Q and A with a Story Guru: Nora Camps: Childhood Stereo Ultimately Leads to High Fidelity Story Telling

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Like many of my most recent batch of Q&A invitees, Nora Camp and her work popped up as suggestions in my Scoop.it curation. I am most excited to have her join the Q&A series because she and her company, Duo.ca, are approaching brand storytelling in a unique way. This Q&A will run over the next six days.

Bio: [from the Duo.ca Web site]: Nora Camps, president, of DUO.CA is a brand strategy consultant for charitable foundations, not for profit organizations and companies who have an entrepreneurial spirit. Nora’s personal interest is in executing agricultural theme marketing initiatives for a brighter future on a greener planet. Over time Nora has articulated, and indeed demonstrated the power of high fidelity storytelling, and how she uses print collateral and events to build an organization’s character.

Before starting her own firm, Nora worked in advertising, direct mail, sales, media relations and corporate design.

Nora says: “I love helping people achieve great things: connecting people with ideas and each other: and juxtaposing disparate ideas to produce new realities. My painting and photography exemplify these desires”.

Q&A with Nora Camps, Questions 1 and 2:

Q: Who are you? Share something about your early years, something that coloured how you think about storytelling now.

A: In 1969, our family took delivery of a Telefunken stereo in a teak cabinet. I’ve since seen many of the very same cabinets in vintage furniture stores across Toronto, so I know we were not alone in our experience. The unit was carefully carried into our small house, positioned in the place of honour in the living room and plugged in. Mom, Dad, my brother, our dog and I sat down for the first sounds from our very own hi-fi system. The unit came with a record and we placed that on the turntable, carefully closed the sliding doors and sitting back to hear a voice that sounded very much like Peter Ustinov tell us that we were about to experience the incredible quality of High Fidelity Sound Reproduction. A car horn sounded from the left side of the cabinet and then birds tweeting on the right … clarity and amazing precision … and then a symphony began some orchestral suite. This was our foray into a way of hearing that would establish a new measure of what is good, average and unacceptable in sound reproduction. This quality of sound would be forever remembered by me as high fidelity sound — sound which reproduced the complete range of the sound experience — subtly nuanced, magnificently reported, larger and more textured than life. There is a direct relationship between how I think about story, about what I call High Fidelity Story Telling and this early experience of hi-fi sound reproduction.

Q: Can you talk a bit about your company’s concept of “High Fidelity Story Telling?”

A: We have broken down High Fidelity Story Telling into seven distinct deliverables — each one can build out a campaign or be used alone. We use something called ‘residual memory’ to program the stories to be memorable and easy to recall/retell. The way we use imagery, with words or on its own, is quite different from the convention. We have begun to deliver a story essay for Monforte Dairy each month, and we want to do that for others. We are talking to a foundation who can use all seven facets of High Fidelity Story Telling to launch and sustain a fundraising campaign for a significant sum … we can incorporate our storytelling method into social media campaigns … Can you tell that after 27 years in business, I am completely smitten with storytelling?

81st Q&A Debuts

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I’m planning a new round of Q&As this late winter and spring. I recently sent out 29 invitations (would have sent more but found that an amazing number of blogger/practitioner Web sites had no contact information). Seventeen practitioners responded affirmatively, and a particularly quick and eager respondent, Nora Camps of Duo.ca, will be featured in the coming week.

A bit of history and stats — just because I find it fun to compile this stuff … I began sending invitations for the Q&A series in the summer of 2008 and began publishing Q&As in early September of that year.

I have sent roughly 174 invitations. Three kinds of responses occur: 1) No response at all, 2) a response declining the invitation, and 3) a response accepting the invitation. The third response is the most common, but it doesn’t mean the respondent will necessarily follow through with responding to my questions after I’ve researched them and sent them out.

I was pleased and a bit surprised to realize I’ve conducted 80 Q&As to date. That means that about 41 percent of invitations yield published Q&As.

