For millennia stories have transmitted human experience. Storytelling simplifies complexity and helps us make sense of the world. Stories help us empathize with others. They make us feel a part of something larger than ourselves. Stories trigger emotional responses that can powerfully drive memory and motivation. Neuro-imaging shows that both hearing a story and experiencing something in real life activates the same region of the brain; the brain does not distinguish between the two.

Yet, instead of stories that touch emotion, business people tend to adopt an intellectual process to communicate. We were trained to build our cases through facts and statistics. We use PowerPoint slides to describe our challenges, report data and communicate our strategies to succeed. Although your team needs facts and data that they can trust, reason alone is not the strongest psychological driver. People are more highly motivated by emotion. A compelling story can not only provide needed information, but, when done well, it will stimulate the audience's energy and desire to act.

A story describes how and why life changes. The “Hero's Journey,” as a story form, seems particularly apt. Think about how business stories, and even your strategic plan, lend themselves to this format. The hero sets out on a quest, for example, to achieve a goal or create a solution to a problem. She faces the villain, which is an impediment that stands in the way: Difficult markets, technological change, competition, unproductive systems and regulation. She enters into battle, fights, and wins or not, and then returns home transformed.