Steps in the psychology of storytelling in business innovation.
Company’s history helps determine its value, so it is essential that it is told well.
While it is true, that this always has been the case, today in a business landscape that is currently going through a global crisis as a result of the pandemic and is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertainly, complex and ambiguous, have a compass to guide your process.
Business innovation never has been so important, matter of fact, at this point it is vital to ensure that you can connect the daily actions of your work to the bigger picture so that you do not get lost in the process.
The cognitive behavioral link between storytelling and the expected results in business innovation.
To enable business change and innovation, first get fully understanding of the systems at play in your business. In the context of storytelling, this involves exploring the cognitive-behavioral link between your story and the expected results of business innovation.
“Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal
Dr. Howard Gardner, Prof. Harvard Univ.
Here are 5 steps that explain how the psychology of storytelling works:
1. Narrative of the story is delivered through a complex system of internal and external touch points.
The entire business innovation process begins by identifying congruent and/or inconsistent points of contact with different levels of impact. In this initial step what we seek to identify is how the people of your company act together with external clients, at the same time we seek to identify how their leaders lead them to a new product or advertisement.
2. Touchpoints create internal and external experiences in your business. The sum of these experiences is your story.
Once we have identified and selected for our narrative the congruent and shocking points of contact (internal/external), on these a new layer is established that allows them to create powerful experiences and a shocking story, whether positive or negative, which is about the one that we will work on in our business innovation through storytelling.
At the same time, we need to be clear that, conversely, inconsistent, non-impactful touchpoints create vague experiences and thus a weak story.
3. Experiences form beliefs. In other words, your story shapes the beliefs internal and external stakeholders have about your business.
In business innovation, the more powerful the experience, the more impactful the story and the stronger the beliefs that are created around them, so always remember that this can be positive or negative, and therefore we must be very careful about what we are going to use for our narrative.
4. Beliefs drive the behaviors of your internal and external stakeholders.
- The stronger the beliefs, the more reliable the behavior and therefore it is more likely to be measurable and predictable.
- You can think about this individually or collectively.
5. Behavior delivers results
Finally, when we have passed previous steps, we be clear that collective behaviors affect commitment, productivity, absenteeism and employee turnover from an internal perspective, and the defense of the brand, customer loyalty and perceived value, and this is where our narrative and storytelling applied to business innovation produces results.
System-wide behavior of stakeholders (internal/external customers) generates tangible results, such as revenue, profit, share value, etc.
