urgentas soon as possible

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hbr.org | December 2007 | Harvard Business Review 53

I ’m in the business of creating compelling stories. As a fi lmmaker, I need to understand how stories touch audiences – why one story is an instantly appealing box offi ce success while another fails miserably to connect. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the world’s most talented storytellers – gifted directors, novelists, screen-writers, actors, and other producers – and from them I’ve gleaned insights into the alchemy of great stories. Make no mistake, a hit movie is still an elusive target, and I’ve had my share of fl ops. But experience has at least provided me with a clear sense of the essential elements of a story and how to tap into its power.The power of storytelling is also central to my work as a business executive and entrepreneur. Over the years, I’ve learned that the ability to
The stories that move and captivate people

are those that are true to the teller,
the audience, the moment, and the mission.

BY PE T E R GU BE R

Storyteller

of the

Four
Truths

T
he

Ta
vi

s
C

o
b

u
rn

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The Four Truths of the Storyteller

54 Harvard Business Review | December 2007 | hbr.org

articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in

almost every phase of enterprise management. It works all

along the business food chain: A great salesperson knows

how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. A success-

ful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts

through a story that shows how short-term sacrifi ce leads to

long-term success. An effective CEO uses an emotional nar-

rative about the company’s mission to attract investors and

partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.

Sometimes, a well-crafted story can even transform a

seemingly hopeless situation into an unexpected triumph.

In the mid-1980s at PolyGram, I produced a television

series called Oceanquest, which took a team of expert divers

and scientists around the world – from Antarctica to Baja

California to Micronesia – to fi lm their aquatic adventures.

The cast included former Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly,

a novice who served as a stand-in for the viewers at home.

One of the planned segments critical to the success of

the series was to explore the forbidden waters of Havana

harbor, where galleons and pirate ships had carried treasure

since the sixteenth century. There was only one problem:

Neither the U.S. government nor the Communist regime of

Fidel Castro wanted a team of Americans fi lming there.

Pleading that our mission was purely scientifi c and peace-

ful, we managed, with support from former secretaries of

state Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, to get permis-

sion from the U.S. State Department. But the go-ahead from

the Cuban government for underwater fi lming proved more

elusive. Gambling that we could win approval, we sailed

to Cuba, set up our equipment in Marina Hemingway, and

fi lmed a few surface shots in various locations as we waited

for word from the regime. Millions of dollars in sunk costs

hung in the balance.

A local offi cial fi nally turned up with a surprise announce-

ment: Fidel Castro had taken a personal interest in our proj-

ect and would be visiting the harbor. (Castro, we learned,

was an environmental advocate and scuba enthusiast.)

“May we use this visit to ask for permission to fi lm in the

harbor?” we asked.

The offi cial shrugged. “El Presidente will be here for ten

minutes only,” he replied. “But you are certainly free to tell

your story. Just remember, no autographs and no gifts.”

Of course, we’d already provided all sorts of information

about our project to the Cuban government’s Washington

offi ce. But it was soulless data with no emotion, life, or

drama. No wonder our request had elicited a perfunctory

“no.” I was determined not to make the same mistake again.

Castro (or Cool Breeze, as we’d privately code-named him)

arrived, his entourage in tow. To make his experience inter-

active, we’d arranged a display of our most elaborate equip-

ment on the deck of our main ship – underwater vehicles,

diving suits, high-tech cameras. Cool Breeze was suitably

impressed by it all – though he seemed most taken by the

friendly welcome from Ms. Weatherly, still wearing her bath-

ing suit from that day’s fi lming.

The ice broken, I began telling the story of Havana harbor

and its centuries at the heart of world commerce, diplomacy,

intrigue, and war. The central motivation for early explorers

of the New World had been the quest for treasure. As the

focal point of Spain’s trading empire and the strategic “key

to the Gulf of Mexico,” Havana had been integral to this

quest, its port the shipping center through which the gold

of the Americas fl owed on its way to the Spanish royal court.

Pirates, privateers, spies, and rival imperial forces – including

Britain’s Royal Navy – had plied its waters, seeking booty,

probing for military and economic secrets, and vying for in-

fl uence. I explained how we would use the latest technology

to bring Cuba’s history to television viewers worldwide.

