The StoryBank
Stories have impact. When we use them in our business conversations, they make our messages clear and memorable. We are all great storytellers, but we can't be a one-story wonder. This podcast is designed to help you build your story collection.
Episodes
167 episodes
Episode 168 – Everyone’s Doing It – The Sign That Made It Worse
Many years ago, an electric utility ran a simple experiment. It started telling households how their electricity use compared to their neighbours’ average.It worked. Heavy users cut back.But something unexpected happened as well...
Episode 167 – The Roundabout – When Control is an Illusion
Like all of you, I have driven through a roundabout a thousand times. One rule makes it work: the driver entering gives way to traffic already moving inside. No stop sign, no one directing you. Just smoother, safer flow. Smoother, in fact, than...
Episode 166 – Many Believers. Zero Passengers – Belief is Cheap. Trust Costs.
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Last Sunday, I chanced upon an interview with John Kim, author of the recent book ‘The Tao of Fundraising’, that brought this old adage alive. Kim, an investment professional cre...
Episode 165 - Act Now, Regret Later – The Instinct Every “AI or Die” Pitch Is Counting On.
A 1st of July CNBC article titled “Employers who laid off workers citing AI are already starting to regret it”It talks about how automaker Ford is rehiring hundreds of experienced human engineers to work on quality issues automated syst...
Episode 164 – The Storyboard Secret – What Disney Taught AirBnB
Back in the late 1990s, as a brand manager at Hindustan Unilever, I was in a briefing for a Jai soap ad shoot. The creative person from the agency was describing a beach volleyball scene — “and there’s a man in a hat, umpiring the game.” I sat ...
Episode 163 – The Long Walk Back – Never Let Anyone Carry Failure Alone
For more than thirty years, I’ve held a belief that most football fans probably disagree with.I think penalty shootouts are fundamentally unfair.Football is the ultimate team sport. Every goal is built by eleven players. Yet whe...
Episode 162 – Curiosity Not Contempt – Zip Your Lips
All of us have met that person. The new leader. The consultant. The expert. The person who has barely arrived but already knows what’s wrong with everyone else’s work.Sometimes we’ve been that person ourselves. The strange thing is that...
Episode 161 – Intuition or Analysis – Six Lives At Stake
In the world of business, full of buzzwords like brainstorming, analysis, rationality, is there still a role for instinct and intuition?Today’s story will convince you there is.It’s about a split-second decision, made with zero ...
Episode 160 - Facts Inform. Stories Move - A Lesson from 9/11
You’ve presented the data. Made the case. Shown the numbers. And still nothing moved. Sound familiar?The reason that happens is that logic and data alone is often not enough. Canadian neurologist Donald Calne spent his care...
Episode 159 – Bruno Fernandes, The Assist Maker – The Best Leaders Make Others Score
In a world that worships the goal-scorer, this week’s story is about the man who made the goals possible.As a Manchester United fan of 32 years, Bruno Fernandes breaking the all-time Premier League assists record didn’t just make me smi...
Episode 158 - He Should Be My Boss - Satya Nadella’s Unexpected Move
A story that touched my heart about a CEO I admire and an act I never expected to happen in a dog eat dog world.Listen on.For more #storiesatwork do have a look the playlists of stories on our website - https://bit.ly/SW_S...
Episode 157 - The Rose That Changed History - Florence Nightingale’s Data Revolution
Is having data and sharing data enough to convince people to take action? Of course not. We need to help people see reality clearly enough that the right answer becomes obvious. While Data Storytelling is a very powerful way to do it, today's e...
Episode 156 – Power without Mastery – The AI Blind Spot?
Like many of you, I'm navigating two very different emotions about AI — the excitement of a kid in a candy store and the fear of someone standing at the edge of a cliff. And with every new release, both are intensifying.Many of us are r...
Episode 155 – No One Briefed The Gorilla – Prepare Then Let Go
Yesterday, Sir David Attenborough turned one hundred years old.No one alive has done more to make ordinary people like me fall in love with the natural world.A man with a microphone and a camera crew and an extraordinary gift fo...
Episode 154 – AI Needs Fresh Eyes – Walk out the door and come back in
Every good leader knows how to manage change. New processes, new structures, new tools etc. These are hard, but they're familiar.But AI is asking for something far more challenging. It's not asking us to learn a new tool. It's asking us...
Episode 153 – The Man Who Said No – Human in the loop
IC has been reading this book by Ethan Mollick called 'Co-Intelligence', and there's this really interesting paradox he talks about.You'd think that now that AI can look up facts, write code, summarise research, basically do all the "bo...
Episode 152 – The Bad News Office – Don’t trust good news
Most leaders I work with assume their teams tell them the truth. After all, they have open-door policies. They say, "Bring me bad news early”. And they mean it.Yet somehow, the bad news comes late. Or softened. Or not at all. Not becaus...
Episode 151 – The Streetlamp Trap – The Harder Question
Is there a lesson we can learn from the demise of Encyclopaedia Britannica on how organisations should deal with AI?Since its first publication in 1768, until the early 1990s, Britannica ruled the encyclopaedia market. A 32-volume set, ...
Episode 150 – Consequence Gets Compliance – The Yo-Yo Test
I was talking to Joy Bhattacharjya yesterday about today's story, and it triggered one from his own memory bank.This was around 2008, when Joy was the Team Director of the Kolkata Knight Riders. A recurring problem had emerged: some of the ...
Episode 149 – The Doctor Who Prescribed Parakeets – Purpose Changes Behaviour
During my years in the corporate world, a question that had often been on my mind was what makes people want to bring more of themselves to work?Disengagement at work does not always look dramatic.People do not always rebel. The...
Episode 148 – The Meter in the Basement – What Gets Measured Gets Managed
“What gets measured gets managed”, has been one of my steadfast beliefs in both my personal and professional life.Good intentions and goals are not enough on their own. They have to be measured regularly to see if we are indeed on track...
Episode 147 – Zoom In. Zoom Out. – When Details Aren’t Enough
When people ask me about my success mantras, my answer is simple: luck, discipline, hard work and attention to detail. Attention to detail is a strength I have always been proud of.But early in my career, a boss gave me a piece of advic...
Episode 146 - Six Feet of Land – The Wisdom of Knowing When to Stop
Sometimes hidden behind the cloak of ambition is something we rarely name, and that is greed. A goalpost that keeps shifting. Because if we can achieve more, then why not?That's when the team stops celebrating wins and starts dreading a...
Episode 145 – The Dunning-Kruger Effect – Unskilled, and unaware of it
What if you're too incompetent to realise your incompetence? We explore this in today's story.We now live in a world where crafting a question takes much longer than getting an answer.You type a prompt and get a polished answer....
