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

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The Power of Stories

The Art of Communication Needs a System Reset

Which is worse: repeatedly performing a flawed process, learning about it without question, or teaching it to others?

In business, and in life, we often repeat the same pattern: We learn flawed ideas, we use them, and then we teach them to others. Usually, this is because our underlying assumptions are incorrect, and since we don't like to question our assumptions, we often repeat our mistakes.

What follows is a true story showing how a good idea can be killed by poor communication and how tenaciously people can fight to reject a good idea.

In the nineteenth century, free or low-cost maternity clinics were set up across Europe to reduce infanticide and improve the practice of medicine. This greatly appealed to poor women. In one unique institution, the Vienna General Hospital, there were not one but two clinics for childbirth. Clinic One used doctors, and Clinic Two used midwives. In the midwife clinic, on average, about four percent of mothers died during labor. In the physician's clinic, the number was at least twice as high, and in some years, the death rate topped ten percent. Something was amiss.

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a young resident at the time, compared the practices at the two clinics and, in 1847, suggested a reason for the difference between the two. The doctors in Clinic One were studying anatomy ...