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

The Three Big Whys

It is not easy to step away from your own motivation entirely. We will give you some tools to examine motivations in a neutral way. In this chapter, our aim is to help you answer the question that matters the most: Why does your audience need to move this mountain?

Although each story will have a unique set of factors, we suggest three main reasons why people propose a change:

• To improve an existing situation. If this is the type of story you are telling, you need to understand and catalog the pain that the current situation is causing, and show how your solution will diminish it. By pain, we mean any inconvenience, inefficiency, loss of potential gain, or physical, emotional, or financial discomfort. (You will find more about the concept of the pain chain and techniques for dealing with the pains later in the chapter.)
• To bring about something new and useful. Maybe there's no existing problem to be solved, but your proposal will lead to a new product, event or process that will increase efficiency, improve revenue, or add excitement. Motivating your audience may be difficult because there's no sense of urgency to draw upon, either from any kind of pain or from a well-understood personal benefit. If this is your story, you have to convince your audience that your proposal will improve their lives, possibly in a way that's never occurred to them. Did anyone ask for the VCR? For the iPad?
• To fulfill some personal desire or motivation. This kind of story may ...