Category: Storytelling

Imagine you could go back in time, to a point in your life at which you faced a decision. Using the benefit of your wisdom and experience, you could advise your younger self as to their future – not to change history, or to alter the course of events – but to reassure them that the journey they are undertaking will come good in the end, or that their efforts will one day all be worth it.

It has become quite a popular exercise – Google ‘Letter to your younger self’ and up will come scores of blogs and articles written by people who have obviously been on such a journey, and have found it cathartic to imagine a world in which such a letter might be possible.

A world in which an angst-ridden spotty 16-year-old could read a letter from his 30-year-old future self (perhaps with an accompanying photo depicting him with stylish facial hair and a clear complexion), and be reassured that Sharon Granger from Number 17 isn’t destined to be his one true love, his broken heart will mend in uncanny correlation with the start of the new football season, and advising him to spend less time on the Xbox and more on his homework if he wants a fruitful career in Graphic Design.

A world in which a lonely pensioner could advise his younger, busier, self that he should spend more time playing with his children and telling his wife he loves her, because one day he will have all the time in the world but that world will have moved on.

Or a world in which a stockbroker who has lost everything could go back to her ambitious, hungry graduate self, and teach the lesson of caution.

What a great opportunity – sadly impossible. However, it’s a great exercise – looking back at the issues that worried, confused and saddened you in your past, and reflecting on how those issues resolved themselves, for better or worse. You should try it.

It got me thinking about what we do as a business. Generally, our clients are on a journey – they have a destination in mind, and a way in which they are going to get there. Imagine if, at the end of their journey, they could go back to the start and reassure themselves that their destination was indeed reachable, attainable, and everything they imagined it might be. They might be able to warn of a few hurdles, dead ends or errors, and outline some of the lessons they’ve learnt along the way. Or they might leave their younger selves to make those errors anyway, knowing that it’s only experience that allows both people, and organisations, to grow. But how inspiring for that CEO, or any employee, regardless of their position in the company, to know that their future self does embark on that journey, and come to the end, however that destination ends up looking. Motivational or what?

Whilst none of us can predict the future, we’re all able to tell the stories of our past. And we can probably learn more about ourselves, our ambitions and goals, from looking back into our past and seeing how we dealt with the struggles we’ve faced in our journey to date. So perhaps it’s a good exercise for us all to carry out, on a personal or professional level. And if in the future some brainiac does discover how to send items, or people, back in time or space, our letters will be ready for the first post.

 

So we’ve gone from a ‘punch up’ to a ‘fracas’, to ‘handbags and pushing’, in the space of just a couple of days. No doubt by Monday the dispute between BBC presenter Jeremy Clarkson and his producer will be labelled a ‘minor tiff’ and all will be well again.

We place a lot of emphasis on words. There was fevered speculation, before the details emerged, as to what a ‘fracas’ could have involved. Its dictionary definition is a ‘noisy, disorderly disturbance or fight; riotous brawl; uproar’ – not the same as ‘pushing’, or indeed punching – and its use has probably been regretted by the BBC since its hastily-issued press release earlier in the week.

Being in the business of storytelling, we place a great emphasis on the importance of words, and choose them carefully. What means one thing to one person might have a completely different meaning to another. I was reminded of this earlier in the week when discussing the term ‘red tape’, as this was a phrase I was not allowed to use for years in a previous job as it had such clichéd connotations, especially when used in conjunction with the equally maligned ‘health and safety’. Yet it has deep resonance for some, who see it embodying all the barriers they experience in their work.

The meaning of words is so impactful that the Huffington Post has curated a list of nine (why nine?) of the literally most hated words of all time. And I’ve just used three in that last sentence. Whilst I don’t mind a lot of them, I can see why they could grate, especially when used together. Management speak in particular has become deeply ingrained into our corporate culture, and now veers between being meaningless or ironic, neither of which is helpful.

