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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Science of Storytelling

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. A British author, journalist and former photographer, Will has been a contributing editor at Esquire and GQ Australia.

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Will has been featured in The Guardian Weekend, The Telegraph Magazine, The Times Magazine, The Observer Magazine, and The Sunday Times. Will has been named New Journalist of the Year, Feature Writer of the Year and has won a National Press Club award for excellence.

Storytelling is the true cornerstone of a presenter. Since the launch of PowerPoint this narrative shifted to the digital era. In fact, too many presenters forgot about storytelling and spent too much time playing with fonts and bullets.

In order to recapture the audience, it is critical for anyone to understand the craft of storytelling. There have been a good set of references that can guide you to present effectively. Most ask you to move beyond fiddling with fonts and bullets.

Will is able to move this effort forward. So this book reveals the essence of storytelling as a science, focusing on a topic that not many others have attempted. So Will is going deep inside our minds to help us learn how to achieve via psychological research and neuroscience to deliver powerful stories.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval holds a PhD from the University of Oxford. He is a professor at the Department of History in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is an amazing book about the history of humans that should be in every K12 school. The topics he is documenting is certainly stunning. In fact, Yuval is addressing the entire evolution of human kind.

At first glance anyone would not consider that an entire history of anthropology, geography, psychology, religion, ideologies, and even how sapiens will evolve with robotic parts. This is a compliment to Yuval’s efforts.

In fact, by retracing human history, some key lessons emerge regarding historical folklore. On example is both chimps and sapiens can only organize into groups at a maximum of 150. So, humans have long believed in many myths that have ultimately sidelined the truth.

By documenting sapien migrations from eastern Asia moving into Alaska, Yuval obviously reveals movement south through Canada and down the west coast of America into Mexico culminating into South America’s southern tip roughly 150,000 years ago.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Subtract

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz. Leidy is a professor of engineering and architecture at the University of Virginia. He is published in the scientific journals Nature and Science. Leidy is also published in The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company.

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz

Leidy is providing interesting lessons addressing the idea that subtraction, or the science of less is actually beneficial, especially in the COVID era. There are multiple ideas that will strike readers as important. You can certainly address the efficiency of your organizations today by removing the extra junk no longer needed to operate.

In fact, there are many efficiencies that my own organization can benefit from by adopting his less is more message.

Organizations are obviously recognized for adding incentives for good behavior, yet do not remove the obstacles that continue to exist for other employees. Especially in the COVID era, we are presented with new ideas and challenges.

However we cannot seem to be brave enough to subtract those dead ideas, policies, or procedures. Ultimately organizations continue the ‘pile it on’ approach. I am reminded of similar goals from two books by Daniel Pink: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing and last year’s popular The Power of Regret. If by chance you have read either book, then you will know how Dan and Leidy are thinking.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Upstream

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath. Today Dan is a consultant to Duke University’s Corporate Education program. Along with his brother Chip, the Heath brothers have been writing impactful books for over 20 years.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

Dan is providing great thinking to modern problems. This is even more valuable in the age we live in today regarding opioids and COVID. Perhaps the idea of instilling his lessons of ‘Preventing Problems Rather Than Reacting to Them’ is the ground floor many organizations need today.

Upstream is certainly an excellent book that talks about the value of thinking in systems and finding/fixing the root cause of problems. In fact, our world today is simply more difficult and demanding. The daily ‘grind’ often forces groups to overlook their ability to see upstream.

So, here is a book addressing how we can begin understanding a process needed to mitigate the problem versus just putting out fires. There is certainly a lot of research across this book showing how how Dan certainly understands how colleges operate.

Secondly, Dan Heath has obviously done a lot of research on this topic and has come up with the gotchas that hit many organizations.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Making Numbers Count

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. Chip is professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath, Karla Starr

Much to my surprise I looked up my first review of Made to Stick, Dan and Chip’s debut book. I read that book over 15 years ago. That book made such an impression that I have read their books without disappointment. However they recently published independent books and I will share Dan’s book Upstream shortly. His brother Dan is a consultant to Duke University’s Corporate Education program.

Chip presents multiple lessons to make numbers more meaningful to any group you are sharing data with in order to make an impression. This book is really one that should be not only on your shelf but also sharing with colleagues.

An interesting point is Chip’s message that nobody is really a “numbers person” as our brains cannot easily understand the analysis of very large number sets.

The focus is numbers in the billions. However, Chip documents how to understand and communicate the difference between one million and one billion that makes an impact within your organization:

You and a friend each enter a lottery with several large prizes. But there’s a catch: If you win, you must spend $50,000 of your prize money each day until it runs out. You win a million dollars. Your friend wins a billion. How long does it take each of you to spend your lottery windfall? As a millionaire….you go bust after a mere 20 days. If you win on Thanksgiving, you’re out of money more than a week before Christmas. For your billionaire friend….He or she would have a full-time job spending $50,000 a day for 55 years.
pg. 10

This example makes perfect sense in helping many users understand how to begin learning how to communicate their data sets.

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