"I could tell this story in 1950 or 2024 + it would work" - Scott Monty, Exec. Coach - How Stories Happen #6
While everyone scrambles to learn the new trends and act like a futurist, it’s the folks who understand what parts of this work are timeless – because they’re based on human nature – that are most powerful of all.
Storytelling is one such thing. It’s been a constant throughout the history of humanity. Why? Because although the world changes in many ways, human nature is one thing that doesn’t change much at all.
So says our guest today, Scott Monty, and it’s part of what makes Scott such an inspiring storyteller – and a leadership advisor, consultant, and coach who has worked for and with brands like Ford, Google, IBM, Adobe, and Walmart. In fact, thanks to his work helping pioneer all things social media at Ford Motor Company, The Economist named Scott #1 on its list of social business leaders.
In this episode, we hear Scott dissect a signature story piece by piece, taking us into the executive team meeting from his time at Ford and how storytelling helped him thwart – then win over – his archnemesis, the curmudgeonly CFO at the time.
After hearing the story, we identify the three tentpoles that help it stand up, plus identify details that could improve – and we hear why the moments that don’t seem to advance the action are actually the most important pieces for this story to resonate deeper.
Scott’s brand is about the idea of timeless leadership – and he effortlessly quotes philosophers and leaders from centuries past to help make his points, both on the show and everywhere he shows up.
Find the Show in Your Favorite App:
Episode Resources:
⚫ Follow Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmonty/
⚫ Subscribe to Scott’s newsletter, Timeless & Timely: https://www.timelesstimely.com/
🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayacunzo/
🔵 Subscribe to Jay’s newsletter: https://jayacunzo.com/newsletter
🔵 Learn about Jay’s coaching and consulting: https://jayacunzo.com/
🟢 Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink: https://www.blakeink.com/
🟢 Find and support our sponsors: https://jayacunzo.com/sponsors
Full Transcript
(This was created with AI and may contain some errors)
Jay Acunzo [00:00:03]:
This is how stories happen, a show where creators and entrepreneurs dissect their signature stories and important drafts piece by piece. You hear how they found it and developed it, how it might improve, and how they're using it to build their businesses and lead their legacies. It's a show for people that care about ideas like quality and craft in an era of the Internet that is defined by pretty much anything. But it has never been easier to create mediocre content at scale. But this show is about increasing the power, not the volume, but the power of our work. I'm your host, Jay Acunzo.
Scott Monty [00:00:42]:
Every time I turn somewhere, it reminds me of a story. This was the most nerve wracking meeting I ever prepared for. There was movement to my left as Lewis pushes back from the table and he takes his glasses off and he puts them up on his forehead and he goes, maybe it didn't happen exactly a certain way, but yet you add something in that fits the narrative and it just makes it that much better. The combination of being like the ultimate accountant and British all in one. This is a guy who does not crack a smile. What happened to that guy? What did he say? And hitch goes, oh, nothing. That's my elevator story. Come with me on this journey as if you are my colleague and we experience this together.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:28]:
Show don't tell. It's a timeless rule for communicators, and a timeless rule like that is also an appropriate theme for today's episode for two reasons. Reason one, when it comes to showing people why they'd care instead of telling them to care, we are normally, as my ancestors might say it, not so good. See, I could have just told you I'm italian and weird and self deprecating and let's just say weird again. But I tried to show you in the way I performed that line. And reason two, show don't tell is timeless because human nature is timeless. The world changes in many ways, but the things that appeal to people, the.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:12]:
Things people need to hear or see.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:14]:
Or experience to start caring, is timeless. So says my guest today, Scott Monty. Scott's entire platform is about timeless leadership, and he believes everything we need to know as we operate in the present and prepare for the future, we can learn from the past. Scott is an executive coach and a professional speaker. Thanks to his work in the early days of social media at Ford Motor Company, the Economist ranked Scott number one on their list of 25 social business leaders. His podcast, Timeless Leadership, is one of my favorites. And brands like Google, Walmart, Adobe, and IBM, just to name a few have turned to him for his wisdom. Today we hear one of Scott's signature stories, dissected piece by piece.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:57]:
It's an autobiographical story, the kind that I think we all need to master telling. And we do that so we can stop telling others we're different or that we matter to them and start showing them.
