It's time to get back on the horse and ride out of here, and by here I mean the mid-pandemic state of confusion about what's next on the horizon. For many of us that means shifting away from business the way we've been doing it for years, and responding to the world and the marketplace as it is now and likely will be in the future. Whatever iteration of the-world-as-we-know-it is coming, it's going to take a lot of focus, imagination, and hard work to build.
It’s amazing what a role stories have played in all this. If there's one thing we've seen during the lock down, it's that stories are more important than ever, to all of us, collectively and individually. Not only do stories entertain us as they always have, but increasingly they are leading us forward (or backward as the case may be), informing our opinions, and shaping our understanding of reality. Growing numbers of people trust the stories they believe more than the hard facts right in front of them.
Much has been made of people’s shrinking attention spans, and this is a fact we all have to face. But the flip side of this is a matching increase in the speed of their perceptions. All of our brains have now been trained to scan, sort, and utilize all sorts of things very quickly as we multi-task our way through busy lives. So just because someone only pays attention for a few seconds, it doesn’t mean they won’t get the message, and the message is always a window to a story
So communicators at all levels will play a pivotal role going forward. The mission is clear, build and implement better, tighter, more meaningful stories in support of the products, services, and causes that will help build a more workable world.. It's a big job, but somebody has to do it!