When I hit 100 Q&As, I want to revise Storied Careers, my free compilation ebook featuring the Q&A story practitioners.

I’m excited about the launch of the latest series. The bulk of them will start appearing in February, and especially March and beyond.

Want to participate or nominate a practitioner? Please email me.

How Much Story Can You Fit into 30 Seconds?

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Yesterday on Facebook, the ever creative Park Howell shared a 30-second TV spot (embedded below) his company, Park & Co., had created about donating to Goodwill.

In the spot, a young boy packs his teddy bear into his backpack and pedals his bike to a Goodwill center to donate it.

It’s a sweet, heart-warming, storied video. BUT, something that happens between the teddy bear being bundled in the backpack and being dropped off at Goodwill distracts from the message, in my opinion.

The boy passes and glances at another teddy bear, this one sticking out of a garbage can. The message is intended to be that donating to Goodwill is a better alternative to tossing out your beloved stuffed-animal friends.

But that message was lost on me because all I could think about was “Why didn’t the boy rescue the bear from the garbage can and also take it to Goodwill?” Another commenter asked the same question. Park’s response: Because it would not have fit in the 30-second spot.

Maybe it’s because I always tended to over-sentimentalize and anthropomorphize stuffed animals. I have only one from my own childhood, but I still have all my grown kids’ stuffed animals. Maybe the spot reminds me of a childhood trauma in which I bathed a doll that should not have been bathed. Though she had rubber or plastic “skin,” she oddly had some sort of stuffing inside that was not meant to get wet. My mother made me throw her away. I was so devastated, not as much over the loss of the doll as over what she must be going through.

Another commenter would have liked to see another child adopting the donated bear from Goodwill. Again, no time to fit in that scene.

It’s an interesting discussion because it raises the question of what parts of the story are most important to include when time is highly constrained. Which parts of the story will best convey the message, and which will distract?

I would rather see Park risk not conveying the Goodwill-as-alternative-to-garbage message than risk traumatizing and distracting people like me and the other commenter who want to see that trashed bear rescued. Maybe if he took out that piece, he’d have time for a scene in which the bear gets adopted.

Goodwill “Teddybear” – :30 TV from Park&Co on Vimeo.

Story Gets an Analysis and a Critique: Two Presentations

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Two TED Talks came to my attention in the last couple of days — one that embodies an affecting story (as many TED Talks do) and another that casts a critical and suspicious eye on stories themselves.

I often see storied presentations, and I often see written pieces on integrating story into presentations, but a wonderful post by John Zimmer analyzes in detail a storied presentation. Zimmer is a Toastmaster who blogs about public speaking and often integrates Toastmaster-specific content.

The presentation, embedded below, is by Alberto Cairo, who runs the orthopedic program operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan.

I urge you to read Zimmer’s full analysis, which is enormously helpful to public speakers, but here’s my brief synthesis that applies the analysis to integrating story into presentations:

  • Establish your credibility with humility, and do it briefly (One of the most striking things about Cairo’s presentation, in my view, is how humble he is throughout.)
  • Foreshadow that you will delve into the past to reveal a story (which, in this case, had several sub-stories).
  • Forego charts and graphs; just tell the story.
  • If you use slides, make them striking photos/graphics that go with your story.
  • Own your emotions. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable as you tell your story.
  • Make your gestures natural.
  • Paint descriptive pictures, but keep them simple.
  • Use facial expressions appropriate to your story. (Here, I differ slightly from Zimmer’s analysis. Cairo tells a serious story, but he could have smiled occasionally. When he smiles at the end, you wish you’d seen that smile during the story.)
  • Don’t be afraid of humor when presenting a serious subject. (The audience indeed laughs several times; these would have been good places for Cairo to smile.)
  • Build drama with your physical presence.
  • Provide relief to that drama with lighter moments.
  • Don’t be afraid to inject pauses, even long ones.
  • Think about what you want the audience to remember, and be sure to articulate that message (What’s the moral of the story?). If an audience member were describing the story/presentation to a friend in a restaurant two weeks later, how would you want him or her to express your message?
  • When appropriate, become your characters.
  • Bring the story full circle by describing a transformation.
  • Provide a few supporting points that enhance the transformation’s impact.
  • You’ve told the audience what you want them to remember, but take that a step further by describing the action you seek.