Scott Monty [00:03:13]:
I'm Scott Monty, and I'm an executive coach and professional speaker.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:18]:
Where does storytelling fit in your typical week?
Scott Monty [00:03:24]:
To carve storytelling out as something separate from what I do is a little disingenuous because it's kind of embedded in everything. And to me, every time I turn somewhere, it reminds me of a story, or I'm inspired to create a story from what I see. So for me, look, I'm just living a fantasy life in somebody else's story, I guess. And I happen to be sharing that gift with people whenever I get the chance.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:53]:
So you and I both work from home. I find that when I travel for work is my notebook just overflows with things to say or story threads to pull. I wonder, have you found a way to break from the routine of rolling out of bed, getting the kids where they need to go, and then you're.
Scott Monty [00:04:12]:
Back home, you have just sat on, I think, what is one of the most difficult struggles of the storyteller and the person who's looking to be inspired, because I'm sure you see plenty of people online who are sharing pictures of places they've gone and people they've met with and meetings they've had and colleagues they've sat with. And you and I are just scrunched down in front of our screens, and we've got kids coming in and out, and, oh, we'll do the drop off in the morning and the pickup in the afternoon, and, you know, lather, rinse, and repeat. So, for me, there's a couple of things where I get my own inspiration, but I also counsel other people on getting inspiration as well. One is simply by reading. I try to read as much as I can, and I'm not talking about newsletters and websites and everything, which is fine. I mean, that's a great way to get information. But as you can see from my background here, I believe in books, and books have been instrumental for me. And there was a great poem that a fellow Sherlock Holmes fan wrote where he talked about books being a passport to a far better age.
Scott Monty [00:05:32]:
And I thought, that's exactly what it is when you can't travel. And certainly we went through this during COVID when you can't travel books are your passport. You can get transported to another time and another place and be inspired by what happened back then. All right, so that's one thing. The other thing I tell people to do is to go take a walk, and it doesn't even have to be a long walk, 1015 minutes. Go walk around the block. But leave your phone at home, because the temptation for us, because we're so tethered to our devices, whether they're big screen or small screen, is to pull that thing out as we're walking or to pop a podcast in our ears. Sorry, Jay.
Scott Monty [00:06:14]:
So leave the phone at home and just be observant. And walking does a couple of things. It allows you to take in things that you normally wouldn't have been inspired by. And the other thing, too, is it allows you to reflect. It allows you to be alone with your thoughts for a moment. And I think we are spending so much time online, scrolling through, flipping through our thumbs, are actually suffering from probably early onset arthritis from all of the flicking that we do.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:48]:
Totally.
Scott Monty [00:06:49]:
And there's a wonderful latin phrase called solvator ambulando, and it means it is solved by walking. Any troubles you have, any issues you're having, any, even writer's block that you're experiencing, go for a walk. You know, just take nature in and observe and soak it in and see what comes to you. Sometimes it'll happen, sometimes it won't. But at least it'll give you that clean break from being held down by the digital effluvia that's running by you all the time.
Jay Acunzo [00:07:21]:
Yes. So not only am I a huge proponent of what I would call slow media in the social media age, you mentioned books, but also I'm a huge fan of just heading out the door and also going in a way that maybe doesn't feel routine. I think this is a little addition to throw on the walk or anything that you do to get out away from the screen is, you know, here's a question. Why do people assume they have to go travel to far off lands to be inspired? Well, you're seeing some incredible things, certainly, and you can, you know, sort of feel within you the history and the gravitas of where you are, all that stuff. But actually, it's because it forces you, when you're in unfamiliar territory, to be mindful of the world around you. And that's ultimately what we're talking about, I think, Scott, is, you know, take a left instead of a right if you can spare 30 extra seconds, or if for some reason, you know, I think about this all the time when I walk my dog. I tend to turn right every time I walk the dog. I don't know why I tend to stay on my side of the street, even though there's sidewalks on both sides.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:21]:
It's just easier. All right, so this morning I'm going to cross the street, and I'm going to go left. And it is wild, especially if you're not looking at your phone in those moments, how suddenly you just see the world around you. So I like to joke that we need more sensitive professionals, sensitive storytellers. I don't mean we see a dying flower and start to weep. I mean that we use our senses, take in what's around us. So breaking the routine in really tiny ways can actually show up in big ways in the work. I'm a big believer in that.
