Business Storytelling For Dummies

by Karen Dietz, Lori L. Silverman

Use storytelling to influence people and move them to action

Need to get your point across? Get staff on board with change? Foster collaboration? Increase sales? Strengthen employee engagement? Build customer loyalty? Drive innovation and creativity? Capture best practices? Align people around a goal? Grow your business? Business Storytelling For Dummies can help you do this—and more. Pre-order your copy today through Amazon!

 Discover:

Expert advice with real-world examples Proven case studies, tips, and templates How to get results by capturing, crafting, telling stories, and more

Genres: Business, Writing, Nonfiction

386 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

For over 25 years I have been helping organizations and leaders be more effective. My business journey started out as a trainer and facilitator in the human potential movement. Later I became certified in the MBTI, working with teams of executives and individuals to improve their leadership skills.

I just finished writing Business Storytelling for Dummies with co-author Lori Silverman for Wiley publishers and available December 2013. I also contributed the Forward and co-wrote Chapter 6 on storytelling and financial management in the 2006 book Wake Me Up When The Data Is Over; How Organizations Use Stories to Generate Results by Lori Silverman, and is featured in the book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling; Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (2005) by Stephen Denning. You can also view her TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahN_FD...

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I've only read half a dozen Dummies books, this one doesn't fit the mold. The others were more reference-like, allowing the reader to drill down to a specific section that relatively stood alone, although with plenty of cross references to other parts of the book. This one, "Business Storytelling for Dummies", reads more like a cohesive whole. It is the first Dummies book I've read that could be read cover to cover, and it seemed to be written that way on purpose (hmmm, like a story...).

The book was very detailed in the suggestions on how to create stories for use in business. I appreciated the thoroughness of the suggestions, maybe finding a little too much instruction given this is a Dummies book. While there were a lot of step-by-step checklists, they were for parts of the process and seemed a bit disconnected from each other. I was expecting (hoping for) something that made things easy and cookie-cutter, but the processes described here still require plenty of thought. There are no easy solutions proposed, but that seems to be the nature of the problem.

I was also confused by what appeared to be a late addition to the book - a definition of story that was very limiting. After spending a chapter narrowing down what a story is, the book gave lots of examples that weren't stories by definition, sometimes calling this out, sometimes not. I understood the explanation, but it really felt tacked on and made the rest of the book lengthier and more confusing. The pedantic chapter and subsequent naming gymnastics could have been omitted.

Overall, I found plenty of tools to help create, refine, and present stories in business. This is a valuable book to refer to - a keeper.

I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads FirstReads program.

[Prashant Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good starting point

This was a good read for beginners. It drew an overall picture of storytelling in business and also suggested some good story structures.
Some of the things were repetitive and showed down my speed. I might not read it again but i would definitely suggest starters to pick this book

[MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important: this is a marketing book, not a KM book.

Storytelling has long been recognized as an effective way to convey knowledge in a business environment. You tell the story of how you solved a problem or how a decision turned out to be a mistake, etc. and your coworkers can learn from it and the company benefits. That's not what this book is about. It mentions some other uses of storytelling in passing, but mostly it is about using stories to build engagement with customers.

The book defines storytelling as "a story provides packets of sensory language presented in a particular way that allows the listener to quickly and easily internalize the material, comprehend it, and create meaning from it." What it will help you do is learn several different kinds of stories and how to use them.

My advice is to go to the appendix (pages 335-350) and read one or two of the s5ories there. If you find them compelling and want to learn how to craft stories like this for your own experiences or company, this book will teach you how if you are willing to work at it.

Note: I received a copy of this book through the Firstreads program and I thank the publisher and authors for the opportunity to read it.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Business Storytelling for Dummies is a great, information packed tool for improving your writing for work or business. The authors aim to help you improve the writing skills you use in business, both by showing usable writing steps and showing how smart, targeted writing can create a true difference in work quality, productivity, and so much more. I liked that it had a lot of great writing advice, but what makes it so accessible and usable is that the authors always tie it back to writing for business. They show what you need to focus on when writing to make an impact and get results. I liked that they gave so many ideas as well as examples in order to help you choose what kind of writing you need for your situation, whether it’s working on an email to your employees, writing for a small business’ website, creating a presentation, etc. With this book, I think anyone can understand how to strategically and thoughtfully approach storytelling for your job or business.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I work in sales and I was in a bit of a slump when I picked this book up and right away I have been seeing positive results. I never thought of a sales pitch as a story or including a story into one and it really is an incredible thing, it’s almost a no-brainer because, like Dietz and Silverman point out, that’s how we connect the most with our fellow human beings: through stories. I think this book is very well organized, I recently finished the book and I have wanted to go back to certain topics and refresh myself on them and it was easy to do so. I also appreciate all of the websites and blogs that are included in the book so you can get even more information on the subject. I obviously would recommend this book to other people in sales but I think anyone could really benefit from this book; we all could benefit from turning our “junk food stories” into “health food stories” as Dietz and Silverman have put it.

[Bev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this text had an amazing amount of information and advice on improving your writing. I liked that there was so much information on a variety of kinds of writing, all that can be found in business. That meant that I could find what was relevant for me at the moment, but also know that this text will be useful for me in the future for different projects. I also like that this book helped me to understand the purpose of my writing, and what I can accomplish with a presentation if I approach storytelling with a focus on what I need to really convey and what my end goal is.

[Marievic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read all of the "for Dummies" books but all that I have had the oppurtunity to get my hands on.. I love! I love these books because it's easy to find what you're looking for. This book inparticular is great for business owners big or small.. even just anyone running any kind of team looking to get your teammates engaged and driven. I would definitely recommend it.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some good points in this book, but I'm not sure if it was really eye opening for me. Will have to wait and see at
My next opportunity to tell a story