Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, I was on a train idling（无所事事） the time away. And I got to wondering, I wonder how many presentations I've written, I've created. And how many I've actually witnessed（目击）, stroke（打）, endured（忍耐）. And on the back of an envelope（信封）, I'm allowing it for inflation（胀大）. Yeah, it's quite a big number.

  And then I got to thinking, I wonder how many of them I remember, how many of them have had an impact on me. And that number was vanishingly small, it's probably like six to ten. And I got to thinking, I didn't think that ratio（比率） is that atypical（非典型的）. And how have we ended up in that situation where we've created so much content, which is dry and anemic and forgettable? Why? Because I think we've lost, we've forgotten the art of storytelling（说书）.

  Now, just something about me, I am a lapsed（失误） classicist, which means I spend a lot of time with Homer, Virgil and Nero. And apart from that, it gives（做） me a rather unhealthy obsession（迷住） with etymology, where words come from. The word authority, we've forgotten what's behind that word. We are designed to give credibility（可信性）, to give meaning, to look up to authors or storytellers. Because they tell us about the world, they tell us about who we are. Now, one such storyteller, somebody who's not given, I don't think, enough recognition（认出）, is a man called Abram Games.

  He was a poster designer in the Second World War, worked（使工作） with Churchill. And amongst（在…之中（among）） other things, he has, well, I consider to be an extraordinarily（非常地） powerful motto. Good communication, he said, was maximum（最大的） meaning, minimum（最小量） means. And in my many decades of working in the communications world, I've yet to see a pithier, more eloquent（雄辩的） summary of the art of persuasion（信服）, of influence, of communication, than those words. So I want to look at a number of different arenas（竞技场）, the public sector（部门）, politics, education, the corporate（社团的） world. Because I want to see how we can improve our communication by applying storytelling.

  So my first example is going to take us back to, if we can go back that far, to the era（时代） of Brexit. Yes, I'm sorry, I want to make purely（纯粹地） communications points here, by the way, not politics, just to be clear. Why do I think that was such a successful piece of communication? Three reasons. Firstly, control. Who doesn't want to sense（感觉到） that they are in control, so they can influence the world around them.

  Secondly, it's not just about taking control, it's taking back, implying（暗示） something has been taken away, we've lost something. There's a sense of grievance（委屈）, very emotional（感情的）, psychological（心理的） truth behind it. And thirdly, it uses the form of a verb called the imperative（命令）, take it back. In the communications world, it is sometimes called the call to action. Do it, do it now, a sense of immediacy and urgency（紧急）. And the other side, the remainers, well, I'm afraid they had just a series of incoherent facts and details that didn't really hold together.

  I want to move on now to education, which is also now prey（捕食） to what I call edubabble. I'm going to hear about scalable rubric-based assessment（评估）. Me, neither. Or children talking about whether six or seven are coming home to their parents. What did you do today while we started off with the non-negotiables（可通过谈判解决的）? What?

  Now, someone once said about history, history is just one damn（ 该死的） fact after another. And I think that's the problem with an awful lot of our communication, just the mindless and endless（无止境的） repetition（重复） of facts and figures and details and information. By the way, just talking about jargon（行话）, please, I know it's hard, but let's try and eliminate（排除） as much jargon（行话） as we can. Jargon is the enemy of storytelling. It is the thief of meaning. Just one example, please, in my company, if you ever meet me or come to see the book signing afterwards（ 后来）, please do not use the expression "lean and agile（敏捷的）."

  The only people who should use the term "lean and agile" are people who describe gymnasts. And my last example is, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Yes, a few parents there. I want you to keep that image in your head, but also Guantanamo Bay（湾）. Yeah, interesting juxtaposition（毗邻）.