Lori L. Silverman

Lori L. Silverman offers business storytelling training, keynotes, and consulting. For 26 years, she's advised enterprises on strategic planning and organizational change.

Articles & Books From Lori L. Silverman

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-18-2022
Successful businesses have discovered the power of storytelling and its ability to affect the bottom line. A good way to start building your business stories is to use the time-honored storyboarding technique.There are usually a few ways to tell the same story — the one you choose may depend on the circumstances of the telling, the audience, your intent and goal in telling it, and other factors.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Storyboarding is a nonlinear way to craft and learn your business stories. Here are the steps to creating an effective one. If you’ve been crafting your stories in other ways, try this approach for variety. It may stimulate a more creative flow. Steps Instructions Comments Step 1 Grab a pad of Post-It notes, a stack of 3 × 5 cards, and something to write with.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Sometimes business-focused stories don’t quite fit these more dramatic types of structures. When this happens, try using the components of business-focused story structures we’ve identified here, which are also powerful and easy to use. Keep in mind that the complexion of the story will change based on the arrangement of the elements that you choose.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Characters are very important when you want to engage listeners in your story. To add more zing to a story, detail some of the characteristics and motivations of your characters using lots of sensory information (LOTS). Before you do so, determine where it’s important for you to provide these details to listeners.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
In the third draft of your business story, it’s time to address the themes that the story brings forth, the focus (direction) it needs to take, and its key message. Follow these steps: What themes are in the story? Several themes immediately come to mind for the SDG situation: working collaboratively, strength in numbers, power of philanthropy, leveraging resources, new possibilities, forging partnerships, and stronger communications.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
No one can fight with a personal dream story you share about the future of a project, a business, a product or service, or an enterprise. It’s yours. You own it. However, they can always fight a future story that’s created by a group of people because they weren’t involved in creating it or it doesn’t jibe with what they think it should be.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Telecommuting and working virtually across the country or even the globe are popular and often necessary today in many workplaces. You can use storytelling to reduce the distance among virtual team members. Story prompts and triggers can be useful in bringing out these stories. Here’s how: Get to know each other.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
You and you alone have total control over using storied approaches in your daily interactions with others, whether at work or in other social interactions. Here are ten easy things you can do to incorporate them into your work, no matter what you do. Replace questions with story prompts When you desire more specific information than a yes/no response, transform the questions you were planning to ask into story prompts to gain richer context around an issue, problem, or need and to more deeply and quickly develop rapport.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Why should you care about the title for a story? For oral storytelling, it really doesn’t matter because the title is mainly a memory aid for you only. Probably most story titles are thought up solely for this purpose. On the other hand, if you’re a blogger, journalist, professional writer, small business owner, or a branding or marketing expert who’s responsible for placing stories into a story bank or into various media, what you use as the title for a story is very important.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Highly technical audiences like to know the science behind storytelling before accepting it as a core business practice. Sharing all kinds of data with them may be tempting, but would defeat your purpose of demonstrating how powerful stories can be. It’s not that you don’t want to share data — but you want to do it in a way that reinforces the fact that stories not only create understanding, they also create meaning and knowledge transfer.