In one particular place, I don't make a heart out of my murder pit. Impossible! It's about the unbearable storytelling gurgle that pours out of countless little mouths and seeps into social media profiles and about me websites, because it simply seems to be part of the basic equipment when you put your little light on the really big bushel. Storytellers are lurking around every corner.
Sometimes I have fun and ask the storytellers what they mean by this and how they actually do it. I usually look into their eyes, which are filled with a similar emptiness as my eyes were during physics or chemistry exams at grammar school. A look says more than a thousand words and the bottom line is: I haven't the faintest idea! Although I would like to apologize for the fact that, unlike the members of the Storyteller squadron, I never claimed to know anything at school. Rather, it was an unfounded suspicion that my teachers grasped from the all too thin air in which it quickly dissolved. So I kept quiet and remained a philosopher, according to the method presented to us in Latin: "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses" (If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher).
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
Storytelling - hero's journey - blah blah blah ...
Storytelling, in other words, and that's it. It rarely takes long for the hero's journey to come into play, the basic mythological structure that St. Professor Joseph Campbell used to describe how humanity has been telling itself stories ever since it started telling stories and thus explaining the world to itself. There is science that says that Homo sapiens was able to assert itself against Neanderthals primarily because it enabled cooperation on different levels through stories and thus established what we today call the leading culture and society. For around 70,000 to 100,000 years, mythological metaphors of this kind have been created that say: "This is how I see life!" or "This is how we should see life so that we are better off!"
Yes, mythologically - not dramaturgically! Even if you can read the hero's journey as a dramaturgical model, as the inner structure according to which stories take place, and should use it for this purpose. But not only!
Christopher Vogler has demonstrated this masterfully. His version of the hero's journey is the widely known one with twelve stages that he developed for Disney. Star Wars, penned by Joseph Campbell admirer George Lucas, was the first screenplay to be written according to this structure. A great mythological tale and basically King Arthur in the space of the future.
By the way: the Campbell original hero's journey takes 17 steps from the painful departure to the return home of the purified transformers. In business, for brand stories for example, you only need eight. And basically only the three monomythic pillars of the story ABC, but really and without (!) exception:
Departurefrom a painful situation in the familiar old world.
Proofthat has to be provided in the unknown new world.
Comebackwith enlightening knowledge gained as a benefit for the community, with which the old world is now being improved.
This applies to campaigns, postings, pitches, presentations, storytelling, brand stories, employer branding ... your life ... simply everything. The principle is as universal in us humans as the operating system in your cell phone.
If you want to know how to make this work for you and your tasks, you can learn it from me at the New Story Academy.
Values are the main story words.
At the nucleus of every real, truthful story is always a value that, from the perspective of the storyteller, is in danger, needs to be strengthened or needs to be brought into the conversation in the first place. This value is the basis of the theme of every true story and this applies rigorously to everything: from blockbusters to brand stories. Even if all too many people do it the other way around and confuse the framing with the image: you can only start storytelling professionally once you have clarified what the story is. Without the value axis around which everything revolves, a super entertaining narrative may well emerge, against which there is nothing to say, but a story, a guiding narrative, does not emerge. It remains a narrative.
My goodness, the guiding narrative - another buzzword. The only reason I don't leave the country as soon as I hear it: it's right and important. It's a similar story with purpose, meaning and why: hackneyed and overused, yet substantially important. Sometimes I find comfort in the thought that special aspects come up more often in a group, especially when they are missing and there is a great longing for them.
Values, purpose, meaning, why - the driving forces behind every narrative, especially in a business context and above all in politics. And that is precisely what is missing. And that is precisely what has gotten so out of hand that if I were 100 years younger, I would exclaim "that's crazy!".
When stories get out of hand in a group, in a society, the entire group loses its bearings. What this looks like can be seen on the homepage of any news portal.
Yes, the culture-defining stories of our society have gotten out of hand, the grand narrative is missing altogether. Humanity's collective hero's journey increasingly resembles an odyssey with menacing Cyclopes, degrading Kirks and distracting Sirens who have us in their grip. To say nothing of the deployments of the aiolos bag of winds.
Our main stories? These are, for example, "Good versus evil and good must win because we are the good guys", "Success means material success and well-being means being wealthy", "The winner takes it all", "Perpetual growth is the cornerstone of a healthy economy", "More is better" and "Technological progress solves all problems". In their slipstream hang many other sub-stories that shape our culture in the form of beliefs and make large parts of humanity the main characters of a hero's journey as an unprecedented success story.
Is storytelling a man's business?
