Humans Understand Stories

Four years ago, after my first trip to Vegas, Steve tells me about this system for doing Vegas developed by a guy whose blog he reads. I take a look at it, and I immediately conclude the guy who put this thing together is a huge nerd. It turns out I'm right, but that there's a lot I can learn from this nerd that has nothing to do with Las Vegas.

Rands (whose real name is Michael Lopp), in addition to writing about Vegas, blogs about his experience as a software manager. He's worked at a number of software companies you've probably heard of, but that's not what makes his writing great. What does is that he understands the power of stories.

Typical Rands-ian opening (from Meeting Creatures):

Worst meeting ever.

It’s not that the attendee list is wrong. All the right people are there and they’re bright and they are the decision makers. It’s not that the topic is boring or poorly defined. It’s a big deal. The problem with this meeting is that it’s never going to end.

See, about a year ago, one of our senior engineers was reading our contract with our application server, he read “Supports ends in two years. We’re done. You’re on your own.” He freaked out, called a meeting, freaked out again in the meeting to make sure it was a big deal, so we agreed it was a big deal. To-do lists were generated, follow-up meetings were scheduled… it all had a pleasant “Look what we can do when the sky is falling” vibe. Love it when folks scurry with purpose.

Present day. It’s A YEAR later and we haven’t made the switch. The senior engineer who raised the red flag A YEAR ago is, surprisingly, actually in this version of the meeting although he is a shell of the engineer he was a year ago. I guarantee he’s not going to say a thing because he knows what I know…

… this is the worst meeting ever.

He then goes on to explain what to do when you find yourself in meetings like this.

When I read Made To Stick earlier this year, I started to get an inkling of why starting with stories that tie into your thesis work. When I read Rands' Managing Humans last month, I saw how effectively they could be deployed. Now I need to figure out how to take advantage of them in my own writing.