Story Dash: Find, Develop, and Activate Your Most Valuable Business Stories . . . In Just a Few Hours

by David Hutchens

Storytelling is humanity’s oldest way of connecting to others. But for businesses and managers, it can also be a powerful tool to help organizations grow and thrive.A leader’s role is to create engagement and belief so that people will act. And there’s no more powerful way to grab attention, be remembered, and engage action than by telling stories—about who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Today, “storytelling” is a hot topic in organizations… but most leaders still struggle to act upon it. How do we find and tell our stories quickly, in an environment of urgency where we can hardly pause to catch our breath? For more than a decade Hutchens has tested his method of rapid and strategic story development with innovation teams in Silicon Valley, across global Fortune 100 leadership teams, and more. Hutchens has honed a unique process that is active, potent, and strategically focused . . . and also a lot of fun.  In Story Dash, Hutchens shares a repeatable process to find, develop, and deploy your “narrative assets”—that is, your urgent core stories that hold value. Even better, he will help you do it FAST; often in less than a day. Story Dash will help you your natural capacity for storytellingFind your stories—and figure out which ones to tellBuild your narrative so it lands with unforgettable impactFind your own voice of authentic leadershipBring more of who you are to your teams and your marketsFully illustrated and written in a clear, sharp voice, Story Dash shares the fastest way to find lots of stories that will create action around the work you care about most.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership

193 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 24, 2021

About the author

David Hutchens is an author, business writer and learning designer who creates communication solutions for The Coca-Cola Company, Wal-Mart, IBM, GE, Nike, Bank of America, and others. He served as chairman of Storytelling in Organizations, a special interest group of the globally renowned National Storytelling Network.

He speaks to organizations and leadership teams all around the world on the topic of storytelling as an organizational capacity. His new book is “Circle of the 9 Muses: A Storytelling Field Guide for Innovators and Meaning Makers,” Wiley & Sons 2015

He is creator of the Learning Fables -- a book series that uses narrative and metaphor to illustrate principles of organizational learning. With titles that include "Outlearning the Wolves" and "Shadows of the Neanderthal," the popular business fables have have sold more than a quarter-million copies in over a dozen languages.

He is author of the book "A Slice of Trust: The Leadership Secret with the Hot & Fruity Filling,” which features a foreword by Stephen M.R. Covey.

In partnership with The Conference Board, he is creator and lead facilitator of The Team USA Leadership Experience, at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado springs; and he also facilitates The Apollo Leadership Experience at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A nationally recognized developer of innovative learning products, David's work has been recognized with distinctions such as Training & Development's "Training Product of the Year" award; ASTD's prestigious "Excellence in Practice" award; Brandon Hall Gold award, and more.

David's newest product is "GO Team: Powering Teams to Perform," a just-in-time team training resource. GO Team's library of 18 team-related topics allows you to build your own learning agenda tailored to your team's needs.

Reviews

[So · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really practical book with many actionable tips - which is exactly what I went in expecting (hoping for!).
The advice is invaluable and there is SO much of it to receive from the author and I appreciated that I didn't have to wait long to find the value in reading this book - the author doesn't use a bread crumb strategy to keep stringing readers along - he goes all out with the advice and it delivers.

[David Hutchens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book, and I like it. So, five stars for me!

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how practical this book is and it's set up for team work. You cannot just enjoy ideation, crafting tales or seeking narrative arcs as you read this book alone- it is best enjoyed with three or four people which after having done design thinking at work made this more enjoyable.
The book has various resources as well to guide one through.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

[Anne-marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book also applies to personal stories. A must have in your arsenal of how to tell or tell a better story.

[Jorge Enrique Alzate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid tools to use to think about telling a concise impactful story in 1-2 minutes. Story cards are available free, as is the story canvas to help map out the crucial elements of the story. Felt a bit too brief on purpose, left me wanting to know more about how the author got there; this was a sales pitch for his product, which is a good one.

[Wiebke Kuhn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was planning a retreat for my colleagues to get the different levels of experiences connected, and I had a hard time coming up with a good way to do this.
And then I heard a podcast about this book and thought - this may be it. And my colleagues agreed that this was the best retreat ever, so this model of thinking about the importance of story telling and then providing an easy to follow template to collect story ideas, pull together one key story per participant and refine them through telling and feedback is definitely worth exploring.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super short and good material but really needed to read this one as a physical book and work through the exercises to gain the most learning benefit.