Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
It's my turn, and I thought about writing about my other passions - 10K steps a day and travel then realized that hearing and sharing stories, especially positive ones, is so important during our present doom and gloom. That's me with Stacey Fish of SAP who has helped facilitate many of my stories - case studies in my books. I could have included many others like Alan Alper at Cognizant who have similarly helped me plenty over the years.
I recently caught up with a PwC colleague I worked with 35 years ago. He had Googled my name and found my books. He asked 'I knew you as an accountant, when did you learn to write?". So between talk of kids and our travels, I told him of my move at PwC into tech consulting, then to the IT research firm, Gartner where I developed my analytical, writing and presentation skills.
Gartner definitely taught me how to communicate on tech topics. It did not, however, teach me how to tell stories. That has been a skill I gradually acquired at Deal Architect, the tech advisory and publishing firm I started in 2004. It has been a slow process, honed gradually with 6,000 posts on this innovation blog and over 200 case studies in my books. Not bad for a late bloomer, eh? You could argue case studies and blogs about technology are not traditional stories which have heroes and villains. I would respond they actually have plenty of each. Let's come back to that - for now let me just say that hearing and sharing stories is definitely a passion of mine. Let me also add I am still an amateur compared to the authors and movie makers I describe below.
Storytelling has been around since the dawn of civilization. Stories started as cave drawings, evolved to hieroglyphs, then were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. They moved to papyrus, the printing press, movies and TV. Today's stories are told in social media, on YouTube and in visualization of data. It is said that humans learned to control fire about 400,000 years ago. They would farm and hunt when the sun was out, and relax by the campfire at night and tell stories. That must explain our continued interest in shows on prime time TV, our book reading and our relaxed conversations over a glass of wine at night.
I learned about the soothing effect of stories and lullabies at night when my daughter was very young. The Lion King movie had just been released, and during a visit to Busch Gardens she saw a monkey and called him Rafiki, a character in the movie. Next thing I know whenever I was in town I was the designated story teller about Rafiki. In my stories, that mandrill used to somehow escape from his zoo cage, get on a plane, and generally cause havoc. Amazingly, all that excitement helped put her to sleep. My son used it in reverse. He would wait till I returned home from my trips and make me listen to his fairly accurate recollection of the most recent Sponge Bob episode he had seen. Yes, I slept soundly dreaming of Krabby Patties.
Let's gather around the campfire
If you have joined me at a group dinner (I know that sounds quaint in these days of social distancing), you probably know I like to turn that into a storytelling session around the proverbial campfire. I like to ask people to tell the most improbable story they know. I like to share one I heard from my college mate, David Sugimoto. It is the incredible story of his Japanese grandfather, Tadae Shimoura and his dream of working in the emerging automobile industry in Detroit in the early 1900s. Somehow after a decade of twists and turns across 6,000 miles, he made it to Henry Ford’s house in Michigan and got that coveted job. I led off my book, Silicon Collar, which is about automation, machines and humans with the story. I have told to it countless audiences and still get goosebumps when I tell it. (BTW, click on the images if you want to enlarge the font.)
The Golden Age of story telling
I have pretty high standards for story telling. Let me share two of my benchmarks. I had taken my kids and their cousin to California in 2007. It was a magical trip for them. It included amusement parks, a chance to watch Barry Bonds when he was close to breaking Hank Aaron's lifetime home run record and a chance to stay at a majestic Pebble Beach resort. When I asked the kids their most enjoyable memory from the trip, it was none of the above. They said it was waiting in line at night at Barnes and Nobles to get their personal copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as soon as it was released. One of them stayed up all night and finished it so he could brag about it to the others! I still marvel at how J.K. Rowling managed to get kids to read her 600+ page books in our age of countless digital distractions. Here's another - I must have watched the iconic opera scene in The Shawshank Redemption countless times. I invariably choke up when I hear the Morgan Freeman voice over “To this day, I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are left best unsaid. I would like to think they were singing about something that was so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and make your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a Gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away. For the briefest moment every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
In many ways we are living in the Golden Age of Story Telling. Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and so many others in Hollywood have thrilled us. Ken Burns, the documentarian has brought to life so much of American history, music and sports. I marvel at how Michael Lewis can take relatively unknown characters like Billy Beane and Brad Katsuyama and make them part of riveting books and movies. One of my personal treats was to meet Billy and hear him talk about the experience with Michael for Moneyball. It was a nice bonus to get a autographed baseball from him - see photo at bottom. I loved how James Michener could turn history and geography into eloquent stories about S. Africa, Texas and many other places. How Tom Clancy simplified complex defense and surveillance technology, and yes made Jack Ryan such a fascinating movie and TV character. How John Grisham can turn obscure and boring legal nuances into exciting adventures.
I have personally been lucky to be around some very good storytellers. One of them is Brian Sommer, who I have known for three decades. In all that time, I have never heard him repeat a story. He mostly talks about his siblings, friends and his ranch growing up in Texas. We are business partners so have to ration his story time, but, my is he entertaining, drawl and all. I can also spend hours listening to my cousin, Harish Malani who is an engineer and has been to over 125 countries. He has an encyclopedic memory and is full of anecdotes.
Humanizing Technology
Of course, with my career in technology, I find tech people, products and places awe-inspiring subjects. One of my favorite blog posts was about the most planned Space Shuttle flight that, in the end, never took off. Atlantis, coded flight STS-125, was headed to do repairs on the Hubble Telescope in May 2009. Unlike at the International Space Station, there are no docking facilities at the Hubble. As a back up, NASA put on standby at a nearby launch pad another shuttle - the Endeavor as flight STS-400. If Atlantis had run into trouble, there was to be a complicated transfer of crew in space to Endeavor - you can read more here. If Endeavor had also flown, it would have been the first time in decades NASA had two piloted space craft up at the same time. I was relieved along with everyone at NASA that the backup flight was not needed. But what an amazing story - I was happy to spend days researching it!
