Challenge and selection  I use storytelling every day. Storytelling is not only a creative way to add value to an organisation, but

also increases the level of engagement between organisations and their internal and external

stakeholders.     Creating narratives that run the whole organisation means designing good stories for your audiences -

and to that end, audience research is essential. An efficient storytelling capability, can put the problem

and the solution into a context. In the end, storytelling becomes one of the most powerful weapons in an

organisation’s arsenal when it come to solving wicked problems.    Application  I worked as an editor in a newspaper. Every year, all editors reflect on the most impactful stories and

their coverage, to be published in the newspaper’s Christmas edition. Despite the fact that everybody

there is a writer, sometimes it is a difficult and time-consuming process for them. Which were the most

compelling stories during a year of cataclysmic events?     This is where the storytelling tool comes into action. I took all editors in a meeting room and asked them

to stand up and to write on a stick-it note two of the stories they covered that made them feel either very

excited or sad or overwhelmed and explain why. Then, I asked them to use a different stick-it note to

write down the two stories that they believed resonated more with our readership (click-wise, like-wise or

response-wise - every editor keeps a rough track of those metrics). Surprise, surprise! The stories that the

editors found more compelling or exciting to write were in most of the the cases, the stories that our

audience also enjoyed reading.    Insight    This approach was surely an eye-opener for them. Storytelling used by storytellers to result in more

storytelling was a productive approach. Listening to themselves describing those stories in a two or three

minutes time, was more fruitful than a day of thinking. That Christmas edition was one of the best: full of

tear-bringing, powerful, compelling and true stories.