The Toastmasters tradition is to constructively evaluate speeches and offer suggestions for improvement, even for high-quality speeches in which it’s difficult to identify ways it could be better. Zimmer calls Cairo’s presentation “a fantastic talk on so many levels,” but he does suggest a few minor improvements. One slide isn’t the best choice for its part of the talk, Zimmer opines, and it stays on the screen too long. Cairo could have employed longer pauses. And Zimmer feels Cairo could have stood closer to the audience, although he suspects, as do I, that the TED folks had him stand in a certain spot for filming purposes. I would add that Cairo could have used more energy. His humility became a bit like an enveloping cloak that made him just a wee bit plodding. Again, a serious subject, but a bit more spark would have enhanced my engagement. He’s not a native-English-speaker, though (he’s Italian), so it’s possible he would speak more energetically in his native tongue. In Toastmasters, he would have been dinged for saying “um,” but I caught no more than two or three of those in a 19-minute talk.

The second TED Talk is a two-year-old deep critique of stories themselves by economist Tyler Cowen (thanks to Stephanie West Allen for alerting me to it). Cowen is suspicious of stories because they (a) are too simple, (b) end up serving dual and conflicting functions, and (c) are often the wrong stories, as served up by marketers and politicians. This third point is the popular manipulation argument often leveled at storytelling.

Throughout the speech, I found myself thinking: What’s the alternative? We have no choice but to think in story form. While he acknowledges that it is impossible for humans not to think in stories, Cowen wants to see more messiness, ambiguity. He wants us to scrutinize stories more critically and suspiciously before buying into them. It’s a provocative talk, and I’d be interested in what story folks think of it.

Interestingly, I was just as engaged in Cowen’s talk as I was in Cairo’s even though Cowen tells few stories — possibly because I had my defensive story hackles up and wanted to understand what he sees as the problems with stories.

Life Writing: A Bit of Looking Back, A Lot of Looking Ahead

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Some interesting life-writing items I’ve come across recently reflect end-of-the-old-year/beginning-of-the-new-year themes.

Professional Personal Historian Dan Curtis published a list of The Top Personal History Blogs of 2011, some of which I know well and will also be well-known to readers here. (Do read his post to learn his criteria for the list and which blogs he considers to be the best of the best). Here are his picks with his commentary:

  • Legacy Multimedia blog. Owner Stefani Twyford says that on her blog “you will read about my passion for personal history, filmmaking techniques, genealogy, and related topics. I will veer off onto other topics from time to time but always come back to the things that make my work and my life a joy.”
  • Memoir Mentor. Owner Dawn Thurston says, “My blog is an attempt to participate in the larger community of people interested in life story writing of all kinds and perhaps help a few people persevere in writing their stories.”
  • One Story at a Time. Owner Beth LaMie says, “I hope you find my stories of interest, especially if you want to write some of your own family stories.”
  • True Stories Well Told. Owner Sarah White says, “Here’s where I share the thoughts I might bring up for class discussion. Here’s where I post the writings of my fearless, peerless, workshop participants. Here’s where I share stories from my own life, as well as my pet peeves, pointers, and personal observations. I hope to create the atmosphere you find in my classrooms.”
  • Video Biography Central. Owner Jane Lehmann-Shafron describes her blog as a place for “Advice, essays, samples and inspiration for people interested in preserving their personal and family history through video biography, memorial video, life story and genealogy video.”
  • Women’s Memoirs. Owners Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet have put together a wealth of information that includes writing prompts, book reviews, and more. Women’s Memoirs is not strictly speaking a personal history site but there’s a lot of useful material here for anyone involved in personal histories.

