The Year of Three Stories
In hard times, we need strong stories to keep us on track
On Thursday 23rd January, we’ll be running our first major LookUP Event, which is our look ahead to 2025 - a year which we see as the Year of Three Stories.
We start the year with no pause in sight to the turbulence in the world, and no immediate silver bullet for the economy.
Organisations are still locked into a breathless cycle of businesses-as-usual; still experiencing cultural fragmentation and conflict; still struggling to cut through with key messages in a too-noisy world.
There are going to be some hard times ahead.
But we see StoryTelling as the hard skill that we all need, to survive and thrive.
Stories help us to envision the future. To connect with people around us more meaningfully. And to shape the world around us.
StoryTelling is the antidote to short-termism, to fragmentation, and to the challenge of selling what needs to be sold.
That’s the focus of our work this year, and of our event next week.
What are the Three Stories?
We are going to explore the art of telling a Future Story.
How do we create visions of the future that feel compelling, urgent, and real? How do we help people to confront unpalatable truths, are see unimaginable possibilities. On Thursday, we’ll be exploring that with Kian Bakhtiari of The People, Charlotte Matier from the Alzheimer’s Society, and Chris Gough from 3 Mobile.
We’re going to be think about how to build a new Culture Story.
Many organisational cultures feels like they are slipping into a wrestle between top-down and bottom-up, between diverse visions and singular ambitions. How can we build better cultural stories, together? This week, we’ll hear from Nishma Patel Robb of Glittersphere, Sue Todd from NABS, and Marcus Orme from Medialab.
We’re going to be focusing on how to sharpen your Selling Story.
The art of the sell has to face into ever great headwinds of diminishing attention, escalating competition, and excessive complexity. This week we’ll be hearing from Lucy Goff from LYMA, Karen Stacey from DCM. And one more still-to-be-finalised contributor…(the joys of event planning!)
We’ll be coming back to this community post-event to share the biggest out-takes from the event, so if these subjects are on your mind this year, keep your eyes peeled.
The event itself is invite-only and intimate, but we’ve kept a couple of spaces free for members of our Substack community who’d like to come along.
If you are free and in London on the morning of 23rd January, and would like to join, send us a note here or at matthew@wearelookup.com, and we will add a couple of you to the invite list.
We’ve been a little quiet on here but there is lots more to come, in the next few weeks we will be:
giving a recap of the Year of Three Stories event
sharing our thoughts on how to make 2025 the Year of Less
providing some inspiration on how to tell your story on LinkedIn
Here’s to a year of powerful StoryTelling!