As I spoke, I watched Castro toy with the equipment and

listen with growing interest to the story of Havana harbor’s

past. Finally, breaking the bureaucrat’s rule, I presented the

Cuban leader with a giant tooth (seven inches long, fi ve

inches wide) from a megalodon, a prehistoric shark that had

once prowled Havana’s waters.

Peter Guber (petergmandalay@gmail.com) has been the top executive at several multinational entertainment companies, including Sony

Pictures, PolyGram, and Columbia Pictures, and has produced such movies as Rain Man, Batman, and The Color Purple. He is currently the

chair and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group in Los Angeles, the host of the weekly fi lm-industry talk show Shootout on AMC, and a

professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television.

For the leader, storytelling is action oriented –
a force for turning dreams into goals

and then into results.

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hbr.org | December 2007 | Harvard Business Review 55

The upshot? Castro spent four hours visiting with our

fi lm crew, and he gave us permission to fi lm anywhere in

the harbor we wanted. We captured hours of compelling

television footage. My impromptu story – and Havana’s

story – won the day. “The seas belong to all humankind,”

I reminded Castro, “and so does history. You are the stew-

ard of Havana’s history, and it is up to you to share it with

the world.”

This experience led me – not for the fi rst time and cer-

tainly not for the last – to try to gather some basic truths

about how storytelling can be used to get people’s help

carrying out your goals and ultimately to inspire business

success. Stories can, of course, take many forms, from old-

fashioned words on a page to movies laden with digital

special effects. In this article I’ll restrict myself primarily to

stories like the one I used with Castro: oral narratives in

which a single teller addresses one or more listeners. Whether

the audience is a handful of colleagues or clients at lunch or

10,000 convention-goers listening to a formal address, the

secrets of a great story are largely the same.

The Leader as Storyteller
As part of my continuing effort to unlock these secrets, I re-

cently persuaded a diverse group of leaders and storytelling

experts from the worlds of business, education, and enter-

tainment to come together over a meal and exchange their

insights about storytelling. One beautiful spring evening, we

gathered at my home in Los Angeles. With a feast laid out

on a great low table and the city lights twinkling in the hills

below us, we luxuriated in a cascade of ideas. As the wine

fl owed, so did the jokes, stories, and observations drawn from

the centuries’ worth of life experience in that room. And

as varied as our backgrounds were, I found that we kept

returning to one theme: the crucial importance of truth as

an attribute of both the powerful story and the effective

storyteller.

Before I go further, let me clear up two misconceptions

about storytelling that many businesspeople have.

First, many think it is purely about entertainment. But

the use of the story not only to delight but to instruct and

lead has long been a part of human culture. We

can trace it back thousands of years to the days

of the shaman around the tribal fi re. It was he

who recorded the oral history of the tribe, en-

coding its beliefs, values, and rules in the tales

of its great heroes, of its triumphs and tragedies.

The life-or-death lessons necessary to perpetu-

ate the community’s survival were woven into

these stories: “We don’t go hunting in the Great

Wood – not since that terrible day when three of

our bravest were killed there by unknown beasts.

Here’s how it happened…”

Storytelling plays a similar role today. It is one

of the world’s most powerful tools for achieving

astonishing results. For the leader, storytelling is

action oriented – a force for turning dreams into

goals and then into results.

Second, many people assume that story-

telling is somehow in confl ict with authenticity.

The great storyteller, in this view, is a spinner

of yarns that amuse without being rooted in

truth. The image of Hollywood as “Tinsel-

town” – a land of make-believe and suspended

disbelief that allows us to escape reality, even

manipulates us into doing so – reinforces this

notion. But great storytelling does not confl ict

with truth. In the business world and elsewhere,

it is always built on the integrity of the story and its teller.

Hence the emphasis on truth as its touchstone in our din-

ner symposium.

Refl ecting on the lessons and ideas from our conclave,

I’ve distilled four kinds of truth found in an effective story.

Truth to the Teller
Authenticity, as noted above, is a crucial quality of the story-

teller. He must be congruent with his story – his tongue, feet,

and wallet must move in the same direction. The consum-

mate modern shaman knows his own deepest values and

reveals them in his story with honesty and candor.

