Bernadette Jiwa - The Right Story: The secret to spreading your ideas

For Reese, whose work is a gift that changes how
we see the world.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively. This mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes.

Yuval Noah Harari

Time was running out for the archaeologists at Wood Quay. The bulldozers moved in. Construction crews had been on site for months, ready and waiting to dig foundations for the planned office development on the site, where a Viking settlement had once stood, a thousand years before. That Viking village became the city of Dublinthe capital of Ireland, where I was born and raised.

Stories are how we change things.
We cant make progress without them.

Despite public disquiet, plans had been agreed and set in motion to build new council offices on the land acquired by Dublin Corporation between 1950 and 1975. Four high-rise granite and glass buildings would rise up next to the historic Christ Church Cathedral. But those plans stalled when early excavation work uncovered a mediaeval time capsule preserved in the anaerobic soil. This record of early urban life in Viking Dublin was an internationally significant archaeological find.

As consultant archaeologist Linzi Simpson reported, what emerged was layer upon layer of urban living from the Viking period and beyond. The remains were astonishing: complete foundations of wattle-and-daub houses; interior hearths and benches; workshops; timber pathways and boundary fences; and even latrines and rubbish pits filled with unique artefacts. What remained was the archaeological footprint of many generations who lived in the bustling international port known as Dyflinn, founded in the ninth century.

Following the discovery, archaeologists from the National Museum of Ireland began working at Wood Quay in 1974. Racing against time, they preserved and catalogued artefacts that would otherwise be buried under tons of concrete and steel, granite and glass. They uncovered the foundations of a hundred Viking houses and thousands of objectshand-carved wooden vessels, tools, decorative jewellery, a childs leather boot. The excitement about these discoveries was tempered with sadness over the hundreds of other undiscovered treasures that would be lost forever, unless the development was stopped.

I visited Wood Quay on a school excursion at the end of 1977, when I was 10 years old. Hundreds of schoolchildren from all over Ireland came to visit the site that year. Archaeologists, historians and teachers were keen to give as many school groups as possible a glimpse of the ancient Viking settlement before it was too late. We saw the archaeologists painstakingly comb the soil with brushes and trowels, learning how the Vikings changed the way cities like Dublin were built, abandoning the central city square, preferring instead to build their settlement curving around the riverlooking towards the river and the sea beyond. We saw fragments of ancient tools and jewellery made from metal and stone, wood and bones, and heard about the Viking rune alphabet and the sagas they told. We looked towards the mouth of the river Liffey where the longships had arrived, and began to understand how our Viking ancestors humanity and ingenuity had shaped and changed our world.

On 23rd September 1978, 20,000 people marched to protest the development, and to Save Wood Quay. The site was designated a national monument that year. Despite the public outcry, protest marches, media attention and international appeals to preserve our heritage, councillors voted to greenlight the development. Even we children sensed that this development was a bad idea. We couldnt figure out why the people in power didnt lift a finger to stop it. We shook our heads in disbelief over the lack of foresight of the elected officials responsible for planning our citys future.

We can only create the future we want to see by bringing other people with us on our journey.

At the core of our bewilderment, and probably yours too, lies a truth about making change happen. Its hard to persuade people to do things they dont want to do. The gap between the councillors values and beliefs and those of the protesters was too wide to bridge in the time available. The protesters who tried to save Wood Quay didnt have enough time to build on the story the councillors had been telling themselves over several decades about the need for progress. The right story could have helped them to find common ground and been a bridge towards a compromise.

The archaeologists at Wood Quay worked on the site for a total of ten years. The new office buildings were eventually opened in 1986. Today, 40 years after the Save Wood Quay protests, four soulless office buildings now dominate that corner of the Dublin city skyline, a reminder of how far we have come as a nation and a society, and how much more we still have to learn.

Sometimes bad ideas succeed, and we cant stop them. Sometimes good ideas fail and we cant save them. But we can learn from those failures and improve our chances of success. In the intervening years, Ive realised that there is no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. The success or failure of our ideas depends on us telling the right story. We can only do that by being clear about the change we want to create, and whyand then bringing enough of the right people with us on the journey. Its up to us, the changemakers of today and tomorrow, to galvanise those people we hope to bring on the journey with us.

Thats what this book is about. Its not just about helping you to change someones mind. Its about how you can get better at articulating the change you want to create and understanding the people you want to influence, inspire or impactso you can build upon what they already believe and ultimately shape the future you and they want to see.

Whats the point of stories?

Like my Viking ancestors, we are hardwired to survive. We humans have evolved to assess risks and react to threats. More importantly, we know instinctively that our survival depends on more than any one individuals ability to stay alive. We understand the need to connect and collaborate with each other. We want to bond and belong, so we can work together for the greater good of the tribe. And not only our psychology but our physiology ensures that we do.

The amygdala, part of the emotional centre of the brain, is constantly filtering signals and stimulating a response. Its preparing us to react or respond, to flee when were threatened or empathise when were emotionally engaged. Neurotransmitters help us to process positive and negative stimuli and prioritise our responses accordingly. When we sense a threat, our brain is flooded with the neurochemical adrenaline, triggering our fight-or-flight response.