Curtis also recently published The 50 Best Life Story Questions. It’s a terrific list because it certainly isn’t run of the mill. Here’s a small sampling:

  • If you could do one thing over in your life, what would it be?
  • What makes you happy?
  • Looking back on your life, what do you regret?
  • What do you believe to be true?
  • What is the secret to a happy life?
  • What do you believe happens to us after we die?
  • Who’s had the greatest influence on your life and why?
  • What are the qualities that you admire in your friends?
  • What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?
  • How would you describe yourself?

Amber Lea Starfire has an New Year’s Day excellent post in which she describes the process she engages in annually in which she reflects on the past and looks forward to the future. In A New Year’s Writing Tradition, she describes creating a New Year’s Chart (pictured), kind of a mind map that captures:

  • Things I want to do.
  • Things I want to be.
  • Things I want to learn.
  • Things and people I want to see.
  • Places I want to go.
  • Adventures I want to have

Amber says developing the chart is a fun, creative activity, and I believe it.

Finally, when SMITH Magazine founder Larry Smith participated in his Q&A here back in September 2010, the magazine had just launched a new project, The Moment, “moving personal pieces about key instances — a moment of opportunity, serendipity, calamity, or chaos — that have had profound consequences on our lives.” Today is the release day for the book that resulted from the project, THE MOMENT: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure. I’m probably looking forward to this book more than Smith’s six-word-memoir books because the contents will necessarily be much more storied when not restricted to six words.

Favorite 2011 Story Finds — From A to Z

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Another blogger inspired me to create an A-Z list of highlights of story finds for the year. Strictly speaking, not all of these are finds. Some are my own creations or initiatives. Others are practitioners I’ve highlighted in the past who’ve been resurgent in the last year. Still others are simply tributes. But they represent some of the most notable content about applied storytelling from 2011.

A is for Assessments. Toward the end of this year, I got interested in the ways people can use story to discover their passions and career paths and made several discoveries of tools for doing so:

B is for Blair. As in practitioner Madelyn Blair (pictured), who revamped her Pelerei Web site this year with rich resources.

C is for Curation. 2011 has been huge for curation in the story world, and I’ve changed the way I curate. In late May, Gregg Morris’s Scoop.it curation, Story and Narrative inspired me to initiate two Scoop.it curations of my own, Organizational Storytelling (which is probably too narrow a name for it) and Personal Storytelling. Karen Deitz (see next entry) soon followed with her Just Story It curation. (Even though Gregg, Karen, and I cover similar territory, our content doesn’t overlap as much as you might think.) A search for Scoop.it curations related to story reveals 200 results.

I used to be frustrated by collecting far more material about applied storytelling than I could ever hope to cover here in this blog. Using the Scoop.it curations, I can still highlight noteworthy story content, but I don’t feel frustrated about not writing about all of it. Readership of my curations continues to grow, and I would like to think the curations and this blog (a curation of a different kind) complement each other.

Scoop.it is just one of several tools that I believe will continue to contribute to an evolution in content curation.

D is for Deitz. As in practitioner Karen Deitz. Karen has long been a luminary in the story world, and I quoted her in my dissertation back in 2006, but this year, she transformed her Polaris Associates into a dynamic new, resource-rich site, Just Story It, in addition to the curation mentioned above. Here’s a post about her rebranding.

E is for Earth. The Earth as storyteller was a true find. One of the stranger — but most fun — posts I wrote this year was The Earth Is the Original Nonlinear Storyteller, inspired by a geology field trip I went on in the fall. Adding to the fun was the response it got, including from one of my career-practitioner colleagues, as I wrote about here.

