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: Story-Powered Sales (a new and improved version of Storytelling for Sales) and Story-Powered Strategy. In this episode, we reflect on a huge week. Our Chairman, Paul Honeywell, shares a story which stood out among many at the Conference, and which illustrates the importance of recognising and seizing opportunities.

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 Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History.

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 management consultant. The great ideas people were having around him just weren't being put into practice. He had always been fond of screen-writing, so he decided to help others use stories to communicate their ideas.

If you’d like more information about the workshops Mark and Paul mention in this episode, visit www.anecdote.com/events. Our Story-Powered Sales workshop is on November 14, not November 13, oops!

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 joining Mark at the mic! Stay tuned!

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 according to plan. They led him to realise that there was more to project management than what he had learned through his studies, and caused him to change his mantra from 'plan the work, work the plan' to 'plan the work and work with the people.'

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 founders had prepared for this very crisis.

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 follows John Harrison and his attempts to solve the greatest scientific problem of his time - calculating longitude. It dates back to the 1700s.

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 from Barack Obama’s final Whitehouse party. The story contains another story which Obama shared with Questlove on the night of the event. It also contains a number of valuable business points, including: be mindful of your audience.

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 can read more about his recent work with Shawn on the Anecdote blog.

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 story, but there is cake.