How to tell stories like Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs smiling while launching the first iPhone

People like me always face a problem while communicating their thoughts. There is a constant fear of being boring, over-delivery, or under-delivery of content.

One of the key methods to communicate your ideas in an interesting manner is to tell stories about them. But stories can also be boring or stagnant. One of the greatest storytellers of all time is Steve Jobs who has been considered one of the greatest communicators of all time. Here, We are breaking down methods to convey great stories and we going to talk about examples from the iPhone launch keynote.

Steve Jobs iPhone Keynote

Every great story has three stages

1. The Setup
2. The Conflict
3. The Resolution

Let’s discuss them one by one

The Setup

Every story has a setup that creates the ground for the storyteller for what is going to come and about the ground reality of the story plot

e.g. In iPhone Keynote, Steve Jobs said they have built revolutionary products since the beginning being Macintosh or iPod and this time he’s going to launch 3 products at once

1. An iPod with a touch screen
2. An Internet Communicator
3. A Revolutionary Phone

The Conflict

Every great story has a villain who builds the excitement in the audience and it can be a real person, a system, or a virtual enemy as well.

e.g. In iPhone Keynote, after announcing the above three revolutionary products are clubbed into one new device called “iPhone” he describes the problems with current multimedia and feature phones as

1. They are not as smart as supposed to be
2. They have a sticky keyboard which is dumb and hard to extend

This created a persona of being problematic among multimedia and feature phone of that time then Steve took the final step

The Resolution

If we a villain, he’s destined to be defeated by the hero and that makes the happy ending. According to a study people find stories having a happy ending more interesting and relatable. So every great story should have a definite resolution in the end.

e.g. After picking the problems with current multimedia and feature phones, he introduced the features of the new iPhone and described how iPhone is going to tackle these problems here are the resolutions

1. iPhone would have OS X which would help to build Desktop grade smart applications
2. Multi-Touch Display technology (Patented) which would provide dynamic touch-sensitive keyboards with multi-finger gestures

Using the above framework we can create and tell compelling stories which can help you to deliver your ideas more clearly and in a more crisp fashion.

Follow me on Linkedin for more stories like this Devansh Gupta