F is for free stuff. I have always been struck by the incredible generosity of the storytelling community. Most practitioners gave away amazing amounts of stuff for free. I don’t know of a good way to list all the free goodies I’ve reported on this year; a search on the word “free” yielded strange results. But you’ll find that most of the time when I report on a resource a practitioner is offering, it’s free.

G is for Goodbye. 2011 saw losses to the story world. We lost Steve Jobs. In an especially tragic way, we lost my friend, Trey Pennington. Not that we can equate the loss of a person with the loss of a story form, but in 2011, I wrote about the demise of serialized comic strips and romance comics and soap operas.

H is for Hoffman. Lou Hoffman consistently writes fascinating posts in his Ishmael’s Corner blog. This year, his infographic comparing corporate speak with storytelling went viral.

I is for Inside Pages. Many of my finds are hidden in the “inside pages” of this blog. Here, you’ll find a large collection of sites and blogs that relate to applied storytelling. My Bastille Day post provides a good example of the kind of links I’m referring to. In that post, I published a big list of links I was planning to add to my inside pages (Confession: I still haven’t added all of them.) To find my inside pages, look at this blog’s sidebar, and then scroll down to “Pages,” especially the links below the list of Q&A participants. I will publish a big new set of links soon.

J is for John’s Storied Resume. I cannot claim to be the least bit unbiased, but I truly felt my son’s comic/zine resume was one of the most creative and storied resumes I’d ever seen. He’s working on revising it as he is currently seeking his fortune in Philadelphia.

K is for Kendall Haven’s story definition. I’ve explored the definition of story/storytelling almost since this blog’s inception and have gradually become more convinced of the importance of defining story. A pivotal moment in my thinking came when I read Kendall Haven’s definition of story in his Q&A:

A story is: a character-based narrative of an interesting character’s struggles to reach a real and important goal that is initially blocked by some combination of one or more problems and conflicts that have the potential to create some real risk and danger (jeopardy) for that character, all presented in sufficient detail to make the story seem vivid, compelling, and memorable.

L is for Life Writing. This blog has always featured content about life writing, personal storytelling, journaling, memoir and similar areas, but I feel I’ve emphasized these topics more this year than in the past, especially through my Personal Storytelling curation. This year, I’ve discovered life-writing gurus like Denis LeDoux. This year, columnist David Brooks conducted a neat project featuring stories by septuagenarians (The Life Report).

M is for Measures of Story. My friend, Sean Buvala came out with a new book this year, Measures of Story, which teaches readers “to create even more stories from the anecdotes and “floats” (the little brother of anecdotes) that are everywhere around you.”

N is for No Story, No Fans. Another friend, another terrific contribution to the discipline. Read my review of Raf Stevens’s excellent book, No Story, No Fans.

O is for onethousandandone. The Australian story consultancy is another example of resurgent practitioners. Principals Gabrielle Dolan and Yamini Naidu (pictured at right) came out with a free ebook, a terrific set of videos, and a coaching program in 2011.

P is for Park. As in Park Howell, who is behind some of my very favorite resources of this year — his slideshow on How to Craft a Great 3-Minute Story and his Storyteller or Marketer slideshow, featured in the Q&A he did with me (I’m pretty sure the latter was created before 2011, but I discovered it this year).

Q is for Q&As. I had thought of 2011 as a rather fallow year for my Q&A series, but in review, it wasn’t too bad, at least the first half. Though more folks commit to these Q&As than follow through, these excellent Q&As graced these pages in 2011:

R is for Roots. As in, a return to my roots, or my special niche in applied storytelling, storytelling for job search and career. I believe I’ve posted more in that category in 2011 than I have in past years. Why? One reason is the proliferation of story curators. Sticking to my niche more often is a way for me to post what others aren’t posting. To get a flavor for these posts, click here (unfortunately, the way this blog is set up, you see only a limited number).

S is for Storify. Storify has been one of the most buzzed-about and well-reviewed new tools in storytelling this year, especially for journalistic storytelling. With Storify, “users bring together the best text, photos and video from social media to tell stories that help make sense of the world.”

