Among his many accomplishments as a writer, Aaron Sorkin now has an Academy Award for the screenplay “The Social Network”,  a fictionalized movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  “The Social Network” brings into sharp relief the market forces that are driving innovations in business and in business communication — in both form and function.

Sorkin’s social network story tells a bigger-than-life creation myth.  Facebook was The Big Bang of social networking.  It created an entirely new digital world and a reordered the social contract.  Every creation myth needs a bad guy, too.  The Zuckerberg character that sprung from Sorkin’s imagination is a young man who lost control of his own narrative.

Effective leaders know that the best stories win — people’s hearts, minds and commitment. “The Social Network” is a cautionary tale for a new generation of executives who recognize the need for a compelling narrative and the skills to communicate it across multiple media channels – live and in person, by text, audio, video and interactive social networking dialogue.

You, too, can take an idea from concept to story by following a logical and methodical process:

1.    Start with SOCO. To make an impact, make a point: a single, overriding communications objective. Build your story, develop your story and resolve your story around a SOCO.

2.    Build your story on a classic foundation. It was true in ancient Greece and it’s true today:  Persuasion balances logos, ethos and pathos.

  • Logos/logic: your story must be logical and make sense.
  • Ethos/credibility: the storyteller must be trustworthy and credible.
  • Pathos/emotional: the story must stir people’s emotions and compel them to listen.

3.    Follow the Rule of Three. Why is the three pairing so pervasive in communication? Pattern recognition. Design the progression of your story using the rule of three:

  • Your story needs a beginning, middle and end
  • Your story should create tension, build tension and resolve tension
  • To increase audience retention, recognize, layer and repeat.

4.    Every story needs a good guy and a bad guy. Certain types of stories and their archetypal characters have endured to tell universal truths, to explain how the world works and to reveal us to ourselves.  Archetypal heroes represent social values and the villains represent a problem or a set of problems.  Three well known archetypes lend themselves to business stories:

  • The Classic Hero’s SOCO: Save the world.
The Hero meets his destiny. Think Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker.
  • The Rebel’s SOCO: Change the world.
The Rebel rejects the status quo. Think Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.
  • The Detective’s SOCO: Make your life better. The Detective thinks outside the box to find the solution to thorny problems.Think Google.

5.    If you must use PowerPoint, use it to enhance storytelling. Storytelling is used to help an audience process information, come to a conclusion or to make a decision. Richard E. Mayer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, conducts research around educational psychology.

To design a powerful PowerPoint presentation, follow these principles that emerged from professor Mayer’s research about how people learn:

  • Multimedia principle: people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
  • Coherence principle: people learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included.
  • Contiguity principle: people learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time or next to each other on the screen.
  • Modality principle: people learn better from animation with spoken text than animation with printed text.
  • Signaling principle: people learn better when the material is organized with clear outlines.
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