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The Four Truths of the Storyteller

56 Harvard Business Review | December 2007 | hbr.org

Jim Sinegal, cofounder and CEO of Costco, tells a busi-

ness story that embodies the values he’s helped build into

his company. Back in 1996, he often recounts, Costco was

doing a brisk business in Calvin Klein jeans priced at $29.99.

When a smart buyer got a better deal on a new batch of the

jeans, company guidelines calling for a strict limit on price

markups dictated a lower price of $22.99. Costco could have

stuck to the original price and dropped seven extra dollars

a pair straight into its own pocket. But Sinegal insisted on

passing the savings on to customers, because he saw the

company’s focus on customer value as the key to its success.

The story continues to be told in Costco’s hallways today. It

vividly conveys a message about the company’s values – one

that resonates, in part, because it’s aligned with the person-

ality of its author. Sinegal answers his own phone, draws

an annual salary of just $350,000 (a fraction of what most

big-company CEOs earn), and has signed an employment

contract that’s only one page long – all of which means less

cost for customers to absorb.

At the storytelling dinner I held, Oscar-winning screen-

writer Ron Bass put it this way, drawing a parallel to the

world of politics: “When I pitch a story, I have to sell my-

self – who I am. The same is true of every leader, in business

or any other fi eld. Take Barack Obama. His story is all about

who he is. And everything about him is part of it, down to his

physical presence: the eye contact, the hand on the shoulder,

the sound of his voice.”

Being true to yourself also involves showing and shar-

ing emotion. The spirit that motivates most great story-

tellers is “I want you to feel what I feel,” and the effective

narrative is designed to make this happen. That’s how

the information is bound to the experience and rendered

unforgettable.

But sharing emotion isn’t easy. As Teri Schwartz, the

dean of Loyola Marymount University’s fi lm and television

school, pointed out, “It demands generosity on the part

of the storyteller.” Why? Because it often requires being

vulnerable – a challenge for many leaders, managers, sales-

people, and entrepreneurs. By willingly exposing anxieties,

fears, and shortcomings, the storyteller allows the audience

to identify with her and therefore brings listeners to a place

of understanding and catharsis, and ultimately spurs action.

When I told the story of Havana harbor to Castro – standing

on the deck of a ship strewn with expensive equipment that

we’d essentially brought there on spec, trusting in my ability

to win the confi dence of Cuba’s all-powerful ruler – both my

vulnerability and my enthusiastic commitment to the risky

project were on full display.

Here is the challenge for the business storyteller: He must

enter the hearts of his listeners, where their emotions live,

even as the information he seeks to convey rents space in

their brains. Our minds are relatively open, but we guard

our hearts with zeal, knowing their power to move us. So

although the mind may be part of your target, the heart is

the bull’s-eye. To reach it, the visionary manager crafting his

story must fi rst display his own open heart.

Truth to the Audience
There’s always an implicit contract between the storyteller

and his audience. It includes a promise that the listeners’

expectations, once aroused, will be fulfi lled. Listeners give

the storyteller their time, with the understanding that he

will spend it wisely for them. For most businesspeople, time

is the scarcest resource; the storyteller who doesn’t respect

that will pay dearly. Fulfi lling this promise is what I mean by

“truth to the audience.”

To meet the terms of this contract – and ideally even over-

deliver on it – the great storyteller takes time to understand

what his listeners know about, care about, and want to hear.

Then he crafts the essential elements of the story so that

they elegantly resonate with those needs, starting where

the listeners are and bringing them along on a satisfying

emotional journey.

This journey, resulting in an altered psychological state on

the part of the listener, is the essence of storytelling. Listen-

ers must remain curious and in suspense – wondering what’s

going to happen to them next – while trusting that it is safe

to give themselves over to the journey and that the destina-

tion will be worthwhile.

Truth to the audience has a number of practical implica-

tions for the craft of storytelling.

