Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Preface

I had been developing and using the ideas in this book for five years before I presented them for the first time in public at the seventh annual Enterprise Architecture Europe Conference in 2006. Between that first public showing and the writing of this book, the content has been refined, tested, and used to train hundreds of Microsoft employees and people in other major organizations around the world.

In 2010, Nick offered to work on the book with me, and we soon invited Mark to join us. Even at that point, this project almost didn't happen. As we were conducting the market research, I found enough books with similar content that I almost gave up. However, after talking with people who had participated in my training courses I realized we had two very strong reasons to write a book. Many books had a narrow focus on a particular skill set, with very few covering the breadth of techniques, or explaining how to bring all of these skills together in a repeatable process. Hardly any of the books focused on the practical aspect, with worked examples to show how to apply the concepts. Our aim is to keep the theory to a minimum and focus on the practical. Eventually you may need those other books that dive deeper into the details and the theory, but when the presentation needs doing and your career is on the line, we believed a “get the job done” guide was needed.

Stories That Move Mountains is focused on one of the most common reasons for presentations — the need to gain commitment ...