Scott Monty [00:08:50]:
I am right there with you now. I have a great quote. This is from Louis Lapham from 1920. He's the executive editor of Lapham's Quarterly, which is kind of like a quarterly cliffs notes for history and literature buffs. For me, it gives me snippets of great writing or great works, and if I want to go back and read the whole thing, at some point I can. If not, I've got this wonderful resource at my fingertips every quarter. And in this case, he said, read to live as Flaubert somewhere in his letters, wrote, and I take him at his word. I books I regard as voyages of discovery.
Scott Monty [00:09:29]:
And with an author I admire, I gladly book passage to any and all points of view or destination, to Rome during the lives of the caesars, to Shakespeare's London, to Berlin and Harlem in the 1920s. I don't go in search of the lost gold mine of imperishable truth. I look instead to find the present in the past, the past and the present, to discover within myself the presence of a once and future king.
Jay Acunzo [00:09:59]:
I don't want to touch the quote. I want to let that cause chills. I just want to let that linger. I did have a question that's almost on the meta level. The fact that you shared that quote, timeless and timely, being the name of your brand. It's like a summary of your perspective. What is it about you turning to history and great thinkers, not just of decades past, but often of centuries past? That is your immediate reaction to trying to understand the present. Most people aren't operating that way, especially in the business world.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:32]:
Why do you think you appreciate that stuff or have that habit?
Scott Monty [00:10:39]:
In some ways, it's almost a countercultural argument. It's difficult to get people to recognize this as important and recognize that they need to focus on it. And the inspiration for me, I realized, came from after working in social media for a number of years, you know, I was with Ford. I led social media. I had been a pundit and prognosticator about social media. I'm certainly a practitioner before I joined the corporate world. But what I realized is that what we were doing is we were educating people about social media. And I love teaching people about the things I learn, because I figure even if it's not new to everyone else, the wonder and the fascination that I can share with people, if I can get somebody else excited about it and maybe help them with a new perspective, then that's a win.
Scott Monty [00:11:32]:
So what I found us doing was educating people about the stuff in social media that were the same pitfalls and foibles that we had had in every previous iteration of media. The mistakes we made on radio were brought to television, and then they were brought to the Internet, and then they were brought specifically to social media. And what I realized after doing this multiple times and getting a flat mark on my head from banging it against the wall was that, you know what? This is a human problem. It's not a technology problem. It's not a social media problem. It's inherent in us. And, you know, the old, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, which isn't necessarily the truth. But what it brought to light for me was the fact that human nature never, never changes.
Scott Monty [00:12:28]:
And I started thinking back to my education, which was at Boston University. I majored in classics. And what do you do with a classics degree? Well, you can go out and get an advanced classics degree and become a professor and get the tweed sports coats with the suede patches and all the rest, which is lovely. Or you can go on and do something completely unrelated with your life, which is what I did. And so it wasn't until decades later I realized, oh, my God, that stuff that I learned in greek drama and roman history and all of the other courses I took were speaking to me from the past, saying, weve done this before. Weve been here. Weve seen people act like this. So my inspiration was, well, what can we learn to try and avoid some of these things and take the core concept of it and apply it to what were going through today? Because its not a match for match kind of thing, but similar situations, similar human situations, will have given us, hopefully, the insight and the ability to predict what's going to come next, right? So in a weird way, it's using history to predict the future.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:45]:
Speaking of using history to talk about things in the future, they call that a transition or a segue in the business. Scott, I don't know if your voice, people are listening to it going, this guy doesn't sound like he's ever been on a microphone ever in his entire life. So I'm just letting you in on.
Jay Acunzo [00:14:00]:
Some of the lingo, some of the.
