The first requirement of effective business storytelling. If we want to create emotion and action, our story has to be about someone. Not a company, not a business, not an organisation — a human being.
In 1976, Sylvester Stallone created one of cinema’s most enduring underdogs: Rocky. The film’s most famous moment comes when Rocky delivers what sounds like a powerful declaration: “I was nobody. But that don’t matter either, you know? ‘Cause all I wanna do is go the distance.”
Go the distance.
It sounds magnificent. You can feel the determination. But here’s the brutal truth of storytelling: what Rocky says doesn’t matter. What matters is what he does.
So we watch. We wait. We see whether he follows through. And over the course of the film, it becomes clear that character isn’t revealed through declaration or intention — it’s revealed through action. Rocky running up those steps isn’t impressive because of the physical feat. It’s impressive because we’re watching who he’s choosing to become.
This is fractal. It works at every scale. In your business story, don’t tell people who you are. Show them through the choices you made, the risks you took, the pressures you endured and how you responded. That’s where character lives.
There’s another layer to this, though, and it surfaces most clearly under pressure. Consider Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. She lives in a world where a woman’s entire security revolves around marriage — and her family is on the brink of destitution. When a secure cousin proposes, he’s offering her safety, stability, everything she’s supposed to want. And she says no.
“It is impossible for me to do otherwise than to decline them.”
It’s in that moment, under all that pressure, that we see who Elizabeth truly is. When push comes to shove, she shoves back. She chooses herself, even though it costs her.
This is the paradox: character is most vividly revealed when it’s under pressure. When someone has to choose between what they want and what they’re afraid to lose. That’s when you see the real them — not the version they want you to believe in, but the version that emerges when they have to commit.
In business storytelling, this matters enormously. You could tell me about your achievement. Or you could tell me about the pressure you were under when you made the decision that led to that achievement. The second creates empathy because it reveals something true — that you’re human, that you felt the weight of the choice, that you chose it anyway.
Here’s the thing: we don’t remember what people say. We remember what they do, especially when it costs them something.
And we believe them.