“We live with our experiments”

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 chose to work with her, they partnered with a designer who was the full embodiment of someone who was not willing to compromise the experiments that they would have to live with.

For Ms. Hadid, the motivation for an experiment started like this: “Every project should have a very strong idea.” The idea phase of any project, indeed any story – and architects are, first and foremost, storytellers – is a challenging one. Not so much for the creation of the idea, but much more importantly, taking that idea – no matter how small, how brief – and shape it into something that can lead to a great final product. In other words, access to an emotionally resonate story that we feel motivated enough to participate in – i.e. the decision to buy, invest, partner with…etc. (For more on tools for shaping ideas, see my trademarked STAMP Methodology™).

Often very strong ideas get lost or, worse, fade away entirely, because of the lack of professional story understanding within firms, leading to the 20th Century fall back option of “just the facts” zapping the story of its potentially powerful decision-making energy.

Great idea  (leads to) Great content  (leads to) Great business opportunity

We are all in the content business. It matters not what industry you come from: your content is what people emotionally connect to – inside and outside of the office. Content is not just the stuff of websites, brochures, television, PowerPoint and the like. It is what you design, manufacture, sell, build and communicate – every single day, every business function, all job levels. Today’s world is the story world (1.7 billion Facebook users and growing; free story content that is immediately turned into great business opportunities). Our challenge is that the story-yelling world is getting louder. Much louder.

Does your organization have a CSSO (chief strategic storytelling officer)? If so, that person, that team, is probably responsible for the results-driven impact made on every one of your most crucial communications access pointsincluding bottom line.

Somewhere inside your company ideas – experiments – are being released to market literally every minute. It might just be a quick note to customers, investors, employees… – or something significantly larger – but once out there, you have no control over what can happen to it…and, ultimately, you will have to live with that experiment.

Thankfully, Zaha Hadid left us with a long list of incredibly fascinating, creative experiments. Stories she was proud to professionally tell, great business content that will live on for lifetimes. All of us can learn from that.

The STAMP Methodology™ ©Bjorn Turmann/SpeakingEnergy Ltd; All rights reserved

 

Leave a Reply