Jay Acunzo [00:14:02]:
Techniques in the biz here. Scott, you stick with me and you'll learn how to think you're better than you actually are. Anyways, so you were talking about using the past to speak to the future. You spent a lot of your days when you're not writing your great newsletter, hosting your great podcast, consulting executives, coaching them, advising them, and your work is sort of littered with big brands, brands that people hear about, and they go, oh, okay, the people who are at the top of those organizations are also at the top of their fields, right? You've worked for Ford. You've worked with Walmart and Google and Adobe and IBM. And the story when we were talking about what you could bring to the show that you're about to tell us involves your time at Ford. You sold me in the email, and I want to sell our listeners. But before I do that, given all the names and companies I just mentioned, is there a difference in your experience in communicating with leaders of these large organizations compared to communicating with either other types of professionals or other people? I think there's this, like, Castle Aura around, you know, they're at the peak and you must have a special type of story you tell or a special way of communicating with these people.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:25]:
And I'm open to you saying that's true. I suspect it's not true, but just talk to me about, given that you work with executives of large organizations like this, have you had to modify the way you communicate compared to where else you show up?
Scott Monty [00:15:39]:
The short answer is no, but with an asterisk. And I'll tell you what the asterisk is, and the reason it's no is because, look, we're all human beings. And I just mentioned this whole thing about human nature being timeless. Well, it's also universal. Whether you're at a large company or small, you still have the same kinds of concerns. You worry about profitability, you worry about employee morale, corporate culture. You worry about are your shareholders happy, all of your stakeholders, really. And it's just you have a larger audience when you're at a larger company.
Scott Monty [00:16:12]:
But the same basic issues apply. I think the difference is one of the things that the executive at a larger firm thinks about is scalability. Are the things you're telling me about repeatable? Can they affect a wide group of people? Or is this something that's just going to stay within certain factions of my team, or a particular vertical, or what have you? And the key to all of this is if you want, particularly if you want culture to scale and a lot of leadership, and that's what I coach on, is leadership and its connection to communication. Leadership is scalable, but it needs to be a shared vision, and it needs to be communicated regularly and consistently and throughout the entire organization. And there's even a process that we used to undergo at Ford called the BPR, the business plan review. This was brought to Ford from the outside, from Alan Mullally, who was, he spent a 37 year career at Boeing and then joined Ford as their first non automotive CEO. There was a lot of skeptics in that early audience, but Alan said, look, I have this process, and you need to trust the process. And the process is repeatable by every single one of my direct reports down to their teams.
Scott Monty [00:17:37]:
And if we do this and do it methodically, every week, day in and day out, and we all know what the plan is, then it's going to work. Trust me. And it did. It was marvelous. And those meetings used to take place on the 12th floor, the top floor of Ford's world headquarters. Huge building in Dearborn that's known as the Glass house. It's probably about an 8th of a mile long. You can seriously get all your steps in just going to meetings all day long from one end of the building to the other.
Scott Monty [00:18:10]:
But up on the 12th floor was a thunderbird room. And in the Thunderbird room, there was this huge circular table. It was cut out in the middle, so there were cameras on the inside that would get an angle of view, really unflattering, you know, like under the chin angle. And you'd be beamed in to all of your colleagues in the various headquarters around the world, the Ford headquarters around the world. And it kind of looked like. You ever see Doctor Strangelove?
Jay Acunzo [00:18:38]:
No.
Scott Monty [00:18:39]:
Peter Sellers is hysterical in that. So they got the war room where there's thermonuclear war that's being threatened, and there's a general and a Russian, an american general and a Russian who are coming to blows over at the buffet table outside of the big circular table. And Peter Sellers, as the us president, said, gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room. Anyway.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:06]:
You stuck the landing. We're working out bits. I like this. We're working out bits.
Scott Monty [00:19:10]:
The Thunderbird room reminded me of that King Arthur and the roundtable. Right? And that's where the BPR meeting would take place every single Thursday from 07:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. without interruption.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:24]:
So that is the perfect setup, as I know you were heading towards for the story that you were about to tell. I promised the listeners the tease you sent me because I was like, sold. You said you've told this story for about ten years, which is great because it's sort of a signature story of yours, but it's improved over time. Also eager to hear that. It's when I managed to not only thwart my arch nemesis in an arena known as the Thunderbird room, but win him over at the same time. It was when I had to prove the Roi of social media to the CFO of Ford Motor Company. Scott, how in the world did you do that? The story, when you're ready.
