Lori L. Silverman

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.