So an engineer walked into a bar...

What happens when an engineering approach is applied to business communications? An engineering approach might call for deconstructing complex ideas into symbols, then reassembling the elements. Incongruously, technologists often take the same approach when explaining what they do for customers. Have you ever received a chart jammed with squares, circles, globes, arrows, all kinds of shapes connected by lines and arrows? If so, an engineer was attempting to reduce what he does to its essence in the hope that you—ostensibly the receiving engineer—would reconstitute the message from the symbols. Here is a recent example of what we encountered and how we used a simple visual story instead.


Before there was a flow chart there was a story. Click the above graphic to download the one-pager that shows how we helped one engineering team get back to their story.

Getting across the time relationships or relative importance between events assumes that your audience understands your symbolic language. But symbols, like letters of some strange new alphabet, have no intrinsic meaning.

Before a technologist could construct the boxes, circles, arrows and lines, he had to assemble a narrative about how, when and why things happened. In short, he created a story first. So, listen for the story.

Regardless of the technical training of the listener, we all understand and enjoy stories. No need to jump into abstract symbols. Show interaction among characters. Include objects that have intrinsic meaning for your audience. Show benefits being delivered, albeit metaphorically. Organize your story in time or space, and you can show people what you do.

Click TellingYourStory.com to learn more.

Help People Relate to Your Law Firm Using Stories: Nursing Home Malpractice Example

Professional services, legal services in particular, lend themselves to storytelling. So it is a mystery to me why most purveyors shroud what they do in stilted language devoid of emotional content. Rather, the subject matter cries out for storytelling.

Rather than reciting the typical laundry list of capabilities, in this example we describe a legal specialty with a story. Read on:

After years of caring for her husband at home, our client Mrs. Williams sought nursing home care for her husband. She was reluctant at first, but as his dementia worsened and her own health declined, adequate care became impossible without help. Mrs. Williams visited homes and interviewed staff before finally selecting a home that seemed safe and clean. It was nearby, and she visited each day at lunchtime. Things seemed to be OK, for a while.


One day, Mrs. Williams received a call informing her that her husband had suffered a fracture in his left leg. The home said that he had been treated and was resting comfortably. With each visit, however, her husband seemed worse. One morning, Mrs. Williams arrived unusually early for her visit. Her husband’s room was unkempt. She smelled a foul odor, and then noticed a dark stain on his bed sheets.

Alarmed, she lifted the sheets to find maggots infesting several ulcers in her husband’s leg. He eventually lost his leg.

Despite what you may see on visiting day, sometimes a single nurse may be assigned to care for up to 40 patients at a time. Lack of care is a violation of strict state and federal regulations. Not only do neglect and substandard care deprive your loved ones of their dignity, but such actions can frequently cause physical injury as well. Understaffing may increase nursing home profits, but our loved ones pay the price.

The expert witnesses that are required to make a case may include gerontologists, nutritionists, nursing home administrators, and wound-care specialists – and can cost $25,000 to $50,000 or more. If we take your case, we pay for everything. Furthermore, we only receive payment for fees and expenses if we collect.

Mr. Williams will never get his leg back. But we obtained a settlement that helped him and his family to purchase a new home, and quality in-home care. Our elders, many of whom live in nursing homes, built this country. They deserve dignity in their later years, and we can help ensure that they get it.

Why Do Most Attorneys Hide Their Stories?

Most legal services are sold on relationships. You call a lawyer because someone recommends them, or you met them. So why are most attorney’s web sites, and legal marketing in general, so impersonal? It’s as if showing us who they are as people is somehow unprofessional. Well, I was fortunate enough to have a law-firm client who understood that the more effectively the firm connects with prospects, the more likely they were to land the client.