Scott Monty [00:20:03]:
I am an inveterate presenter. I love getting up and telling stories in front of people. I love being on the stage. This was probably the most nerve wracking meeting I ever prepared for Jay. And when I say that, it's because I knew I would be shoulder to shoulder with all of the C suite at Fordhouse at one time. I had had one on ones with a number of them before and felt appreciated and understood by them. But this was our opportunity to give the state of social media to the C suite. So they understood how the industry was going, they understood what Ford was doing, and they understood what we needed from them, because ultimately, behind all of this was a pretty significant financial request.
Scott Monty [00:20:57]:
We knew that it was going to be a battle because the CFO had turned us down so many times before. His name was Lewis Booth. He came from Ford of Britain, right? So he was no nonsense, no humor, just the facts, man. The combination of being, like, the ultimate accountant and british all in one, that's probably the most off putting right there. This is a guy who does not crack a smile, right? So I knew that this presentation had to not only inform, but it needed to persuade, and it needed to persuade one person in the room. So I arrive at the Thunderbird room, and normally when you're a guest at the Bpremen, there is a row of seats along two adjacent walls where all of the observers sit. Those that are lucky enough to be the observers are given the opportunity to just watch the whole three hour process go down and explain to everyone at the end of it what they got out of that particular meeting. So in this instance, I was brought up from the outside ring and seated in the inner ring of the circle, and I was seated in the very seat that Alan Mullally, the CEO, normally sat.
Scott Monty [00:22:22]:
And to my right was Mark Fields, who would eventually replace Alan as CEO. He was the coo at the time. And to my left was Lewis Booth, chief skeptic of the social media function at Ford Motor Company. Now, we prepared a presentation that, you know, all in all, would be about 20 minutes long. And I said, look, before we start this, I want to do something kind of go off the path, call an audible, as it were. And I'd like to open our Ford corporate Twitter account and ask a question to our audience. And at the end of the presentation, we can go back and see what all the responses were. This was a bit of a risk, Jay, because you never know how the public is going to react.
Scott Monty [00:23:11]:
I mean, we kind of knew, but I. We wanted something that would help inform some assumptions that the executive team was making. And this is 2010 or so. We were coming off of the recession. Fuel efficiency and gas prices were on everyone's mind. Ford's product strategy depended on it. So we went onto the Ford Twitter account and we simply typed in, what's the minimum mpg you need to see in the next car that you'll buy? Mpg, meaning miles per gallon send? And I went and I gave the presentation just overarching, you know, number of users, countries it's used, where we've seen success, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, there were polite nods throughout.
Scott Monty [00:24:01]:
Even Lewis was, you know, kind of looking engaged. Well, as engaged as somebody like that can look. But he still didn't look one over. So we opened the Twitter account at the end of the presentation, and that question, what's the minimum mpg you need to see from your next vehicle? It was everything from don't matter what it is, as long as it got a v eight engine in it, all the way up to the unicorn of mpgs, the 300 miles per gallon, which is the electric vehicle equivalent. But most of the responses were in the thirties and forties, and that is exactly where Ford had targeted its fuel efficiency for its next three years of vehicles. What it did is it reinforced the strategic assumptions that the company was making. Well, there was movement to my left as Lewis pushes back from the table, and he takes his glasses off and he puts them up on his forehead. And he goes, do you know, if I had insights like this every day, I would find it invaluable.
Scott Monty [00:25:16]:
Well, my friend, that is what they say is game, set, and match in the corporate tennis world. Also in the Thunderbird room that day, I knew that that is the kind of information and format that would help someone like Lewis be better at what he did. And it isn't about, you know, hey, here's a ham sandwich I ate for lunch today that I just posted on Instagram, or I just checked into this place on whatever it was. I was going to say squarespace. I don't even remember the old check ins. We used to do.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:51]:
Foursquare, Rit. Foursquare.
Scott Monty [00:25:53]:
There's a scoring. That kind of stuff is immaterial to him. But if it's testing strategic assumptions and it's getting direct feedback from a particular audience, that's useful. And it really came back to me, this marketing quote that I've lived by for decades. Now, if you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words. Right? Think my thoughts, feel my feelings, speak my words. Well, Jay, you know how this is coming. That's not something that Seth Godin said.
