The New 2019 Definition of Content

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Content as a word, a concept, a product … is something we are all familiar with. And today, every company is in the content business. Stacks of content that is being used to communicate something: internally to colleagues, externally to customers, clients, partners and investors. Content fatigue has set in, however (a problem I see […]

Scenes: The Energy Source of the Business Story

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Recently a client a came to me with one question: Why aren’t we getting better results from the content we have spent months developing?  As this is a question I frequently get, the next step was to request a meeting so that I could analyze what they had.  The content they showed me (mostly PowerPoint […]

SpeakingEnergy Scene Thinking™. Transforming storytelling and problem-solving

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After years of working closely with clients in the finance, banking, asset management, technology, real estate, insurance, health, government and media sectors, I am now structuring those extremely valuable case studies into a new book that will be complete by early 2019.  Coaching and consulting multinational executives on the principles of SpeakingEnergy Scene Thinking™  enabled […]

Holy s**t! The terror and joy of launching a new novel

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I love writing novels…and it scares the s**t out of me. Can these two conflicting emotions (happily) co-exist – without driving me insane? No guarantees on the latter, but having published five since two thousand and five – four novels, a book on public speaking – I have a few strategies (sic) that (sort of) […]

Story scenes in 2017. Set your scene

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The most obvious statement now is: we live in a storytelling world.  How can companies be better equipped to participate in this world – regardless of our business or our products?  My answer is: think much more clearly and strategically about the story scenes you create. Humans understand scenes. We live them every day. We […]

Danger: Proceed with Maximum Curiosity

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I recently came across a fantastic piece from the consistently wonderful – and generously free! – Brain Pickings weekly newsletter (BrainPickings.org) about the American educator Abraham Flexner. What got my attention was Flexner’s exploration (way back in 1939, no less) of our “dangerous tendency to forgo pure curiosity in favor of pragmatism.” Now, it must […]

Big data means big human stories

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The term “big data” means different things to different people.  Some of my clients have teams of people dedicated to analyzing it and some of my friends sit in fascination (usually with a coffee and other friends) wondering where it is all going.  While big data on its own sounds rather intimidating, anyone who spends […]

Prey Lang: the brand project. A brief personal statement and case study

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Prey Lang: Cambodia National Forest A story-focused branding and strategic communications initiative Conceived and directed by Bjorn Turmann,  Founding Director, SpeakingEnergy Ltd. (with project funding from USAID Cambodia)   Covering over 3,600 square kilometres that stretch across four northern Cambodian provinces, Prey Lang is one of the world’s Top 10 most important biodiversity hotspots. ** […]

Objective vs. Theme: both matter, but one will get you closer to results

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The desire of companies to want to call an objective a theme is something I often encounter in my strategic storytelling work. At times they may appear similar, but the reality is, themes serve objectives much more powerfully than an objective will serve a theme. Objectives, to apply a simple definition learned from my boss […]

“We live with our experiments”

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The title of this story comes from a quote attributed to the iconic architect, Zaha Hadid who died suddenly this month at the age of 65. Ms. Hadid was known for “building the unbuildable.” Her structures can be seen in some of the world’s most prominent locations – and for very good reason. When clients […]