The underutilized art of storytelling
With all the amazing communication technology at their disposal, I wish tech executives would tell more stories. They mostly talk about their products or their financials. Every once a while they let their storytelling skill come out of hiding. In the late 90s, I had heard Doug Burgum, then CEO of Great Plains (now part of Microsoft) use his entire keynote to talk about the English clockmaker, John Harrison. Harrison beat out far more qualified scientists to solve one of the vexing problems of the 18th century – how to accurately measure longitudes, so important then for sailors and for all kinds of navigation since. I was spellbound for the entire hour. More recently, I was in a meeting with Dr. Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP. I wrote later "He was doing his best Mark Twain describing how young Tom Sawyer had turned whitewashing a picket fence - a punishment for skipping school - into a group activity. He had conned his friends into thinking it was fun and required a unique skill - 'only one in a thousand, maybe two thousand can do it'. So much so that his friends paid him for the privilege of doing that tedious task in the hot sun. The tale has clearly helped Hasso motivate customers and employees over the decades even when he is proposing something radical."
Burgum is now Governor of North Dakota. I wonder if he has continued his story telling. I wish political leaders would use more stories in their speeches. President Ronald Reagan used them very effectively. Lincoln was even better - his Ethan Allen story in the heat of the Civil War is just masterful. I have heard Bill Clinton in a small group setting and he is similarly adept with stories. I have also heard Platon provide glimpses into many world leaders when he has taken portrait photos for the cover of Time or other magazines. Political leaders have the gift of the gab - too bad they don't often use it to tell calming stories
Chisel, sharpen, hone, polish
As with any craft, some of my most satisfying work happens when I take days to curate just a few words. That was certainly true of the research I did on the historic meeting Workday executives had with their first big customer, Flextronics. As you can imagine it some time to get busy executives to recreate a meeting which took place 5 years prior, and that on a Saturday. I am glad they did - it made for a great "You did what?" story. Below is the beginning of that section.
I similarly did extensive research for a couple of pages on Leonardo da Vinci for The New Polymath. Here is a sample.
I am proudest, however, of storytelling I facilitate for others. Over the last decade, I have coaxed over a hundred colleagues and friends to write about their passion in this series. Many of them are not writers, others are too modest to write about their craft, but every one of them beams with pride once they share their interest and watch readers comment their appreciation. Same is true of each of the case studies in my books. Corporate executives are coached on how to communicate but they often use technical and other jargon specific to their industries. My job is to make them comfortable and talk as much as they want. They are incredibly generous with their time, and I pay back by letting them validate their content multiple times before it is published. A village-full of transcriptionists, designers and editors helps polish their words. Readers often tell me they want to hear more of my analyst opinions. I tell them if more than 10% of any book is in my voice, not that of others, I have failed. Besides they can find plenty of my opinions on my other blog, Deal Architect.
More recently, I have been reaching out to a number of executives to talk in a video interview format about leadership during the crisis we are going through. And to also talk about the acrobatics and heroics they are seeing and what they foresee as the New Normal in their sectors. Here is one in the series with Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront. Several more will follow.
The digital campfire
Delivering stories at scale would be impossible without today's technology. My book interviews with executives around the world are conducted via Zoom and Vonage. They go through multiple transcriptions and edits. My creative firm, 1106 Design uses plenty of Adobe and other software. Print shops have become incredibly sophisticated for producing bulk copies in thousands of units. For small orders, robots increasingly drive the print-on-demand process. And for eBooks, the Amazon Kindle Publishing process has been a game-changer.
My blogs use content management software by Typepad. My iPhone, iPad, Google Drive, various Microsoft tools help me create my content. My video interviews use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, webcams, microphones, editors and more. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram help me promote them all my content.
Ironically, even as we were promised a paperless society, 75% of my books continue to sell on paper. They are easier for companies to order in bulk and hand out at events. Of course, they are also easier to autograph on paper!
Back to heroes and villains
Well written stories have heroes and villains. Technology world also has plenty of both. In my advisory role, I help executives negotiate deals. Trust me, much harsher words than "villain" are used when things get intense. For my books, blogs and videos, however, I like to focus more on heroes.
I want to end this column sharing something on my bucket list. I would like to write a Michener-style book on my adopted state, Florida. Yes it would include some of our morons, but I would mostly show how for countless Americans, a trip to Florida is still one of their best childhood memories. How Kennedy Space Center has made them proud over and over. How many of them have elderly relatives happily living here. How much science and tech we have that few know about in medicine, simulation, green energy, autonomous vehicles, oceanography and space.
My wife, who helps edit my books, warns me very few people these days have time to read a large Michener-class book. She does not know my friend Paul Greenberg, who never lets word count get in the way of a good story. I tell her if J.K. Rowling could make young kids read fat books, I am pretty sure I can make adults do that. Ok, call me naive, they would rather make fun of Florida Man. I did say it's on my bucket list, not something I want to start tomorrow. Besides I need to write about my other passions for this series.
Meantime, back to reality. Please read and share positive, happy stories. The world can use a lot of soothing these days. We need more calm, humorous Lincoln tales. Stay healthy - and yes, look for stories that help you sleep like a baby. Hopefully, no Krabby Patty needed.
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