We interviewed each principal of the firm and had them tell their stories in full-page profiles. Though present, their education and experience was de-emphasized. Rather, we had the attorney tell us what motivated them, and why they did what they did. Wolfgram & Associates is a personal injury firm. Personal injury law involves, as I learned, delving into people’s problems. Medical problems. Personal problems. Frankly, I found it really depressing. So if you’re going to do personal injury law, and be effective at it. You really have to want to help people. Because every day when the attorney picks up the phone, they welcome tragedy into their offices.

Like magnets for misery, personal injury attorneys attract regular folks in the worst of circumstances. By definition, personal injury clients have demonstrable, compensable losses. Moreover, personal injury clients have more often than not been wronged by arrogant insurance companies, disrespected or dismissed by indifferent hospital administrators, abandoned by friends and spouses. You meet crippled, brain-injured, suffering children. You comfort people in the cold face of losses so profound and untimely that I hope you and I will never know them. Yet, as a personal injury attorney you must rise to the occasion each and every day and be a comfort for humble people in such circumstances.

At the same instant you as an attorney must be a fighter to get respect from in-house council and insurance adjusters who see your client as an acceptable loss, as a data point in a numbers game. ‘Fight every claim no matter the merits or they will all come knocking,’ is opposing council’s attitude more often than not.

In the face of all this, personal injury attorneys simply must have a fire in their bellies for justice and something in their DNA that drives them to help people. Otherwise, they would become casualties themselves.

And all this became clearly evident in the stories the attorneys told, about themselves, their clients, their cases. This was done with sensitivity and without coming close to violating any standards of conduct. Attorneys are, after all, people with feelings and emotions. And when clients sense your humanity, they will be drawn to you. Because they know that you care, and that you will fight for them, they will hire you.

Check out the site Wolfgram & Associates, and decide for yourself if feelings, emotions and stories are consistent with professional communication.

Remember your last trade show?

Think about your booth or poster presentation for a minute. Is it jam-packed with data? Now ask yourself, how many people out of ten that walk by are pausing by your display? How much time does it take to grasp your message? Does your display tell a story that people will remember? Can you use your display to engage people in conversation?

Click here to learn more, or call us at (314) 772-1185.

How well are you relating to your audience? Are you making it easy for them to see themselves working with you? If you throw data at people you are forcing them to search through information and make judgments about what may be relevant. So, for the data hounds among us, who is really telling your story; you or the viewer?

On the other hand if you show that you understand your audience by reflecting their immediate concerns in your display, they will want to talk to you. And isn’t that why you came to the show?

Click TellingYourStory.com to learn more.

Join us for "Coffee with the Experts" Wednesday, June 13th, 8:00am at the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Washington University. The panel of experts will include:

Rex Reed, Executive Director for Community Relations, the YouthBridge Association, www.youthbridgeassociation.org, addressing the structural needs of children’s charities by blending entrepreneurial thinking with the best business practices of successful social agencies

Dan Davison, Founder & CEO, BentonsEdge LLC, www.bentonsedge.com, sales and marketing for technology companies

Mary Kay Digby, Social Entrepreneurship Collaboration Coordinator, Skandalaris Center

If you would like to make a 10-minute appointment with the panel, to have some coffee and talk about your idea, contact Jane Yorker at yorker@wustl.edu or 314.935.9134. If you haven't already done so, you will be required to post a brief description of your idea to www.ideabounce.com prior to the Coffee.

Originally published June 7, 2007, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.

Stories Help Convert Free Beta Users to Paying Subscribers

Last week I met with the executives from a relatively new company that is offering a faster Internet service for PC gamers. Their immediate challenge is converting free beta trial-users into paying customers. A trial makes for a pretty good self-test of benefit. Users can prove it to themselves. But people can quickly become habituated to a higher level of service, and lose the emotional spark required to push them to action, to sign up and pay. Therefore you have to tell the Value-Story™ as well. Ironically, demonstrating value is not enough! You’ve probably seen the same thing yourself. So we are looking at ways to demonstrate value and simultaneously tell users about the benefits that they are getting. Let’s engage emotion and rational thought to get those beta-users to sign up and pay for that great service!