Stories

Came across a good piece about the power of stories on Seth Godin's blog here and was very struck by the mention of people relating to stories more than features.

I think this is a vital thing to understand when dealing with people in any business where you can't supply everything they wish for. It's easy to dismiss people who say they want something to work "just like Google" or who complain that their laptop isn't as sleek & stylish as a MacBook. To a certain extent this is justified - as a business, we certainly can't afford to kit people out with the latest cutting edge gear every 6 months!

However, we should recognise that when people talk this way, they aren't necessarily talking about the functionality or features of the technology. They're talking about their own stories for how it makes them feel. For example, Google search isn't infallible - but they've done an incredible job of framing their offerings around you, the user.

If we want people to buy into what we can do for them - and I feel this applies to both KM and internal IT - then we need to understand how these sorts of stories work. We can't compete with Google or Apple in marketing terms. But there's no reason why we can't understand our users and develop stories around them that make a powerful case for what we offer.

NB: This is an edited version of a post to a corporate internal blog.