First, you’ll want to try your story out on people who

aren’t already converts, to get a realistic sense of how your

real audience might respond. Ron Bass fi nds this strategy

useful: “In effect,” he says, “I have my own story develop-

ment company. It consists of three or four young women

who represent my ‘marketing department.’ I bounce every-

thing off them – every new idea, scene, plot twist, character

Although the mind may be part of your target,

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hbr.org | December 2007 | Harvard Business Review 57

development, big speech. I study their reactions and then,

even more important, study my reaction to them. I don’t

necessarily follow their advice. What I must follow is my

own deepest instinct, and this is best revealed to me as I

see how I respond to the feelings and thoughts of other

people.”

Business leaders too need to be in touch with their listen-

ers – not slavish or patronizing, but receptive – in order to

know how to lead them. Getting your story right for your lis-

teners means working past a series of culs-de-sac and speed

bumps to fi nd the best path.

Second, you’ll need to identify your audience’s emotional

needs and meet them with integrity. It’s not enough to get

the facts right – you’ve got to get the emotional arc right as

well. Every storyteller is in the expectations-management

business and must take responsibility for leading listen-

ers effectively through the story experience, incorporating

both surprise and fulfi llment. At the end of the story, listen-

ers should think, “We never expected that – but somehow,

it makes perfect sense.” Thus, a great story is never fully

predictable through foresight – but it’s projectable through

hindsight.

Third, you’ll want to tell your story in an interactive fashion,

so people will feel they’ve participated in shaping the story

experience. This requires a willingness to surrender owner-

ship of the story. The storyteller must recognize that the story

is bigger than she is and must enlist her audience’s help.

This can mean, as screenwriter Chad Hodge pointed out

during our dinner, “helping people to see themselves as the

hero of the story,” whether the plot involves beating the bad

guys or achieving some great business objective. “Everyone

wants to be a star, or at least to feel that the story is talking

to or about him personally,” Hodge said. Business leaders

need to tap into this drive by using storytelling to place

their listeners at the center of the action. As Hodge advised:

“Encourage your people to join your journey, your quest, and

reach the goal that lies at its end.” Recall, for example, how

I shone a spotlight on the chain of history of Havana’s great

harbor and placed Castro at the center of the story, as the

harbor’s current steward.

LMU’s Teri Schwartz picked up on Hodge’s idea: “Make

the ‘I’ in your story become ‘we,’ so the whole tribe or com-

munity can come together and unite behind your experience

and the idea it embodies.”

Consider how Sallie Krawcheck – formerly the CEO of

Smith Barney and now, in her early forties, the youthful

chair and CEO of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management

division – connects with people who might be intimidated

by her reputation for brilliance and her rapid rise to the top

of the fi nancial services industry. She often tells her life story

in a way that anyone can identify with, recalling how she

felt like an outcast at her all-girls school as a teenager – with

glasses, braces, and corrective shoes – and how that prepared

her for the rigors of her professional life. She has said in the

business press that “there was nothing they could do to me

at Salomon Brothers in the ’80s that was worse than the

seventh grade.”

When you hear Krawcheck describe her journey in these

terms, you know exactly how she feels. You can’t help rooting

for her – and if you’re a member of her team at Citigroup,

you’re ready to follow her wherever she leads.

Perhaps of equal import, business leaders must recognize

that how the audience physically responds to the storyteller

is an integral part of the story and its telling. Communal

emotional response – hoots of laughter, shrieks of fear, gasps

of dismay, cries of anger – is a binding force that the story-

teller must learn how to orchestrate through appeals to the

senses and the emotions.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at

the story’s ending. Getting the audience

to cheer, rise, and vocalize in response to

a dramatic, rousing conclusion creates

positive emotional contagion, produces a

strong emotional takeaway, and fuels the

call to action by the business leader. The

ending of a great narrative is the fi rst thing

the audience remembers. The litmus test

for a good story is not whether listeners walk away happy or

sad. Rather, it’s whether the ending is emotionally fulfi lling,

an experience worth owning, a great “aha!” – not just sticky

fi ngers and a few uneaten kernels of popcorn.

Orchestrate emotional responses effectively, and you ac-

tually transfer proprietorship of the story to the listener,

making him an advocate who will power the viral marketing

of your message.

Truth to the Moment
A great storyteller never tells a story the same way twice.