Scott Monty [00:26:28]:
It's not even something that Anne Handley said. It's something from 45 BC said by Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was a master orator and knew how to move people to make decisions that he wanted them to make. And again, it's a universal human truth. If you know your audience, if you know what they're looking for, then you'll be able to persuade them using their own types of words and information. And that's exactly what happened with Louis. And you could have knocked me off my chair at that point. To think that I not only won him over a little bit, but made him do a complete 180 about how he thought about social media. And needless to say, we got the budget that we were asking for.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:17]:
I love that story. There is so much to like about that story. But part of my appreciation of it was when I caught that you were sort of riffing. See, these are the little details I wanted to be able to nerd out about publicly, Scott, that I know you and I would over a strong drink after a speech, but it doesn't seem like there's a public forum for it. So enter this show. There was moments where you were saying, as they say, in the corporate tennis matches and in the thunderbird room that day, you sort of, like, riffed a line and then definitely brought it back. What I love about a signature story like this one is, you know, the throughput, you know, okay, there's Lewis. There's the stakes of, I gotta prove the value of my work or the technology that I believe in.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:59]:
They don't, or what have you. There's stakes around the table, just the eyes, the prying eyes of colleagues, let alone the executives. There's the sort of inciting incident of. And we pulled up our Twitter account, and I wouldn't say inciting incident, I'd say open loop, actually, of like, we sent the tweet, and, you know, that's going to come back and factor into your story later. You kind of have those touchstones. They're all there. And then you just sort of play with it and modify it to the moment. You know, what listeners aren't hearing because of the deft edit that we're going to pull together is halfway through, you had to take a drink because you were coughing.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:32]:
And then partway through after that, the phone rang. Right. And it didn't throw you at all. You just continued with it. So just a tip of my non existent hat here for the way you were able to sort of, like, customize it to the room. Cause that speaks to how internalized the story was.
Scott Monty [00:28:46]:
And that's the thing, Jay. I told it largely as it occurred. I mean, one of the things with storytelling is the embellishments that you put in there, and, well, it needs to be true to life to make it relatable. It's not like I'm on, you know, this took place on the moon or something like that, but you want to add elements to it that make the story come to life, that maybe it didn't happen exactly a certain way, but yet you add something in that fits the narrative, that fits the overall throughput, as you said, and it just makes it that much better.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:26]:
Yeah, there's a story I can think of, and I have some rules to make sure I'm doing this honorably and respectfully, both for the people involved in the story, but also the people receiving the story. So, for example, I'm never going to change what somebody looked like. I'm never going to change, you know, I'm never going to put words in their mouths. If I assume they're feeling a certain way and I don't have access to them saying, yes, I felt that way, or it's not obvious they were feeling that way. I'll say it seemed, or, you know, I assumed.
Scott Monty [00:29:52]:
Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:52]:
So I'll put up some of these things. But, you know, there's a signature story I have about when I quit Google that I like to tell, and I've told it in many different places to arrive at many different insights. But there is one moment that culminates the story where I'm showing something on my laptop to my roommates at the time, and I had three of them. Well, I think, if memory serves, and it's a little blurry, but, you know, years and years ago, I think they were all in separate rooms of the apartment when I showed them this thing. Well, for the pacing of the story and the drama, the story, I put them in the same room. Right. And if you want to accuse me of whatever, lying to the audience or something, I'd cite the David Sedaris line. When asked if his autobiographical stories are true, he says, true enough for you.
