THE STORY BEHIND "STORIESTHAT.WORK"
- Jeremy Connell-Waite
- Apr 24
- 4 min read
StoriesThat.Work began with a moment of curiosity. I was watching Barack Obama speak about his Netflix series Working: What We Do All Day, and I was struck by how he brought such humanity and a new perspective to something we often overlook; the everyday experience of work. That thread led me back to Studs Terkel and his extraordinary book Working. In his early days of community organising, Obama was heavily influenced by this book which was written by the Chicago-based radio host and raconteur.
It's a brilliant book I highly recommend. It's full of 100 beautifully written stories about everyday folks, from shoe-shiners and maintenance workers, to hookers and CEOs. It sounds mundane but the way Studs brings the stories to life is magical because he didn’t just document jobs, he revealed the stories inside them. The pride, the frustration, the meaning, the identity. He showed that work is never just what we do. It’s how we make sense of the world.
And that’s where the problem begins today...
In modern business, we are surrounded by presentations, pitches, town halls, strategy decks, and keynote speeches. Yet too many of these stories fall flat. They inform, but don’t inspire. They sound polished, but feel empty. They make people think… but not act.
I have noticed that many leaders focus most on what they need to say, and very little on what their audience actually want to hear. They seem to worry more about their words, and how they look on stage, than the challenges their audiences are actually facing.
What’s the real story, not just the story you want to tell?
In the six months that I've been off work recovering from brain surgery (Nov-April 2026), I've come to believe that we’re in the middle of a storytelling crisis.
Not because we lack content, but because we’ve lost connection. We’ve optimised for slides instead of substance. For structure over soul. For information over impact.
Consider a few of these stats from studies I've been reading recently:
Up to 30% people experience significant fear of public speaking/presenting. [NIMH]
50% of employees will need reskilling by 2030 due to ai and automation [WEF]
88% people are scared of losing their jobs
54% believe technology is changing too fast in ways that is not good for them. [Edelman]
70% of people say they define their purpose through work… but only 18% feel they’re actually living that purpose.” [BARTELL]
Only a minority of leaders receive formal training in communication [McKINSEY]
Only 13% of employees strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively [GALLUP]
Only half of employees say they understand their company’s strategy [McKINSEY]
Ineffective communication costs businesses over $15,000 per employee every year [AXIOS HQ]
This is a BIG deal.
We will spend around 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime, but most of us feel ill-equipped to communicate in ways that will help us to do their jobs better. (And AI is not the answer by the way. All AI will do is amplify any lack of communication or storytelling skills).
In my experience coaching thousands of executives at IBM and I am often struck by a powerful statistic which the International Coaching Federation likes to throw around:
“The average person is only working to within 40% of their potential.”
StoriesThat.Work is my attempt to explore a simple but powerful question:
Why do some stories work… while others don’t?
It’s a place to study the moments that matter; the speeches, decisions, and turning points where words shape outcomes. To understand not just what was said, but what it did to an audience.
Did it change minds?
Build belief?
Increase confidence?
Create a sense of purpose?
Create urgency?
Drive action?
I am quite proud that the story programs I have created and run at IBM over the last 7 years. I've gone out of my way to make sure that they are not just measured by NPS satisfaction-based scores which can be easily manipulated, but by real economic metrics:
eg.
Candidates increased their confidence in telling transformational stories by 67%.
AI Storytelling assistants increased productivity by 13.5% saving the average employee 5 hours per week when building client-facing communications.
Client pitches which used my frameworks increased win rates on deals by 20%.
Using a personality-based approach to mission critical conversations built relationships with a new CXO (on average) in 30 days instead of 60.
You get the idea. Metrics which mater.
That's the real ROI of storytelling in my opinion.
Of course there's an art to storytelling and we must NEVER forget that, but in business art isn't enough on its own.
Few communications coaches or courses talk about this. Perhaps because they don't have the experience? Or they don't believe it? Or they just don't know how to?
So I wanted to create a place where I could showcase a more scientific approach to business storytelling. Somewhere I could take people behind-the-scenes of highly impactful communications, to show them what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Over the last few years I have come across many "storytelling gurus" and coaches who talk a lot about engagement, attention spans, and “winning hearts and minds”, but few seem to focus on what really matters. Even some of the most expensive communications programs from top universities and MBA schools (and I’ve taught at a few of them), fail to translate great communications into actions which each of us can apply into our own jobs on a daily basis.
..
In a training for the Climate Reality Project the former Vice President of America Al Gore once told me, “the only measure of a great speech is what the audience did next.”
Because in the end, that’s the only measure that matters.
Not what you made your audience FEEL.
But what did they DO?
Great stories don’t just communicate.
They move people.
And in a world where businesses are navigating constant change: AI, transformation, geo-political uncertainty, environmental crises - the ability to tell stories that work isn’t a nice-to-have...
It’s mission critical.
So let’s try to tell better stories.
Stories that work.
..
I hope you enjoy the site. Thanks for being here.
Jeremy :)
ps. While I am a passionate evangelist for using AI to help you do your job better (and be more productive), be assured that none of the stories on this site will be written by AI. My personal aspiration is to write my own Studs-inspired stories which might feel at home gracing the pages of The New Yorker, The Economist, or Harvard Business Review. You be the judge if I succeed!