Instead, she sees what is unique in each storytelling experi-

ence and responds fully to what is demanded. A story in-

volving your company should sound different each time.

Whether you tell it to 2,000 customers at a convention, 500

salespeople at a marketing meeting, ten stock analysts in a

conference call, or three CEOs over drinks, you should tailor

it to the situation. The context of the telling is always a part

of the story. In the case of my pitch to Castro, the story had

to seem spontaneous, a natural response to the inspiring

the heart is the bull’s-eye.

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The Four Truths of the Storyteller

58 Harvard Business Review | December 2007 | hbr.org

historic setting of Marina Hemingway (itself named after

one of the twentieth century’s great storytellers). And it did,

though the information had been gathered in advance. Its

organization and delivery were in essence the “premiere” of

this particular story.

There is a paradox here. Great storytellers prepare obses-

sively. They think about, rethink, work, and rework their sto-

ries. As Scott Adelson, an investment banker who uses story-

telling to help clients raise capital in public markets, said

at our dinner: “Sheer repetition and the practice it brings

is one key to great storytelling. When we help companies

sell themselves to Wall Street, we often see the CEO and

his team present their story 10, 20, 30 times. And usually

each telling is better and more compelling than the one

before.”

At the same time, the great storyteller is fl exible enough

to drop the script and improvise when the situation calls for

it. Actually, intensive preparation and improvising are two

sides of the same coin. If you know your story well, you can

riff on it without losing the thread or the focus.

At the storytelling dinner, scientist and science fi ction

writer Gentry Lee told us about appearing on a public panel

about alien abductions. The other three members of the

panel were two people who claimed they’d been taken by

aliens, and John Mack, the late Harvard psychiatrist who

believed in and researched such stories. As you might expect,

the two abductees had colorful, vivid, fascinating stories to

tell. The listeners were literally standing on their feet, clap-

ping and cheering. Mack poured fuel on the fi re by testifying

that these stories could be confi rmed by many others he’d

studied.

Lee had prepared, from a scientist’s perspective, a detailed

response to the abduction stories, showing how the power of

the imagination can conjure up fantasies that look, feel, and

appear compellingly real. But he could see that the frenzied

audience was in no mood to absorb his lengthy presenta-

tion. Instead, he decided to avoid a war of dueling stories

by simply using a single startling observation to defl ate the

abductees’ tales. All he said was this:

“My friend Carl Sagan used to say, ‘Extraordinary claims re-

quire extraordinary evidence.’ Well, we’ve heard some won-

derful stories today, and they make extraordinary claims. I

would just point out the following: Hundreds of people who

believe they’ve been abducted by aliens have told stories

like the ones we’ve just heard. And yet, despite all these

hundreds of supposed abductions, not a single souvenir has

ever been brought back – not a single tool or document or

drinking glass or so much as a thimble! Given the total ab-

sence of any physical evidence, can we really believe these

extraordinary claims?”

This simple, unadorned statement – improvised on the

spot to startle the audience into a fresh way of thinking –

completely transformed the situation. Most of the throng

changed from true believers to thoughtful skeptics in just

a few moments.

For the well-trained storyteller, spontaneity and economy

can be elegant and powerful.

Truth to the Mission
A great storyteller is devoted to a cause beyond self. That

mission is embodied in his stories, which capture and express

values that he believes in and wants others to adopt as their

own. Thus, the story itself must offer a value proposition that

is worthy of its audience.

The mission may be on a national or even global scale: To

land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.

To win the Cold War and bring freedom to millions of peo-

ple around the world. To reverse global warming and save

the planet.

Or the cause may be more modest but still important,

at least to the storyteller and his audience: To turn around

a company that is fl oundering and save hundreds of jobs. To

bring a great new service to market and improve the lives

of customers.

In any case, the job of the teller is to capture his mission

in a story that evokes powerful emotions and thereby wins

the assent and support of his listeners. Everything he does

must serve that mission.

This explains the passion that great storytellers exude.

They infuse their stories with meaning because they really

believe in the mission. I truly believed that our program

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hbr.org | December 2007 | Harvard Business Review 59

on the history of Havana harbor was important: We had

shown up to do something that was bigger than the swirl of

temporary political bargaining between our countries, and

we had bet the farm on the journey.

