Peter Guber: Business storytelling must be done in person

Great NY Times article about Peter Guber's new book about how important story and meeting face to face is, In Film and in Life, the Story Is King:

Like a Hollywood movie, he figured out, the stories that drive professional life — the narrative that is part of pitches, résumés, introductions and every conversation about business goals and achievements — work best when they are grounded in emotion. By and large, they require a hero. Dramatic tension and even a few props help...

In sorting that out, Mr. Guber spent time in Papua New Guinea, watching tribesmen do business, in their way, via story.

From his fellow tribal leaders in Hollywood — an especially tactile culture, where lunch is less a meal than a ritual — he learned one of his more ironclad lessons, that business storytelling must be done in person, by people who, as he puts it, sniffing loudly, “are breathing the same air.”

SCREENS and telephone lines, he said, don’t let you flesh out the story with body language, shared emotion and the occasional resort to extreme measures.

His new book:



Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story