Hey, remember when I told you this?
I’m still not kidding. And the big brains at Inc. agree with me.
Check this out. Inc. staff writer Graham Winfrey has a great article, complete with sexy infographic, on the skills that employers will need from employees in 2020 — and all ten of ’em have connections to that storytelling impulse nestled deep and cozy in the human brain.
No, really. Sense making? That’s understanding and assembling information into narratives. Social intelligence? Analyzing other folks’ narratives. Novel and adaptive thinking? That’s just understanding the tropes and rules of storytelling well enough to know when to break them.
Y’all, one of the skills is straight up called “new media literacy.” It’s right there on the label.
Look. Homer started spinning yarns in the 800s BCE, and we’re still telling stories now. Seems foolish to bet on that changing, doesn’t it?
Storytelling for Success 
You’re totally right about the emphasis on storytelling. It almost seems like an innovation at this point, but I suspect that’s because the idea is only now catching up to new media channels. I wasn’t around back in the day, but I imagine the channels we now consider traditional (print, radio, television) went through similar growing pains of focusing on the media rather than the message. (“Sophisticate Cigarettes! Now on the radio!!!”)
My takeaway from Winfrey’s article is that storytelling skills are going to have to evolve. Instead of manufacturing a marketing narrative out of whole cloth, the next generation of storytellers are going to have to be able sift through insane amounts of data and shape it into a cohesive and compelling story. And that’s a whole different kind of creativity.
Great post and awesome blog. Thanks for sharing!!!
Content is king. The sooner we realize that entertainment (storytelling) leads to engagement, the more effective out marketing efforts will become.
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