Happy Eid! Today, we don’t have a business story or articles for you, but we do have a story of serendipity.
In late 2020, I had just told a friend how ready I was to start sharing what I had learned as a business journalist. But I didn’t know who would be interested to think and write in narratives. I would be interested in working on a product—one that would allow us to share our knowledge on storytelling with those outside our newsroom.
And no, I am not making up a “story.” The call did come, and I was excited. But then, I started thinking critically, as a business journalist should.
Months later, we found the answer when we launched a customised workshop called Building and Differentiating with Narratives. The response was overwhelming. And over the last few months, we’ve spoken with market senior executives, and learning and development heads from dozens of Indian corporates, think tanks, and not-for-profits. The sentiment they echoed was simple and clear. The leaders in these companies want their colleagues to not just share the data or the numbers or the updates with them. They are pining for insightful, authentic, and compelling stories that they can act on.
They feel the world is evolving at such a fast pace that they now need to communicate effectively with an ever-changing set of audiences, like that new generation of potential hires and consumers that aren’t afraid to cancel anyone. The need for powerful stories and storytellers inside the organisations, they told us, was commonplace, immense, and had no clear solutions. The pandemic only accelerated the need for resilient narratives as much as resilient businesses. Great narratives are like living organisms, and can be the foundation of an organisation or a career path.
And it is this skill that we are now sharing with you.