When truth to the mission confl icts with truth to the

audience, truth to the mission should win out. The leader

who knows his listeners is able to gain their trust and spend

that currency wisely in pursuit of the mission. But this

doesn’t mean telling people exactly what they want to hear.

That’s pandering and, as Hollywood has learned, a formula

for a mediocre story. Indeed, sometimes you need to do

just the opposite. At our dinner party, Colin Callender,

president of HBO Films, noted that several of HBO’s most

acclaimed productions are ones that audience pretesting

marked as losers.

Even in today’s cynical, self-centered age, people are des-

perate to believe in something bigger than themselves. The

storyteller plays a vital role by providing them with a mission

they can believe in and devote themselves to. As a modern

shaman, the visionary business leader taps into the human

yearning to be part of a worthy cause. A leader who wants to

use the power of storytelling must remember this and begin

with a cause that deserves devotion.

One of today’s most creative business leaders is Muham-

mad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank and pio-

neer of the microcredit movement, which advocates provid-

ing small loans to the poor. When he addresses would-be

partners to solicit support for microcredit, he tells some ver-

sion of this story:

“It was a village woman named Sufi ya Begum who taught

me the true nature of poverty in Bangladesh. Like many

village women, Sufi ya lived with her husband and small chil-

dren in a crumbling mud hut with a leaky thatched roof. To

provide food for her family, Sufi ya worked all day in her

muddy yard making bamboo stools. Yet somehow her hard

work was unable to lift her family out of poverty. Why?”

(Of course, “Why?” is a rhetorical question. But posing it to

the listeners engages their curiosity and makes them eager

to hear the answer, which they trust Yunus to supply.)

“Like many others in the village, Sufi ya relied on the lo-

cal moneylender to provide the cash she needed to buy the

bamboo for her stools. But the moneylender would give

her this money only on the condition that he would have

the exclusive right to buy all she produced at a price he

would decide. What’s more, the interest rate he charged was

incredibly high, ranging from 10% per week to as much as

10% per day.

“Sufi ya was not alone. I made a list of the victims of this

moneylending business in the village of Jobra. When I was

done, I had the names of 42 victims who had borrowed a

total of 856 taka – the equivalent of less than $27 at the time.

What a lesson this was for me, an economics professor!

“I offered $27 from my own pocket to get these victims

out of the moneylenders’ clutches. The excitement that was

created among the people by this small action got me fur-

ther involved. If I could make so many people so happy with

such a tiny amount of money, why not do more?

“That has been my mission ever since.”

When Yunus tells this story of the origins of microcredit,

his listeners – including bankers, CEOs, and high government

offi cials – are moved. They are riding the emotional arc of

Yunus’s tale, which culminated in 2006 with the awarding

of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Yunus and Grameen

Bank. When he concludes his story by asking his listeners

to help bring affordable credit to every poor person in the

world, he almost always receives a standing ovation – along

with a fl ood of pledges.

The Unchanging Heart of Storytelling
Story forms have evolved continually since the days of the

shaman. Literary genres from epic poetry to drama to the

novel use stories as political or social calls to action. Techno-

logical breakthroughs – movable type, movies, radio, televi-

sion, the internet – have provided new ways of recording,

presenting, and disseminating stories. But it isn’t special ef-

fects or the 0’s and 1’s of the digital revolution that matter

most – it’s the oohs and aahs that the storyteller evokes from

an audience. State-of-the-art technology is a great tool for

capturing and transmitting words, images, and ideas, but the

power of storytelling resides most fundamentally in “state-of-

the-heart” technology.

At the end of the day, words and ideas presented in a

way that engages listeners’ emotions are what carry stories.

It is this oral tradition that lies at the center of our ability

to motivate, sell, inspire, engage, and lead.

Reprint R0712C

To order, see page 147.

As a modern shaman, the visionary business
leader taps into the human yearning

to be part of a worthy cause.

1717 Guber.indd 591717 Guber.indd 59 11/1/07 8:51:13 PM11/1/07 8:51:13 PM

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