Coming back to the Jeremy Clarkson incident – consider this from the producer’s perspective. His employer has described an incident in which he was variously bullied/attacked/teased/threatened (depending on your perspective) by his colleague as a ‘fracas’. This has led to an ‘inquiry’. If nothing comes of it – and after a ‘hearty man to man chat’ as one newspaper has described it, Clarkson is given just another caution – then what message does that send to the producer? That a ‘fracas’ is a perfectly acceptable method of communication between colleagues? And that we can all get away with a fracas at work if we put down our ‘handbags’ afterwards and say sorry?

Words are important. Words have meaning. As the press department at the BBC may or may not learn, they can come back to haunt you, as indeed Clarkson found to his cost just a few months ago. When telling a story, your choice of words can really affect the listener, or reader, who will draw their own conclusions from the words you use. That’s why stories have so much power.

How do you engage your audience when you explain the physics of entropy, the strange world of quantum mechanics, or what happens to the mass of an object in the vacuum of space? The only way to explain it is to employ the wit and charm of Professor Brian Cox, master of analogy!

If you’ve had the pleasure of watching any of his incredible recent Human Universe documentaries, you’ll certainly be familiar with his enthusiastic prose, and his skill at taking the most complex theory and breaking it down into the most digestible of words. He’s up there with other great television scientific alumni such as Michio Kaku, Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan, to name but a few.

Using the physical world around us, he explains the basic principle of black holes. The idea of space “travelling faster and faster towards a black hole” can be likened to a calm river. At certain points you can easily swim against the current, as the flow isn’t very strong. Yet in his example, it is revealed that this isn’t just any river, it’s the Zambezi River, which leads to the epic Victoria Falls. This marvel of nature was cast in this analogy as the black hole. There will come a point in your leisurely swim where you can no longer overcome the strength of the current which is gravitating towards the precipice of the fall – the event horizon upon which your body will be completely sucked in.

Just as anything in the water near the falls cannot successfully swim against the ever-increasing pace of river, even light cannot travel fast enough to overcome the speed at which everything barrels towards a black hole as, faster and faster, it draws nearer and nearer.

The point is, you can use as much body language as you want to explain something simple, but this has its limits. When you start using waterfalls to explain black holes, and Patagonian glaciers to explain the arrow of time, you can rest assured this is one of the best ways to get your message across – visualising your message, and using concepts people already understand to make the leap towards understanding concepts that are much more foreign to all of us.

No wonder this wonderer of the world has been awarded all sorts of prizes for helping the likes of me begin to understand something like the physics of entropy.

Now, I’ll travel to the future to see how well this article was received before posting it!

One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman.

“You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”

“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer. “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.

The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.

“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.

The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”

Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”

An energy company we were working with a couple of years ago told us this story.

It was in the wintry depths of February, and an elderly woman who lived alone had her boiler break down. So she called the gas company, and they sent a repairman.

When he arrived, he became more than a bit apprehensive when he saw a little dog that was running around his legs in a kind of frenzy. This dog was clearly harmless, but he’d always been terrified of them. Still, wanting to be polite, he didn’t say anything, and just went about his business hoping the dog would go away.

The boiler was old and fiddly, and the repairman had to go back to the depot to get parts. When he got back, the parts weren’t quite right, and he had to go back again. Every time he returned, there was the dog. As the flat was getting colder and colder, he pressed on with his work, despite this dog that made him tremble with fear.

After several hours, the job was finally done, and the radiators clanked back to life. When he went to say goodbye to the woman, she told him his service had been excellent, and she was very pleased. But she did offer one bit of constructive criticism.

“You really shouldn’t bring your dog with you to repair jobs”, she said.

A young boy was walking a beach after a tropical storm. Driftwood and rubbish were everywhere, but also hundreds of starfish that had been washed up on the sand. The sun was starting to come up over the horizon, and as the boy skipped along, he bent down occasionally to toss a starfish back into the sea.

Another and yet another starfish was returned to its watery world, and as the boy continued his journey along the beach, a tourist walking from the opposite direction stopped to watch him with curiosity. He shrugged, continued walking, and then stopped again. He turned back towards the boy.

“Why are you throwing those starfish back into the sea?” he asked. The boy looked at him, somewhat surprised.

“The sun’s coming up. If these starfish don’t go back into the sea, they’ll shrivel up and die in the heat.”