Basically, this is about deeply masculine narratives and it is no wonder that behind almost every great misfortune there is a weak man who thinks he is strong. For example, it is about defeating, fighting, dominating, dualism, dominating, destruction, potency, struggle, power, ego, leadership, empowerment, separation, matter, invincibility. The result is that although we are all (still) doing well, the individual does not feel well. The planet as a habitat is on the verge of collapse, exploding numbers of mentally ill people suffering from the misery of work, epidemics of loneliness, crumbling democracies, seething dangers of war and, with AI, for the first time a tool that acts on its own initiative, i.e. is not a tool at all, but for the first time an agent whose operating instructions were hopefully not written by Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice. Welcome to the Anthropocene, the era in which we humans have the greatest influence on the state of planet Earth of all possible influences.
Hm ... Something's not working out here in terms of the hero's journey, is it, and it's not too early to get a few things back on track. How? Not by fighting the old stories, of course, but by bringing new options into play, new narratives that change, correct and replace the old ones. Whatever changes, the story that is told about it changes first. Change the story, change the world. Nothing else has ever worked - for better or for worse.
So.
What if?
What if we turned our collective hero's journey into a heroine's journey? We're not talking about women appearing as the main characters in our stories and carrying on doing the same (excuse my French) shit that men have always done. Nor is it talking about superheroines from the Marvel universe.
It is about changing value narratives, it is about what we respect or ostracize in order to nourish a positive future narrative. It is about terms such as inclusion, sharing and participation, encounter, healing, inspiring, holistic, caring, complementing, potential, development, enabling, we, unfolding, empowerment, connectedness, meaning, openness.
We could try it out one way or another, just for fun. How about it? All boys can and should join in, because here it's true: more is better.
The NEW STORYtellers, the real ones, the true ones, the ones with values, are the new leaders and tell stories through their example in action. New stories that make us strong - as people, companies and society - of true interconnectedness of everything in everything, of boundless cooperation, even in antagonistic cooperation, of experiencing meaning in growing through one's own contribution to the big picture.
As if wished for by all good spirits, new sub-narratives and beliefs such as:
Mentors are the new heroes.
For each other is the new against each other.
Spirit is the new reason.
Being is the new having.
Shaping the world is the new work.
Purpose is the new profit.
Success is the new winning.
Depth is the new more.
Our heroine's journey takes us into the five great areas of human longing: Connectedness, development, security, meaning and the resulting relevance. And it's no wonder that futurology (whatever that is) predicts that these fields will be the most important of the future. Areas in which companies and brands can actually succeed, because it is precisely there that a vacuum of epic proportions has been created in the wake of our current, all-pervasive narrative of cultural capitalism, in which everything and everyone is subjected to a hectic scrutiny of usability. When companies create added value there, they establish resilient relationships with employees and customers because they have and give meaning. Companies and brands can also embark on a heroine's journey. Companies and brands can also create meaning. Please spread the word!
Let's go!
He who tells the stories rules the world. Let us take on this necessary task with courage! Let us rule with a hot heart, a cool head and a steady hand as true kings do: by asking what they can give and thus build our new world with a great new story. As optimistic interpreters between a more beautiful time in which we all want to live and the "why not". Welcome to the humanocene!
If you feel a longing here for yourself, your team, your brand, your company, then we should discuss how I can support you with my programs and tools from the New Story Academy.
With our exclusive tools, programs and methods, we at the Academy accompany people who are striving for real brand work and want to charge their brand story with authentic meaning. This is often achieved quickly, sometimes even a single session is enough, because thanks to a great deal of experience and intensive learning values from successful projects (and also from the opposite), a nutrient-packed power package is available.
On the New Story Academy website you will find, among other things, a special offer for a quick vitamin kick, the PowerHour . There are also detailed workshop programs for extensive tasks, all of which have one goal: to enable you and your team to quickly and efficiently find a better brand story and tell it better than before. So that your team and your customers quickly understand what they have and get from you, how they can develop their potential, why this is relevant for them and so that they come to you and stay with you. The bottom line is that simple.
If you have any other specific questions, please send me a message. As a member of our Story Inside community, you can also book a free check-in meeting directly in my calendar (online).
Why is this so important to me? Quite simply because I am convinced that most people want to and should find more meaning in their jobs, companies and brands than they have been able to so far and that the AI upheavals open up a wide range of opportunities for this.
Most of us want to do meaningful work and convey the meaning of our work to our team because we know that if you fulfill your very own task, it will fulfill you. And that's true to life and tangible, beyond wondrous "live your dream" promises that mainly fill the account of the incumbent gurus (mostly storytellers) but not your gaping hole.
Most in our community are in tune with this encouraging tone. They understand that we in the so-called economy have the powerful leverage to transform the dark narratives of our time about duality, dominance and destruction into a new story - the New Story. This is the story of connectedness, unfolded potential and found, experienced meaning. We write this new story when we support each other.
My grandmother, old Story Dudette, the heroine of each of her journeys, wrote a work about this odyssey under the meaningful title: "New Story. New Glory."