T is for Toastmasters. 2011 was unquestionably the year I got a bit obsessed with Toastmasters. I told the story of my experience and explored the storytelling aspects of the organization’s approach. This post lists all my Toasties posts (including one from 2010).

U is for unbridled creativity. A topic that really caught my fancy this year was creativity and its connection to storytelling. Propelled by my own experimental summer of plying creativity in the form of crafts, I interviewed story luminary Annette Simmons about her creative pursuits. The second post contains a link to the first. Afterwards, I was blown away when I discovered an incredibly creative handout Annette created for job-seekers.

V is for Video, which continues to play a major role in the story world. Here are a few of my favorite posts that featured awesome video stories:

W is for Workbook. One of my biggest projects this year has been my workbook to accompany my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career. I’m proud of it and curious whether buyers are finding it useful.

X is for eXcellent white papers. (Yeah, I know that’s a cheat for X). Ever-generous practitioners offered thought-provoking white papers, which I noted in these posts:

Y is for You. Every reader is a precious find. I cherish you above any content I’ve published this year. I value you and your story.

Z is for Zahmoo. Created by Shawn Callahan and the folks at Anecdote, Zahmoo is a story bank for business and family stories and is another one of the exciting story tools launched this year. I wrote a preview post describing Zahmoo.

Yet Another Storied Way to Assess Your Year, Plan the Next One

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To my current theme of year-end review and new-year goals, I’m adapting some ideas from an article by Ernest R. Stair in the January 2012 issue of Toastmaster magazine (to read the full article, you’ll need to return to the link later in January — unless you’re a Toastmasters member).

Stair’s thesis is that you can’t get a real sense of achievements if you look at them through the perspectives of others. An example of a particular telling question that reveals the wrong way to look at achievements (and a question I can see myself asking) is: “How will my job title sound at a high-school reunion?”

Instead, Stair suggests a set of the “right” questions to ask. I’m adapting them here, not as questions, but as prompts to apply to the year we’ve nearly completed:

Thinking about the year just completed, give one or more storied examples of:

  • Times you’ve learned from your mistakes.
  • Times you’ve refused to quit.
  • Times you’ve let someone else have all the glory
  • Times you’ve taken criticism gracefully
  • Times you’ve made someone’s day

Your responses to these prompts, says Stair, “succeed in highlighting the true you, as you rise to great heights turning ordinary moments of your everyday life into events of extraordinary significance.”

The Gift of Story in Santa’s Bag

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I know I’m a bit late in the day of Christmas with this post. Just a few last-minute bits I came across with nice, storied elements for the holiday:

These American Lives, edited by Ira Glass, tell of ordinary lives “with an untold tale.”

In the Huffington Post Religion section, readers tells stories of experiences that made the holidays holy. “They range for heart breaking to heart warming and reminded us that the reason for the season is family, friends, fun and faith,” an editor’s note says. Here’s the list:

Kathleen Hidreth — A Christian Toddler Narrates a Hanukkah Tradition
Ana Josephs — How I Found Christ in Christmas
Elizabeth Bastos — A Christmas Story
Gayle Ashbach — The Holy Season
Nandini Pandya — Merry Christmas From a Hindu
Mark Pfeifer — On Christmas Eve, Homeless at the Hyatt
Rev. Ellen Cooper-Davis —Little Holies
Keith —Darkest Before the Dawn
Sister Rebecca Mead, OSB, SPP — Through the Eyes of a Child
David Currier — Christmas in Mexico
Frenika Mudd — My Holy Holiday Story
Nichelle Wrenn —An Atheist Thanksgiving and Christmas
Frankie Trice —Yule: A Pagan Feast
Melinda L. Wentzel — The Warm Fuzzies
Michael L. Ruffin — The Christmas Play
Harsha Sharma — How the Story of Hanukkah Inspires me in Interfaith Social Action

A podcast from Create Your Life Story notes that “Christmas and the holiday time that we have at this time of year, is often about family, catching up and talking about what has been happening over the past year.” The podcast encourages folks to “spend time with your family members to ask those interesting questions to understand and show your interest in their lives.”

