As you may have noticed from an earlier post, I like words. With the right words, people and organizations can tell extremely powerful stories. At the same time, I'm also a believer that less is more when trying to communicate a message with impact. Which is why I like "One Sentence". It's a great example of individuals telling powerful stories in very few words.

In our business, storytelling is an important element of what we do. By themselves, messages, vision statements, and taglines lack the human element that make people want to listen, and to learn more, and to believe. Stories give context and meaning to what might otherwise be meaningless soundbites.

Not only are many of the stories in "One Sentence" very funny or very clever, a lot of them have incredible impact. In my view, that's because they reveal something about the people behind them. They are an instance in time that we connect with. As we craft the our pitches, or create the talking points our clients use when speaking to customers, employees or other decision-makers, we need to focus as much on the story as the message itself.

We may not always capture our client's story in one sentence. But we must always strive to think about the story behind the messages. We are the storytellers.