Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business (Columbia Business School Publishing)

by Aswath Damodaran

Using the lessons from story structure and story types, here are the steps you can adopt to tell a better story. 1. Understand your business and know yourself: As a storyteller, it is difficult to tell a story about a business if you don’t understand the business yourself. If your vision for the business in terms of what it does and where you see it going in the future is fuzzy or unformed, your story about it will reflect that confusion. This is true whether you are the CEO of a well-established business with a long history talking to equity research analysts or the founder of a start-up seeking venture capital money. In fact, as the founder of a start-up is so integral to the business, you are as much a part of the story as the business you have founded, and some introspection (on the role you hope to play in this venture) may be needed. 2. Understand your audience: Your business story may not be the same when you are talking to different stakeholders (employees, customers, or potential investors), because each has a different interest in the story. While employees may share your enthusiasm for the success of the business, they are just as interested or perhaps more so in how you plan to share that success with them and the personal risks they face from failure. Customers are more interested in your products than in your profits and want to hear the part of your story in which you explain how your product or service will meet their needs and what they w...