Sometimes you don’t need many words to make your point.

And sometimes (or as it comes, quite frequently) others have already found better words anyway.

So why not purposefully quote them every now and again?

As in the case of the following “Six Classic Errors of Business Story” which my esteemed and valued storytelling friend and sparring partner James McCabe sent to me the other day. So, allow me to just quote and let the words speak for themselves. There’s more than just a grain of truth to them, as I could tell stories galore about from own experiences as witness and consumer of business wanna-be-story communication pieces, from sweet beginning to bitter end.

So here we go:

1. Telling your story from the company’s view.
2. Talking to the customer in the third person.
3. Avoiding reality as way too “heavy”.
4. Creating gratuitous feel-good factor.
5. Avoiding exact detail in the search for universality.
6. Calling rhetorical exercises “stories” when they are only directed at the mental processes.

What are your experiences? Do you agree with James? Disagree? Why?

Let me know!