A practical, easy-to-use guide to transform business communications into memorable narratives that drive conversations - and your career - forward
In Everyday Business Storytelling: Create, Simplify, and Adapt A Visual Narrative for Any Audience, visual communication and storytelling experts Janine Kurnoff and Lee Lazarus leverage decades of experience helping executives at the world's top brands - including Colgage-Palmolive, Nestlé, T-Mobile, Medtronic and Meta - bring clarity and meaning to their business communications. Whether you're building a presentation, crafting a high-stakes email, or need to influence the conversation in your next meeting with an executive, or have to communicate with data, Everyday Business Storytelling offers an insightful exploration of how to develop compelling business narratives that meet diverse audience needs.
You'll discover how to use a simple, repeatable framework to transform your ideas, data, and insights into an authentic, persuasive story. Within this professional development book, you'll also find clever data visualization and visual display techniques to help humanize your stories and build an audience connection, leading to improved presentation skills and better data literacy. Whether you're looking to enhance your executive presence, align teams, become an expert at converting data analysis into data insights, or want to communicate change and influence audiences, Everyday Business Storytelling is for you.
Everyday Business Storytelling is an indispensable guide to making your communications stick in the minds of your audience and drive change. It enables you to display confidence and communicate with clarity regardless of how complex your message is. If you're a busy, talented businessperson looking for tactics to improve your executive presentations, one-pagers, emails, or virtual meetings, this communication book is for you.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Storytelling Is How We Move Business Forward 1
What two Silicon Valley-bred sisters know about business storytelling (hint: it’s pure, irrefutable career gold)
Part 1 Once and for all - Let’s Unfluff the Reputation of Business Storytelling 6
Chapter 1: Meet the Brain Scientists 8
Chapter 2: Data (Yes, Sometimes Overused) Is Not the Villain 16
Part 2 Ok, I’m in - How Do I Get Started with Business Storytelling? 24
Chapter 3: The Four Signposts 30
Chapter 4: The WHY, WHAT and HOW of Business Storytelling 48
Chapter 5: Your BIG Idea 52
Chapter 6: Putting It All Together: Sample Story 56
Part 3 Thanks, got the basics. What Else Can Help Me? 60
Chapter 7: Push Your Story Forward with Active Headlines 62
Chapter 8: A Simple Path to Building Your BIG Idea 72
Chapter 9: Five Well-Tested Ways to Visualize Your Story 80
Part 4 Let’s see the magic! How Does Storytelling Show Up in Everyday Business? 106
Chapter 10: Making a Recommendation 108
Chapter 11: Providing an Update 144
Chapter 12: Crafting an Email 162
Chapter 13: Creating a One-Pager 176
Part 5 But wait! How Do I Flex My Story? 192
Chapter 14: Audience Is Everything: A Manifesto 194
Chapter 15: You’ve Got Five Minutes with an Executive… Go! 202
Chapter 16: Your Audience Is Diverse How Can You Please Everyone? 210
Chapter 17: You’re Told “Only Three to Five Slides” 216
Chapter 18: Team Presentations: Who Does What? 220
Chapter 19: When Your Audience Is Virtual 238
Part 6 All together now: Building a Common Language of Storytelling 252
Chapter 20: Fostering a Culture of Story Coaches 254
Chapter 21: Five Ways Managers Can Reinforce Storytelling 260
Chapter 22: Ready, Set, Coach! Five Tips for Peer-to-Peer Story Coaching 264
Conclusion
A Final Word From the Sisters 272
Your everyday business storytelling journey starts right now… #nomorefrankendecks
Gratitude 275
About the Authors 276
Notes & Photo Credits 277
Index 278
