The Right Story: The secret to spreading your ideas

there is no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. The success or failure of our ideas depends on us telling the right sto

From the day we’re born to the day we die, we’re figuring out how to persuade people. We are aware that we can’t do much of anything alone. We can only create the future we want to see by bringing other people with us on our journey. We understand the importance of gaining enrolment, getting agreement or effecting some kind of change of heart.

A desire path is usually the most easily navigated route between two places.

We’ve all done something similar on occasion: chosen the wrong place or time to have a discussion with our partner, became tongue-tied because we didn’t prepare what we wanted to say, failed to get the funding or close the sale we needed because we didn’t win the trust of key stakeholders.

They want to reinforce their worldview about the kind of person they are, and the kind of person they dream of being. They need to know they can trust the idea, or the product.

we know instinctively that our survival depends on more than any one individual’s ability to stay alive. We understand the need to connect and collaborate with each other. We want to bond and belong, so we can work together for the greater good of the tribe.

When we are united by that story and our shared humanity, rather than separated by our otherness, we can change anything and everything for the better. Together.

And we started to prioritise the immediate benefit we wanted to get from the interaction. We neglected to build trust before sharing the message and instead obsessed over just delivering it. The result is that we have changed from purposeful storytellers, who care about how the audience or user feels, to pragmatic communicators who prioritise ‘gett

Facebook likes had value. Marketing goals changed. Now, instead of investing time to understand customers’ unmet needs and unspoken desires as successful companies had been doing for generations, we began to monitor their online behaviour, looking for patterns and vulnerabilities, gathering data to leverage later—sometimes to serve or oftentimes to

Communication isn’t only about finding the right words. It’s about finding the right way and the right time to say them.