Wolfgang Hammer - The Power of Story

“Story works in 3 layers. One, there's the external mechanics of how the character interacts in the world, and you can substitute character for product. That's a requirement. And then there are 2 more layers, which is a subjective layer of why is this series of events important to me and what does it mean to me personally? And then there is a philosophical layer. On a philosophical level, how you believe the world works today and what people believe makes a good world.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship · Philosophy & Reasoning

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External, emotional, philosophical: three-layer story

“The questions are something like: How should the world be in a general sense? How do we believe? How do I believe the world? The good life? The second layer is why am I doing this? What is it about my specific story that maps back onto that? And the third is what are we doing about it? If you tell the company's story in that way, what does it galvanize that makes it worth pursuing in the first place?”— Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Business & Entrepreneurship · Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Three questions: world belief, personal why, action

“Narrative is fear made conscious and conquered through action. The mind can imagine really anything. In many ways, what is possible, even emanating from our own subconscious, is so much bigger than what the left hemisphere brain, the rational analytical brain, can handle. So I think there is a fear of the bigness of the world. That fear of the bigness of the world is also reflected in the inner world. So much of story is actually an inner transformation.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning · Leadership & Management

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Fear of inner potential conquered through action

“The most tolerable element of new before it's rejected by the human mind is 20% new, 80% familiar. With the idea of originality and creativity, there's a tension. The new is really just the obvious uncovered through systematic trial and error over a certain period of time. By striving to stay within the obvious and trying to find a variation on the obvious, I think you have a higher chance of discovering something novel that will still feel intelligible enough to categorize in the world.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior · Business & Entrepreneurship

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20% new, 80% familiar: cognitive acceptance threshold

“Robert Towne said this to me at lunch years ago when I was a young executive. He said, stories are either desires fulfilled or anxieties purged. I think he's right. Desire to fulfill one's potential in the world. And anxiety or fear purged is an idea of an inherent fear of something that might happen to you that you really don't wish to happen.”— Robert Towne via Wolfgang Hammer

Psychology & Behavior · Creativity & Innovation

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Stories: desires fulfilled or anxieties purged

“Someone called me, hadn't heard from them in a while, and they said, we realized we've been selling to the wrong level. We have to sell to C-level as opposed to frontline manager level. And the sales pitch didn't work to the C-level. It was because they had not changed the framework, this objective personal philosophy. The C-level has a very different worldview of what's happening in company than the line manager. And we worked on it and it was like magic.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Match narrative to audience worldview for conversion

“All society is communication. Because of its complexity, communication breaks down into buckets of specialty, but it's in essence being a master communicator of an almost infinite amount of buckets and knowing to context switch between them and understanding the language games that each one of these buckets plays, but never forgetting the core principles underneath all this.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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CEO role: adapt emotional layer, preserve philosophy

“There's a thing in character development where the character at the beginning of a story will have a concept of the world that they believe is fixed, and it's very often a flawed concept. This is always attributable to a lack of self-knowledge. With the case of a great founder who feels that they're building something that's working, and then they feel that perhaps the way they're thinking about the context wherein this product lives is limited.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Flawed worldview stems from missing self-knowledge

“My view today is an iconic character has to do with an ability to be a Greek hero, which means to live and espouse a worldview that is universally disliked. I'm really interested in what Elon Musk is doing because it's so unconcerned with the traditional hero trajectory. It's almost Greek. This idea of breaking societal rules to get to some Platonic ideal that is worth more than acceptance.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior

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Iconic: espouse universally disliked worldview, persist

“Stories are very good vehicles for delivering experience of ultimate concern. In the group of people listening to this, probably by revealed preference in the US, the most common ultimate concern is money. It's an unbelievably powerful symbol because it stores potentiality. So the mind can imagine anything.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Psychology & Behavior · Economics & Markets · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Money stores infinite potential: ultimate fantasy

“Every scene is about status. Every scene is about a power differential. Every interaction is about status. There's a British actor who knew absolutely everyone in English society and for some reason was unsuccessful at getting what they wanted. When he overplayed his status, he would be hated. When he underplayed his status, he wouldn't get what he wanted. When he matched status, he would get whatever he asked for.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Match status level to get what you want

“I was at Stanford when the turnaround for Apple in its second inning. This was a man who had a philosophy, a personal worldview, and knew exactly what he was fighting against at all times, and then acted accordingly with unbelievable discipline and courage and created something that was a work of art in many ways. He literally wanted to make business art, and he kind of did.”— Wolfgang Hammer

Business & Entrepreneurship · Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Jobs: philosophy plus knowing the enemy