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

Pain Chain

The pain chain concept comes from sales techniques. The idea is that the pain, or problem, cascades through an organization but is experienced differently according to each person's level or responsibility. For the visual story, the pain chain technique can help you identify the relevant people or groups in your audience, how the story touches each of them differently, and the variations in the ways in which they're currently responding to the pain.

You can start anywhere in the chain and work in any direction. In the example illustrated by the diagram, the pain starts with a sales director identifying a failure to hit targets. This pain radiates up and down the organization, affecting different people in different ways. Pain occurs at both a personal level, with the sales person losing commission, and at an organizational level by affecting overall business profitability. The root cause of the pain in this example is visible at the bottom of the chain. Economic conditions in the countries where a major customer operates have caused big cash flow problems, resulting in the loss of a future sales opportunity.

Pain chains can work laterally across organizations, and the root cause can start at any point and spread out. The pain chain doesn't help you understand the change over time (which is something the Five Why technique can help with), but it does help to build a comprehensive picture of the many different people, groups, or organizations involved and their unique ...