Q&A with a Story Guru: Karen Dietz: ‘A People is Known … By the Stories it Tells’

See a photo of Karen, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Karen Dietz, Question 7:

Q: What do you feel is organizations’ greatest obstacle in trying to get their message across, and how can story help?

A: Well, I think the greatest obstacle organizations face in getting their message across is the reliance on PowerPoint. According to Presentations Magazine, 30 million are created every day! PowerPoint is basically designed to convey information. Based on my regular exposure to these kinds of presentations, most are terribly dull. Storytelling is about engaging the hearts and minds of people and in business, moving them to action. Imagine trying to tell your organization’s story, or your project’s story, or your team’s story effectively by only using PowerPoint. Imagine trying to squeeze complex concepts and inspiration into a PowerPoint page. Remember the last presentation you heard and they read facts, figures and information off the screen? Ugh! Storytelling is 100 times more powerful and engaging. Electronic presentations are not all bad, and stories can be used in those types of presentations. But it does take some training in how to meld storytelling and PowerPoint together to create a powerful program.

The other obstacle I see that many leaders face is not knowing the right story to tell at the right time. For example, I’ve heard leaders tell again and again and again the story about why the organization needs to change. But people have already gotten that message and are past that. They are ready to be inspired about how the change has already begun and the progress that’s being made.

To sum up my philosophy about storytelling is a quote from author Flannery O’Connor in Mystery and Manners: “There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.”