Everyday Business Storytelling: Create, Simplify, and Adapt a Visual Narrative for Any Audience

by Janine Kurnoff, Lee Lazarus

A practical, easy-to-use guide to transform business communications into memorable narratives that drive conversations--and your career--forward

In Everyday Business Create, Simplify, and Adapt A Visual Narrative for Any Audience , visual communication and storytelling experts Janine Kurnoff and Lee Lazarus leverage decades of experience helping executives at the world's top brands--including Facebook, Nestle, Accenture, and Marriot--bring clarity and meaning to their business communications. Whether you're building a presentation, crafting a high-stakes email, or need to influence decisions in your next meeting with an executive, Everyday Business Storytelling offers an insightful exploration of how to develop compelling business narratives.

You'll discover how to use a simple, repeatable framework to choreograph your ideas, data, and insights into an authentic, persuasive story. Within this business book, you'll also find clever data visualization and visual display techniques to help humanize your stories and build an emotional connection with your audience, leading to improved presentation skills and effective data storytelling.

Just a few of the things you'll learn from this business book

The science behind why storytelling is the most effective way to trigger emotion in an audience and how to craft a business narrative that makes your ideas engaging The four signposts of storytelling and how to identify and weave in your BIG idea to capture attention How to craft expert headlines that guide your audience and advance your story
Everyday Business Storytelling is an indispensable guide to making your communications stick in the minds of your audience and drive change. If you're a busy, talented businessperson responsible for executive presentations, one-pagers, emails, or virtual meetings, this communication book is for you.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Communication, Productivity, Professional Development, Psychology, Writing

288 pages, ebook

Published February 17, 2021

Reviews

[Vasso Kal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustrated examples help a lot. The framework looks solid, yet the writers present it as the solution to every problem ever, which makes me starting doubting it in the first place. The repetition is a bit too much, I'd honestly prefer the book to be half in size and repeat itself less, I would go back to it a lot more. But yeah, for people new to storytelling it's a nice read.

[Duong (Ufo) Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most helpful business books I have ever read! As I was reading and see all the examples of bad presentation, I kept saying to myself "OMG! That's me!". I'm quite a data-driven person and so I did not realize that I was missing the story and visual parts of a good presentation. I followed the guidelines in the books and looked at the good examples for reference, then I redid my latest business proposal. My colleagues were amazed! They said it's so much better - like day and night!
Highly recommend this book!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The before/after examples of the slides themselves were helpful.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could gift this book to every beginning knowledge worker and tell them to use it as a handy reference guide for creating a good slide deck, pitch, or presentation. I've see so many slides from so many companies that are essentially data repositories rather than steps in a compelling story. Kurnoff and Lazarus provide a simple structure for thinking about putting together a basic story and creating the slides to go with it. Follow their 4 steps (characters, setting, conflict, resolution) and their advice to put the Why, What, and How in every story, and you can't go very wrong.

[Bernadeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catchy, insightful, easy to read. A few key take aways from this book:
-All great stories have a WHY (setting, characters, conflict), a WHAT (Big idea) and a HOW (resolution).
- Your audience is diverse.
- Be ready to tell your story out of sequence.
- Don't be afraid to give up control for a moment to get control. Anything that can turn meetings and conversations into two-way dialogues helps you to show off your mastery of the material and your executive presence.

[Vaclav Kocian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a great book about telling stories in everyday business settings. It's very engaging, reads like a novel, has no fluff, and goes straight to the point. It's very actionable, has no unnecessary theory, and it's full of examples of bad-to-good transformations. Last but not least, the whole book has excellent typography and graphic design. Highly recommended for anyone who needs to create an engaging presentation, write an email, or communicate in general.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book for work and honestly it helped me think out how to make executive summary slides and emails. Starting with setting, characters, and conflict before going into resolution is such an obvious “English class” learning, but it definitely needs to be applied in work too. The slide layout examples they had looked really good and we had a couple of group discussions on how we can incorporate them going forward.

[Sara Siddiqui · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some really great tips for anyone that gives presentations, writes emails and builds dashboards on a regular basis, especially to clientele. The main idea- to captivate your audience with a storyline and to use data, visualizations, and text sparingly.

I felt like ideas got a bit repetitive at the end, but didn’t mind as the tips are pretty useful for anyone who works in corporate America.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love how practical the storytelling framework in this book is. It shows you step-by-step how to apply storytelling in real scenarios we often face in business, like when your meeting is cut short or you’re facing an audience with various needs. It also includes “before and after” examples which I found helpful to seeing how the concepts actually come to life.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodbye boring presentations within the board room! This amazing book is practical and to the point especially, if you, like me, are looking for simplicity and elegance of thought delivery through storytelling that drives real positive impact within the workspace.
It surely is great to revisit again & again to better put that insight into real practice, could not recommend it enough.

[Karina Brandenburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent resource in breaking down what is important in business. Every business owner will be faced with challenges and this book gives you the skill set to present, overcome and work through the problem. Insightful and full of excellent visuals to make the point simple to understand. Highly recommend!

[Cheryl Cantafio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this after I saw it on LinkedIn. If you’re looking to improve your business storytelling and presentation skills, this is a gem. It has well-written tips, visuals, and tools that have helped me already.

[Frieda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a fun book to peruse and read. It is geared towards sales and marketing but I found it most helpful in improving employee engagement during training sessions. In order to garner interest, one must cater to people's emotions. This is how information becomes memorable.

[Grania Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun to read and provided helpful frameworks to bring my business communications to the next level. On the flip side, it's very focused on pitching ideas rather than some other business communication situations and it could have easily been half the length.

[Iryna Draguntseva · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book about how to convey the main idea to an audience in the context of modern business. It includes examples and clear instructions on how to create presentations, write emails, design landing pages, and more. Everything is well illustrated with comments.

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing new or earth shattering here, bought this for MBA program.

Could have skipped it and just listened to some helpful youtubers who are already covering this material, and better with deeper explanations.

However, the pictures MIGHT make this book worth it if you need to do slide decks.

[Eddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing practical guide

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the frameworks outlined in the book! Simple and easy to understand. I'm looking foward to applying some of the principles I've learned for small business communications and content.

[JL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome examples
Very practical tips on how to connect audience needs to data/situation/ideas to form a story.

[Conor Birmingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a quick read, but had some good points in it. Enjoyed it even though I didn’t find much value from it

[Jannet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped me so much

[Steven Fouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for leaders. Highly recommend.

[Carolina Conde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un libro práctico, tomé y documenté varios pasos para aplicarlos. Es excelente, concreto y con muchos ejemplos.

[Leah Nyfeler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average. Read it for work. I didn’t learn anything new, but I’ve been a writer and editor for a long time. And I did finish it. I might recommend it to someone in their first job.

[Bobbi Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a must for anyone trying to tell a story in the workplace.

[sislasus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful.

[Taylor Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely essential reading for business communications. Especially helpful if your primary mode of communication is in PowerPoint slides.

[Annavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the ideas, but I don't see how I can apply them in my everyday work. My boss would never approve.

[Jasper Roelants · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very hands-on, no nonsense book that guides you towards creating slides that get their message accross in any business context.
Unlike many other storytelling books, the tips in this book are useful for everyday use (as the title suggests). Not only when you need to give a TED talk…

[Joseph McBee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent foundational guide for building killer slide decks. The guidelines are in the context of a storytelling structure and are practical but there are no technical PowerPoint tips here. It’s a quick read but can serve as an excellent reference for your PowerPoint deck builds.