Are you anticipating the 'story gap', or falling behind?
I believe that stories are not 'nice-to-haves', but essential foundations for how and who we are as people, organisations and societies. Now that old stories are dying, how can we capture new ones?
Dear reader,
Do you feel you need to tell your story in a different way, because the world is changing so fast? And you want to do it in a human way? Keep reading.
First of all: thank you!
I was pleasantly surprised with the results of the very first Substack newsletter I sent out. Engagement was at about 180% of Substack's averages!
Also,
I received quite a few personal messages and calls from people I hadn't spoken with for some time. Thank you guys ;-)
I was offered new work, a speaking engagement and gained 41(!) new subscribers — very encouraging!
Ok, back to the newsletter.
This newsletter is about the 'story harvesting' method I developed and tested with different groups, such as at the beautiful Museum of the Tropics in Amsterdam with 350 library directors in a search for the future of libraries.
AI helped us generate some glimpses of solar punk future libraries:
At pharmaceutical congress InFarma I used the method to show their industry a mirror and one of the attendees of the congress said afterwards:
“You really said what needed to be said and you said it in the way it needed to be said: open, honest and confronting, in a non-judgemental way.”
This made me blush and feel proud, because that was exactly what I aimed for.
Also, I applied the method to research (in Dutch) on the social basis of Amsterdam, based on gathered documents.
What is story harvesting?
‘Story harvesting’ is a way to channel the voice of a group of people of any size into a clear ‘core story’, in a fluid way. If done well, the group will feel a strong shared ownership of the results and gain more collective clarity, direction and inspiration.
Curious what I can do for your organisation? Let’s talk. I’m curious to hear about your vision, especially if it exists in a complex context.
Are we in a ‘story gap’?
Because change is happening now so fast and so dramatic, we have entered a time of ‘splintered realities’ causing a 'story gap' to emerge, a strange and scary period between a fading ‘old world’ and a pretty vague ‘new world’.
In the story gap, the outdated stories, ideologies and mythologies that used to help us make sense of the old world, become irrelevant as they are no longer able to explain the world in between worlds. This disconnect makes our experience of reality increasingly confusing, scary and weird, like ‘a time of monsters’ as Slavoj Žižek has called it — a time in which we don’t know so well who we are, why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing.
Is your story future proof?
Because the old world is fading away so rapidly, I believe that many initiatives, groups, organisations and also individuals urgently need to update and redefine their stories in order to survive into the future, because how they are representing themselves now might no longer be believed or relevant in the new world.
How can we cut through the media noise?
The media landscape is now so oversaturated, so overly optimised, so algorithmically manipulative and increasing AI-generated that as a result, I don’t think the solution should be even more and smarter marketing, more cunning strategies, more clever advertising and more fine-tuned branding.
As a counter force to the overall dehumanisation of media, I think a growing general need is emerging for what is real, what is human and what is grounded in physical reality. More on this in an upcoming newsletter.
We might now need something quite ancient in fact: real, human stories.
Collective storytelling matters more than ever
Developing future proof core stories can no longer be just the job of the communications department, the board of directors or ‘the experts’. Their development needs to involve all and luckily this is happening more and more.
More rigorous co-creation processes are needed everywhere to help integrate and synthesise many perspectives in better ways. Not out of some idealism or a celebration of arts and creativity but out of pure pragmatism: more collective intelligence is simply needed as large systems around us are cracking under their own weight.
I asked myself the question: what if you could easily capture what a group of people or even an entire sector stands for as a whole? How can we revive the power of collective stories?
Introducing: ‘Story Harvesting’
After 20 years of story development for organisations across the world, I gathered all of my tools and took a hard look at how to use them best for what is needed more of now: powerful collective storytelling.
Out of this came the ‘story harvesting’ method, in which I use a mix of questionnaires, in-person gatherings and relevant documents to extract the meaning and purpose already alive in a group. In the projects mentioned above I discovered many hidden and unspoken story bits about human experiences and emotions, dissatisfactions and tensions, as well as crazy ideas, wonderful visions and secret wishes.
The core story for pharmaceutical congress InFarma was especially successful, because this is an industry with a big tension: a deep distrust from society at large, due to a number of historical scandals and a real tension between many people’s health versus profits, although that doesn’t mean that all people and the entire industry is bad.
I was pleasantly surprised about their candid answers, which showed a self awareness I think might not have come to the surface in a regular meeting or a general brainstorm.
As a storyteller, what I found very interesting about this story is that there’s a lot at stake, there’s a big potential for change and some big monsters, as well as a bunch of heroes daring to question the status quo from the inside out.
What’s next?
What do you think are some areas and organisations that need uncovering of stories? What topics, organisations, groups and initiatives might need more clarity? I’m open to new projects and very interested in your tips for who I should definitely be talking to!
Thank you for reading all the way to the end 💚