As an executive and corporate strategist, you want to keep your strategic thinking sharp. In today’s world, it sets you apart from the panicky, knee-jerk reactions plaguing others. But how do you expand your repertoire of knowledge so that you demonstrate strategic leadership, even among long-time colleagues?
There is a particular kind of discomfort that creeps up slowly. It arrives while you are nodding along, taking notes. The conversation is going well, when all of a sudden – Wham!
This is a tale of what happened when I was blindsided mid-interview with Seth Godin, watching as he sped through exactly 14 distinct stories during a one-hour podcast.
Before the session, I thought I understood the role of well-told stories in strategy work. I had a working set, curated over years, deployed in retreat after retreat to make a specific argument about time horizons and organisational thinking. That felt like enough.
Then somewhere around the 50-minute mark, with the recording still running, I heard myself say aloud: “I don’t know how that magic works because I don’t have anywhere near as many stories.”
But I wasn’t processing the gap privately, the way you do after a meeting. I was saying it out loud, on the record, to Seth.
He had just moved through stories about a hospital crib factory in Buffalo, a Walmart auditorium in Arkansas, a Google homepage with two links, and a grease-covered piece of equipment nobody had touched in 10 years.
Each story landed. Each did specific work and then got out of the way. By the end of our conversation, he had told 14. And I realised, for the first time, that stories organised to make a single argument are not a full library.
The Pattern
I wanted to understand the mechanics. What was Seth actually doing that worked so well? And what do others like Malcolm Gladwell have in common with him?
With the help of AI, I downloaded and analysed 12 recent interviews Seth completed. Across them all, he averaged 11.08 stories per conversation – 133 in all. His new book, This is Strategy, used 87 stories.
I asked directly: “Is your list of stories infinite?” He said, “No, and the best consultants carry around 20 stories.” To explain, he made me imagine that professional magicians have perfected about a dozen tricks. Not for variety’s sake but because different audiences need different entry points into the same idea.
Twenty stories is a manageable target, specific enough to build towards deliberately. Where should an executive start?
Gladwell’s Storytelling
Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink, is not only the son of Jamaican writer Joyce Gladwell. He is also a master storyteller.
His method is deliberate. He never opens with a theory or thesis. There is always a human scene first: a hockey player’s birth month, a recipe for ketchup. Only after the reader is hooked does he pull back to reveal the larger argument.
In addition, he withholds the ending deliberately. He tells 90 per cent of the story, pauses to layer in a decade of research, then closes the loop.
The audience never sees the architecture. They only feel the attraction.
Seth illustrated the same principle. For example, a fundraiser he knows doesn’t start by sharing hunger statistics. Instead, he opens with a question: “What was it like at your dinner table growing up?”
Neither man is improvising. Both are following a deliberate system in which they uncover a story that names what the audience already senses but cannot articulate. Seth calls this “profound”. The goal is not to deliver new data but to give someone precise language for what they sense but cannot say.
Your Library
Building that library is the actual work.
The gap Seth exposed isn’t fixed by reading more books, taking a class, or attending more conferences. Closing it requires treating story collection the way you treat any professional skill – with rigorous intention and systematic use.
Start with your curiosity and follow it towards stories that fit your organisation, your industry, and your particular way of seeing the world.
The work is specific: find stories worth keeping, evaluate whether they will land with your staff or audience, organise them so they are retrievable under pressure, and then practise until the telling becomes effortless.
YouTube alone contains more raw material than any MBA library. Plus, there are platforms designed to sift through its haphazard contents.
Seth works with 20 stories. You may need fewer. But you need to know which ones they are. You are not carrying a library – you are following a powerful habit.
Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to [http://columns@/]columns@fwconsulting.com.