Hope you and yours are enjoying a splendid and blessed day of celebration!

Journaling Technique That Will Pay Off at End of 2012

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I’m on a roll with storied techniques for reviewing and reflecting on accomplishments and such at year’s end. The latest is a re-discovery of an old friend, John Caddell.

John created The Mistake Bank, a place for folks to tell stories about their mistakes and what they’d learned from them. He disbanded the site, a Ning site, when Ning started charging a fee for its sites.

Now he incorporates mistakes — but also assessments, gripes, and accomplishments — in a 5-minute journaling technique. He even created an app for this endeavor. In 5-minute journaling really helps at year-end review time:

This year, I have been writing a short journal entry at the end of every workday — a short paragraph explaining the most notable event of the day. I then answer a few questions about the entry. One question asks me to categorize the event, which could be a mistake, an assessment, a gripe… or an accomplishment. I built this as a cloud-based app (ugly, but functional), so I could enter the data from anywhere, including my phone.

The app enables him to filter his entries by topic:

I simply added a filter for “accomplishment” and got a fairly long list of accomplishments for the year. They easily clustered into a few most significant ones. I used this information as the basis to write my self-evaluation. There were patterns, too, in the accomplishments, that helped me do the document my strengths. The items labeled “mistakes” were useful to find development areas — an important and challenging part of a self-evaluation. Given that I had the journal entries, providing concrete examples was easy. I’m confident my self-eval will be the best representation possible of what I did all year.

“Providing concrete examples,” of course, translates into crafting stories.

John was so pleased with this technique that he declares,”I won’t do an evaluation ever again without having the online journal to work with.”

And, bonus, he’s offering to share his cloud-based app if you email him at inquiry (at) caddellinsightgroup.com.

Story Your Future with Personal Scenario Planning

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As we reflect on 2011 and set goals for 2012, using techniques such as the Milestones and Memorable Moments exercise I shared last week, here’s another interesting tool.

Peter Schwartz’s Your Future in 5 Easy Steps: Wired Guide to Personal Scenario Planning actually appeared back in 2009, but I came across it only recently. In its use of quadrants, personal scenario planning reminds me a lot of SWOT Analysis. Both are tools that are not overtly storied but offer strong story elements. Schwartz writes:

To be clear: Scenario planning is not prediction. The goal is to envision possible futures, which will serve as guideposts to the path forward. The payoff is a clearer view of what the future may hold and of the most advantageous route through it.

It’s the possible futures where storytelling especially enters the picture.

The process in a nutshell is:

Identify forces likely to bear on the problem, organize them into future possibilities, envision paths that would lead to those futures, and devise a strategy for surviving them all. With a sharp picture of potential futures and corresponding plans of action, you’ll always be one step ahead.

Schwartz organizes the five steps into infographics using a sample situation — the future of a career in aerospace engineering. The technique is geared to career but could conceivably be used for more personal aspects of life.

Briefly, the steps are:

  1. Listing driving forces — variables, trends, and events that will affect your mission, dividing them into certainties and uncertainties, and ranking them in order of significance.
  2. Make a quadrant grid (matrix) in which the two most important uncertainties — from the top of your list — form the axes of a grid, with each quadrant representing a potential future.
  3. Here’s the storied part: “Make the scenarios more concrete by fleshing them out into imaginary, but plausible, news stories that are emblematic of the forces at play.”
  4. “Develop strategies for coping with the four futures you’ve imagined.”
  5. Armed with what you’ve come up with, be aware and sensitive to the way the future is unfolding. “Adjust your action strategy to anticipate the future as it emerges.”