Chapter 1: The Deal for Connection
Humans live in two realities at once. Like all other living things, we live in the reality of ‘survival’ – food, shelter, procreation. But we spend most of our mental time living in a second one: the ‘story realm’. Story is what we do: it’s how we make sense of the world.
‘The deal for connection’ is one of the essential deals that all humans want to make. We are innately driven to connect with others.
When we meet new people, we have this horrendously painful experience of small talk, as we desperately look for ways to share reality. Once we find someone we connect with in an interesting way, we say goodbye to transacting a conversation and enter back into the ‘story realm’.
Chapter 2: Umwelt
Did you know the human eye can only detect one ten-trillionth of the available light spectrum? Our brains only pick up what is essential to our human experience of consciousness. We only see a narrow band of reality. This is referred to as our umwelt.
If you’re a turtle, your umwelt is the magnetic field that you detect in the ocean. If you’re an electric fish, you live in a world of electricity. A dog lives in an umwelt of smell, with galaxies of information we can’t access.
The human umwelt is story. We are the only species on Earth that processes reality in the form of narrative. We coat reality in a sense of morality, with its heroes, villains, teachers and betrayers. It is sense-making for humans.
Chapter 3: Superorganism
Imagine lots of people going into a cinema: they stop thinking about their own story, their own lives and their own self, and instead all tune into the same narrative they’re seeing on screen.
The hunter–gatherer tribe is the original superorganism.
Everywhere we go in the modern world, we create modern versions of tribes. A political movement, a football team, a religion, a cult – all human collectives are superorganisms. A business is an archetypal example of a human collective, with all its members focused on the same goals, the same obstacles, the same happy ending.
To make a superorganism work, you need something compelling that everybody can sign up to and tune into. It must motivate everyone who has individual parts to play to pursue the same goal.
Chapter 4: Active Belief and Status
It’s not enough to simply connect in our human groups. We’ve got to become valuable to the rest of our group by acting out its version of what a hero is.
Active belief is how we, as protagonists acting out the story of our lives, become heroic. We have to earn status. Consider fandoms: you can be a fan of Taylor Swift, but to earn status, you must go to the Eras Tour multiple times and passionately defend her online. Football fans earn status by analysing managers’ mistakes. The more you actively collaborate in the story world, the more status you’ll earn.
In the business world, people want to feel they matter: that they’re seen, heard and are contributing to their group’s great goals.
Chapter 5: Storybeing and Leadership
Everyone knows how storytelling works. What’s less understood is that we also persuade people by acting out compelling stories, which is a much more powerful motivator.
‘Storybeing’ is the notion that a story isn’t something we tell – it’s what we do. Every day, we act out the story of our lives. We follow heroes and avoid villains. People persuade us by appearing as certain characters in our life stories.
Successful leaders are experts in storytelling – but also in storybeing. They present as the hero of their human groups. A good leader says “we.” They embody the group’s ideal: “This is who we’ve always been… and who we must be again.”
Chapter 6: Identity and Morality
In the human story world, we’re not a machine of flesh and blood, we’re an identity – a set of ideas about who we ought to be and how the world should work. That identity, our sense of morals, is of massive importance. People will often sacrifice everything for it – even their lives.
All storytelling is drenched in moral instruction, subconsciously persuading us. When we identify with the hero and the hero becomes more virtuous, we are persuaded too.
Every business has its own virtuous beliefs – a sense of what makes a good or bad employee. If someone identifies with that story, they’ll want to feel good, follow its rules and transmit them to others.
Chapter 7: How to Be a Better Storyteller
#1 Start with unexpected change
Our curiosity signals to our predictive brain that there’s something about the world that we don’t know. Humans instinctively start to ask: what’s going on and what happens next?
#2 Share a moral lesson
Stories are how we exchange knowledge about how the world works. The best ones carry a message about what it takes to act bravely and become heroic, and resonate when they leave us.
#3 Overcome obstacles
Every compelling story must have a goal and something standing in the way of it. By watching someone face resistance and push through, we gain insight into both the world and ourselves.
