books -- Resonate by Nancy Duarte and On Writing Well by William Zinser.  I developed a strong interest in communication skills when reading recently Just Listen by Mark Goulston.

We don't tell stories well anymore.

I was a fan of Star Trek: Next Generation for it's seven year run.  But there is only one scene I've ever remembered well.  It was Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra:



Stories are powerful.  The tale of Gilgamesh originated in Babylon some 4500 years ago, and we still tell it today.  In this age of twitter and power point we seem to be losing our old traditions of oral story telling.  It is not just the internet, undoubtedly fifty years ago people watching songs being sung by the characters on Andy Griffith were already bemoaning television replacing the art of entertaining each other.

Times change.  My youngest nephew isn't taught cursive in school anymore.  Before World War II there was a much greater emphasis on mythology and poetry in our colleges and high school.  I think we can live without cursive, I don't think we can live without story telling.

John Magee was an American of privilege who attended elite preparatory schools and in 1940 declined an acceptance to Yale and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and fought as a pilot in England.  He authored "High Flight":

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

He came out of a tradition far different from the academic world of many of our business (or political and military) leaders of today.  High Flight is one of the great poems about flight, lines from it were used by Ronald Reagan in his address to the nation the night of the Challenger disaster.  Good stories are powerful.

Western Civilization has a strong tradition of challenge and achievement.  Myths from Greece to Scandavia, even back to Babylon, have contributed to the basic hero narrative of one rising to the occasion when presented with a challenge.  Trying to overcome the anxiety that make many people too risk averse is a very old activity.  The Western tradition is what you where yesterday is not what you must be tomorrow.

The bible may be summarized in one short statement: Jesus died, God grew up.  At it's core Christianity is about leaving the past behind and trying to become better then you were, a simple story too often lost among all the words.

Even in America, the zenith of the Western world's ethos of re-invention we fight risk adversity, memories too long, rules to constraining. Modern adults sit at their office desks, fearful of litigation -- tales of lawsuits bandied about as modern day Grendel that will come in the form of a subpoena. It is an unnatural state for people who are happiest when walking, when exploring their world, when figuring out the possible. It is the dissonance that causes stress.

The television show Mad Men speaks to failures and re-invention on many levels, the contrasts not only within the show but between their world and our society of today are fascinating.  The show had a remarkable scene to watch for anyone who has ever suffered "Death by Power Point" meetings.

Too often we use Power Point for expository information best left in a detailed report for the few people who need to know the details.  Presentations are the times we need to tell stories, to engage other people with our ideas and show them how they can move from were we are to a better place they didn't know existed.  It plays directly to the hero narrative of Western Civilization of discovering and rising to meet situations in ways you previously had never imagined.

Here's in Don Draper's Carousel presentation .  "It lets us travel...around and around and back home again to a place we know we are loved."  That is something that works emotionally on people whether they're listening to Don Draper say it in a business presentation with the harsh light of a projector build, or they were sitting around a fire listening to Homer describe Odysseus' twenty year journey to return to Penelope.

We are not a society forged by looking at ledger sheets under banker's lamps; we are a society that grew up telling tales around campfires.  If you want an emotional connection, to inspire people, to let people understand where they are today and where you can lead them to be and how it will make their lives better -- you need to be able to tell a good story.