The Power of Storytelling

Posted on November 5, 2025 Updated on November 15, 2025

The discussion of data and goals in business is very common. Unfortunately, it is so common that it becomes routine. There is no heart, no excitement, and, generally, a lack of real motivation that limits the likelihood of success.

Stories evoke emotions, and emotions often trump logic when it comes to getting buy-in and creating excitement. Stories also help with visualization, and visualizing success is proven to enhance goal achievement. That leads to mutual success. Just think about the power of TED Talks to help with the understanding and retention of ideas.

Steve Jobs realized that people are drawn to engaging stories that evoke emotion. He created relatable scenarios that helped people understand the benefits of a technologically advanced solution without having to dive deep into the technology. He spoke about things that were fun, exciting, and useful. He was visionary, but just as important, he was able to share that vision and create demand. Relatability and engagement, when done right, create an emotional attachment that drives action.

When my team and I were selling a leading-edge vector analytics database years ago, our Marketing team and other experts wanted us to focus on what later became known as “speeds and feeds.” Our product was more advanced than the competitors’, but our message was undifferentiated. That is not a good place to start when your competitors are larger and better known.

I created a weekly webinar that we called “Why Fast Matters.” We started by discussing common issues around the complexity and inflexibility of Star Schemas, Fact Tables, pre-aggregation, specialized hardware, and more. The focus was on agility that created a tangible business advantage while saving money. One of the stories I would tell was around a beautiful, multi-layered cake. It is a thing of beauty, taking a lot of time and skill to create. It was also fragile and expensive.

The story concluded like this:

“Now, picture yourself taking a bite of that amazing cake with your eyes closed. Think about how rich, flavorful, and amazing it is. Then someone hands you a fork, and you take another bite. It is just as amazing. You open your eyes and see a plated piece of the amazing layer cake alongside a cupcake. They were both delicious, and with your eyes closed, the results were the same. But one was complex and fragile, and the other was simple, quick, and inexpensive. There is a time and place for each, but when you are betting your success on an outcome, do you really care how you get there?”

We closed with a brief explanation of the technology, real-life proof points, and a call to action to prove its effectiveness in their environment using their data. The close helped demonstrate that this was not just a made-up story, but rather, something that could become their own success story. This was a straightforward approach to getting people to try something they might never have considered otherwise.

Essentially, you are shifting the audience’s mindset from how something gets done (means objective) to what matters and why it needs to be done (fundamental objective). People tend to have preconceived ideas about how the solution should work, often based on what they are familiar with. Once the audience begins to visualize a desirable outcome, they become more open to different approaches.

I have successfully used these approaches with more complex products, such as an advanced Kubernetes platform, object databases, a multi-platform data integration product, and the world’s first commercial JDBC driver. It is also an effective way to motivate teams. Create a vision of the successful execution of a plan, how good it feels to achieve your goals, and what it could mean for each person—an area they develop as their minds elaborate and personalize the story.

Some of the most effective and engaging people that I have known are skillful storytellers. Not everything has to be a story, but when leveraged at the right time, it can mean the difference between moving closer to your goal and being just one of many ideas or solutions.

You may not be the next Steve Jobs (I’m certainly not), but you could easily stand out from your peers and competition. Share your story in the comments below!