The Storytelling Wheel

On a recent transatlantic flight on BA, I watched two episodes of Community, a new TV show that I was frankly not familiar with (OK, so I haven’t been part of the show’s hip and enthusiastic online community, the enviable demographic that advertisers crave – at least not yet). In Community, Joel McHale plays a disbarred lawyer who attends a Community College, together with a ragtag group of diverse friends (one of them played by Chevy Chase). The show is hilarious. With October 31 just around the corner, one episode centered on a Halloween party gone terribly wrong, people turning into zombie, infecting each other, until a heroic act by one of the characters saves the day.

I decided to do some research, and found out that the show’s creator, Dan Harmon, uses a very specific method in his storytelling. He keeps drawing circles with eight slices. According to Harmon, a good screenplay (and a good story) follows a regular pattern:

1. A character is in a zone of comfort 
2. But they want something
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Adapt to it
5. Get what they want
6. Pay a heavy price for it
7. Then return to their familiar situation
8. Having changed.

Harmon calls these circles embryos – they contain all the elements necessary to make a story whole. He applies the concept to short side jokes, to the main story of an episode, and even to entire seasons.

It immediately struck me that this storytelling wheel works equally well if you tell a story in a business setting. Structuring a presentation or a final document to inform decision makers about the results of a project is nothing else but storytelling.

McKinsey uses the famous “Situation – Complication – Solution” approach to structure a story. In some instances, that SCS framework is very helpful. In other cases, I have found it to be quite broad, and people often struggle with it: There are often different ways to define the situation and complication. And even if you get the top level of the storyline right, then how do you flesh out in more detail the second level? Applying Dan Harmon’s storytelling wheel could represent an interesting alternative. Of course, it would have to slightly altered, for example:

1. A company / product / brand has been doing very well
2. But early successes have led to even bigger expectations

3. They are now faced with repeating their success in new customer segments / geographies
4. They have initially adapted well to it, and have managed to capture market share in these new areas
5. As a result, revenues are up significantly
6. But that was only achieved through a dilution of what the brand originally stood for. As a result, in a number of new areas, the revenue gains seem short lived
7. The company / brand refocuses on its core audience and core message
8. It has managed to expand somewhat beyond its original base, but has today a much better understanding of how to successfully do this.