Bonus: My Conversation on 'Causality in Storytelling' with Harish Bhamidipati Artwork

The Story Rules Podcast

Storytelling is an ancient craft and humans are wired for story. Yet when it comes to telling the story of our work, we often fall short. My mission, through 'Story Rules', is to help you tell a better story of your work. I do that by tapping into the fascinating and wondrous world of Storytelling techniques. The Story Rules Podcast is a further step in that direction. In episodes of the podcast, we will have long, deep and meaningful conversations with some of the best storytellers in the world. We will explore their life story, discuss their storytelling philosophy and unearth the secrets of their craft. Listeners will get to learn, grow their own inner storytellers and finally, achieve better outcomes at work - by leveraging the power of story.

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The Story Rules Podcast

Bonus: My Conversation on 'Causality in Storytelling' with Harish Bhamidipati

December 08, 2023 • Ravishankar

This is a different type of podcast episode: one where I'm the one being interviewed!

“So, as a storyteller, you have three things in your hand to make an appeal right, you've got the data or the logic. You've got the emotional appeal to your audience. Most importantly, you've got your Ethos, your reputation, your credibility. And if you make a series of wrong recommendations based on quick (assessments, thinking), 'I'm very, very sharp and I have got this great intuition', it may go on well for some time, but eventually, the probability will catch up with you and when that happens, then you will realize that, oh, (and) the audience will also realize that ‘We can't rely on your word anymore. We'd like to see more evidence, please'”

That was me on my own podcast (yup, it's weird to be quoting yourself).

As I said, this is a different kind of podcast episode. In this one, I’m the one being interviewed, and the interviewer is Harish Bhamidipati, a good friend, and the co-founder of Choose to Thinq and Align by Design. (Incidentally, his firms do some unique, highly valuable work for startups and big companies – and you should check it out through the links).

In the conversation, Harish spoke with me about my recently published long-form essay on the crucial role of Causality in storytelling.

The conversation was the brainchild of Harish (and his wife Sirisha) who felt that the 17,000-word essay may be a bit daunting for folks who don't get time to read... and they may appreciate an audio conversation about it.

But instead of a plain reading of the essay (which would anyway be difficult given the visual elements embedded in it), we decided to have a conversation about the essay.

We talk about two broad topics:

1. A deeper dive into some of the key messages of the essay and the implications for different stakeholders.

2. My process for writing this long-form piece: The initial idea to write it, the research process, structuring the piece, actually writing it, adding visual elements, and finally editing the write-up.

So - in case you haven’t had time to go through the essay and would like a quick overview - or would like to know more about my reading, reflection and writing process, go ahead and listen to this deep-dive on: ‘Causality: The Elusive C at the Heart of Story’.

Show notes:
- Essay link

- Ravi’s YouTube video on how to up your storytelling game post ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot

- Harish’s work – Align by Design (a transformative leader alignment program that enables organisations achieve unparalleled growth) and Choose to Thinq (enables companies and individuals to continuously build future relevance)