“But there are hundreds of starfish on this beach,” said the tourist. “And thousands of starfish all over the world being washed up on beaches like this. You are wasting your time – you can’t possibly make a difference!”

The boy looked at him, unfazed. He bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it back into the waves.

“I made a difference to that one,” he said.

The news that we have landed a probe called Philae on a comet called 67P is breathtaking. And the probe was launched, on its 4-billion mile journey, a full 10 years ago. (The office-wall list of “things we forgot to pack” must have been fascinating and long.)

But scientific exploits always lack the attention they truly deserve. And there is one very good reason for that – they just don’t mean anything…

Hear me out. As an engineer myself, I am confident in arguing that the world we enjoy today is built to an overwhelming degree on the back of humanity’s accumulated scientific knowledge – structures, laws of motion, hygiene and, you know, computers. But why aren’t people generally a little more moved by news of events that may further enhance the lives we live?

The answer lies in the way the stories are told. Stories of scientific breakthroughs suffer by their very nature – they contain facts that we probably can’t yet relate to.

To help us make sense of them, great stories put a protagonist at the heart of the matter, and we judge the protagonist’s reactions and experiences in order to understand the story on our own terms.

So, next time you put a satellite on a comet and you want people to pay attention, think about sending someone up there too. And give the mission an objective we can relate to. Say, the comet contains some natural resource that’s running low back on Earth. And our hero is the only man who can tap that resource. Also, bring in a bit of everyday human drama… say, the hero’s protégé is making a move on his daughter. You could make the whole thing into a film and get the daughter’s dad’s band to do the soundtrack.

I think that would get people’s attention.

Welcome to Uravan, Colorado, population zero.

No one lives here anymore. It’s not because they’ve slowly moved away. There used to be hundreds, maybe thousands of people here, a school, a post office, a baseball diamond, and – the linchpin of it all – a mine. But the mine closed, and with it, the town.

A wire fence lined with sun-faded biohazard warning signs is the only clue to the historical importance of this place. For decades, miners drew uranium and vanadium out of the ground, hence the town’s name. Its first use was as a yellow pigment. But when Manhattan Project scientists were developing the world’s first atomic weapons, the ones that would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, this is where they got their uranium.
Amidst the sound of crickets and wind through the grass, and the very occasional car winding through this sun-baked Rocky Mountain canyon, it’s tough to imagine the destructive power wrought from the ground beneath your feet.

Though I grew up just an hour down the highway, I first learned about this place from an article in the New Yorker, which article points out the powerful irony of how Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been completely rebuilt – and that it’s Uravan that’s now destroyed, fenced off, unsuitable for human habitation.

After World War II, Uravan continued to produce uranium through the Cold War, and then for the nuclear power boom in the 60s and 70s. But by the late 70s, the uranium market had slowed down and shifted largely to Canada, and the adverse health effects of uranium exposure started coming to light. The cleanup began in 1986, bulldozing all the buildings, removing mine tailings, and burying the remains of the town with thick layers of dirt.

The region’s history and mineral richness has come under new consideration lately as the rare earths market heats up again and companies have explored re-opening the mines. Predictably, this prospect has pitted NIMBYs against those who for decades have been victims of the region’s limited economic development. Mining companies claim that their operations have improved massively, mitigating the human and environmental threats of decades past, and that may well be true. But the degree of nostalgia among those in the region for a time when cancer and early death decimated the local population has come as a surprise to many. As a new documentary, Uranium Drive-In, illustrates, many locals seem proud of the region’s past, and eager to see the next chapter of the same story.

Why? I’m not so sure. I suspect part of it has to do with regaining a sense of regional identity, even a unique and historically important one, albeit one that has been so distinctly dangerous. A community that accepts, even prizes, such an inherently hazardous activity as uranium mining takes on a unique regional version of American exceptionalism.

The other lesson here, perhaps, is the crucial importance – and difficulty of attaining – empathy for the other side. Those who want to protect the landscape and those who want to regain economic vitality and regional identity hardly understand each other’s points of view. In conflict, we look for common ground. But here, it’s as if the common ground itself were poisonous.