Anecdotally Speaking

On January 18, 2018, Shawn and Mark recorded the first episode of Anecdotally Speaking, and today we’re bringing you our 50th episode! To celebrate, we’ve bought five members of the Anecdote team together: Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk, Paul Honeywell, Mike Adams, and Paul Ichilcik. We’ve just returned from Sydney, where we held the 2019 Anecdote Partner Conference and launched two new products: Sto...

Shawn is still away so, this week, Mike Adams joins the podcast. Mike is the head of our Story-Powered Sales program. He is also the author of Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell.  Mike shares a story about an event that he has never forgotten, despite not being there. It illustrates how stories are the second best thing to experience.  The podcast Mark and Mike discuss in this episode is Ma...

In this episode, we welcome Paul Ichilcik to the podcast! Paul, who joined the Anecdote team a few months ago, is filling in for Shawn while he’s on holiday! If you haven’t met Paul, or read his introductory blog post, he has recently returned to Australia after spending six years in the United States. There, he worked for Amazon and Microsoft. Paul discovered business storytelling when he was a m...

In this week’s episode of Anecdotally Speaking, we’re mixing things up! Instead of sharing one story, we’re sharing three, each one illustrating the importance of keeping an open mind and an awareness of unconscious bias. Shawn’s about to head off on a 5-week European holiday, so this will be his last episode for a few weeks! Instead, our newest team members, Paul Ichilcik and Mike Adams, will be...

In this episode of Anecdotally Speaking, we welcome another guest! Luke Brown has been a friend of Mark's for many years. He joins us to share a story from his time working as a project manager for the Australian Defence Force. Luke has successfully run multiple multi-million dollar aircraft acquisition projects. There were, however, three projects at the beginning of his career which didn't go ac...

In this episode, it's Shawn's turn to share a historical story. He recounts a crisis faced by Oxford's New College about 100 years ago.  An entomologist found the beams in the ceiling of the college's main dining room riddled with beetles. The beetles had chewed through the beams and had compromised the structural integrity of the building. Little did the college council know, the college's founde...

Here at Anecdote, we’re gearing up to turn 15 years old! We’ve been taking a trip down memory lane as we prepare for our big day. Keep an eye on our Instagram page, @RealAnecdote, for some flashbacks! In this episode, Mark retells the story contained in Dava Sobel’s Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. As the title suggests, the story f...

Podcasts are a great source of stories. That’s why we started Anecdotally Speaking. Malcolm Gladwell’s Broken Record is no exception. Shawn found this week’s story listening to episodes 1 and 2 of the podcast. Questlove, drummer, DJ, and member of American hip hop band The Roots, features as a guest in each of the episodes and shares a few personal stories.  The story Shawn has chosen to retell is...

This week, Mark shares the story behind Steven Bradbury’s win in the short tack speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. You might think you know the story behind the most unexpected gold medal in history, but Mark’s retelling offers a different perspective. Unfortunately, Dave Carroll can no longer join us at our Washington D.C. Storytelling for Leaders workshop, but you ca...

If you regularly read our blog, you will be familiar with story-triggering. Story-triggering is what occurs when someone does something so remarkable that the people who see, or experience it, tell stories about it. In our last episode, we shared a story which you can tell or trigger to make a business point. In this episode, Shawn shares a similar story. There’s no backwards brain bike in this st...

This week, Karen Stanton, the Global Branding and Marketing Director at IFF (International Flavours and Fragrances), joins us from New Jersey. She shares the story of the ‘backwards brain bike’.  When riding the backwards brain bike, you have to turn the handlebars to the left to go right, and to the right to go left. This sounds simple but is difficult in practice. The story suggests that while w...

This week we welcome our first guest speaker for 2019 to Anecdotally Speaking! Jill Roche is the Chief of Corporate Affairs at World Vision Australia. She shares a story which suggests we should look at mistakes as opportunities. Imagine unthinkingly hitting the ‘reply all’ button on an email and sending a note, intended for your immediate team, to your entire organisation! Jill made this mistake,...

A few years ago, Shawn was doing a project for a software company in the United States. He was invited to attend a sales conference in Orlando, where he heard a sales leader he had been coaching share a story with his sales team. In this episode, Shawn retells that story.  The story contrasts Michael Phelps’ record breaking swim in the men's 400m Individual Medley Final at the 2008 Beijing Olympic...

Happy New Year! We took two weeks off over the holiday period to relax and recharge. Now, we’re back and ready for a big year!  Here is the first episode of Anecdotally Speaking for 2019! This year, we’re excited to hear more stories from guests all over the world who have completed our training programs. But before we do, we’d like to share a few stories we've discovered and rediscovered over our...

This week, Shawn shares another story. The story demonstrates how small things can make a big difference. It suggests that if we are looking to solve a problem we should think about the small things we can do, before thinking about the big things other people can do.  When working as a reporter in Iraq during the Iraq War, Charles Duhigg met a US army major. This major was tasked with resolving th...

Once again, its Shawn’s turn to share a story. The story he has chosen suggests the success of new products relies on finding a balance of new and familiar features. Spotify's 'Discover Weekly' is a personalised music playlist of 30 songs, chosen based on the user's listening patterns. Matthew Ogle designed the playlist so that it would only include songs which the user had never heard before, but...

Having a clear purpose can help an organisation make better decisions. Southwest Airlines’ purpose to ‘democratise the skies’ helped the airline add over $1 billion to their bottom line, despite a slump in the profitability of the airline industry. This week, Mark tells us how through the story of the airline’s ‘Bags Fly Free’ campaign.  The story contains a number of meaningful business points, i...

This week, it is Mark’s turn to share a story. The story he has chosen is one which demonstrates how stories can change minds and influence people. This story changed his mind. It reminded him to be aware of his assumptions and aware of the lessons of history.  Many of us are not familiar with the universal basic income concept. Just fifty years ago it was nearly reality. The concept proposes a mi...

Most of us know the Dyson brand. Their vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and stylers, fans, heaters and humidifiers are all considered top of their product ranges. Most of us, however, don’t know that James Dyson toiled over the design for his bagless vacuum cleaner for some 15 years before earning any real profit or gaining any real success. So, what is the story behind the Dyson brand and the first b...

Continuing to share stories from those we’ve met on our travels, in this episode we’re joined by Sir Charles Masefield. Charles shares a story from very early in his career with BAE Systems. Charles worked his way up within the ranks of the company, starting as a test pilot and eventually becoming the president. This story is from his days as a general manager.  Charles’ story describes the series...

Anecdotally Speaking is back! We’ve taken a short hiatus while travelling all over Australia and all over the world. We’ve returned home with a collection of stories shared by clients and friends we met along the way. In this episode we welcome a guest speaker, Steve Crompton, Managing Director of Change Social UK, who completed our Storytelling for Leaders program back in 2013 when he was working...

The British are coming! Make sure you tell your well connected mates.

Instead of seeing a pattern of excellence and just noticing it, top leaders investigate how the pattern formed and work out ways to recreate it.

Bringing your data to life is crucial in making others understand why it’s important. In this example, we hear how John Snow had to be creative and clear with his data to prove his theory right.

What do you do when you have high turnover? Henry Ford's solution made his shareholders angry.