Scott Monty [00:30:35]:
I like that. Well, the one detail that I have always included is Lewis taking his glasses off and putting them up on his forehead, because we've seen elder executives do that, you know, the half glasses that you could let him dangle down by the chain and, you know, just agog with your jaw dropping. Right. But Lewis actually did take his glasses off that day. That's one of the things that really stuck out to me, that I had affected this guy so much that he had to push back from the table and take his glasses off.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:11]:
This is why I love storytelling, because it's a way to describe what happened. But the what is actually a trojan horse for the how it made you feel. And I'd love to hear from you. Cause there was a lot of stress you felt as a protagonist in that story. There's a lot of emotions that others around the table could be feeling both before and after a realization like they had in the room that day, there was a lot of emotion to it. What I find is, when I tell stories, I'm starting by planting down, like, the whats of it all, and then once those are down, I'm like, does this convey accurately how it made me feel? Because if not, I might rearrange some things. This is the classic start at the end or end media res drop them in the middle of it. There's different things you can play with.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:57]:
Or if it's like, okay, well, that beginning part of it, I'm telling you, I had the meeting, and this is something I wrote down for your story. I kind of wanted to know. I often find you in a tie or a bowtie. I kind of wanted to know, knowing you had the meeting coming up that morning when you were getting ready prior to going to work, were you stumbling over that tie or before you actually entered the room, were you sitting outside of it? Kind of like overthinking everything? Or when you walked in, was it sort of like, I don't know what to do with my hands, you know, stereotypical nervousness, like, I don't know, like physically uncomfortable. I didn't know where to sit or what to do. Like, I kind of wanted more of the emotion of Scott heading into the room. But anyways, my real question here is, do you have a sense for how you construct stories like this where I kind of went through what are the actions? And then I step back and consume it and go, oh, okay, I need to embellish or omit or rearrange for now. The emotion to come through.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:54]:
Do you have some similar process?
Scott Monty [00:32:56]:
That's an interesting angle that you drew out there that the experience I went through.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:02]:
Well, because you're the proxy for the audience. You're talking to an executive, you're talking to a practitioner. The ROI of my work, there are.
Scott Monty [00:33:10]:
Details that I could call on. Like this is completely geeky. I have so many ties, right? And oftentimes when there is a significant event, it could be a family event, could be a corporate celebration, could be on this day in history, I wear a tie that relates to that somehow. So I very well may have chosen my vineyard vines tie that has all the antique cars all over it that day. It would make perfect sense. There is also an antechamber. It's kind of a staging room where they make the gladiators that are next to go on sit before they get ushered into the Thunderbird room because you don't sit there for the whole 3 hours as a presenter. You go in for the 1020 minutes that you're presenting and that's it.
Scott Monty [00:34:03]:
So there were three or four of us in that antechamber out there and that's where it was the most nerve wracking, the waiting, the anticipation. Do I have all of my talking points down? Am I going to flub this? What are they going to say? Right? Am I going to make my team proud? All of that creeps into you now. For me, the story I was telling was not necessarily telling it as if somebody had to be me in that situation, but it's as if they were sitting in that outside ring, what they would have witnessed. And that's kind of why I set the stage with the Thunderbird room as the war room from. I'm blanking on the film now.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:51]:
Come on. It's Doctor Strangelove.
Scott Monty [00:34:52]:
Everybody knows that from Doctor Strangelove. Jeez, I can't believe you had to help me with that.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:57]:
Have you ever seen that film? Come on. No, I haven't seen it.
Scott Monty [00:35:00]:
Never? Never. So thinking of the war room and the people that would be in there and the pressure so an outside observer could get a feel for what it was, but to bring it through my own eyes, that's an interesting element to that, that I don't. For that particular story, I don't think I fully explored.
Jay Acunzo [00:35:19]:
Yeah.
Scott Monty [00:35:21]:
Told a story last week about a nightmare of a CEO client I had last year that made me rethink exactly what I was doing for my business, actually. And it kind of transformed how I'm showing up now. That was very first person, because it was. It really took me aback. But for some of these other stories, it's like, okay, come with me on this journey as if you are my colleague and we experience this together.
Jay Acunzo [00:35:49]:
Yeah. I feel like there's. It's not something you want to do all the time, but there are pockets of storytelling, especially. You know, our style of storytelling is, of course, to arrive at an insight that's useful. We're trying to teach. We're trying to inspire change in people. These are trojan horses or lead ups to the teaching that come next. Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:10]:
Because you're open to it. I'm aligned with you. Back to that wonderful quote from Cicero. This is what the science of resonance reveals. Like, two frequencies that are aligned are considered resonant, and the second becomes amplified. It's an energy transfer. Same in creative work, same in storytelling. When you feel aligned with somebody, it's going to resonate with you people who are listening to how stories happen.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:32]:
I'm very grateful. I got one person saying, shout out to Ronnie Higgins, who is a member of the creator kitchen, the membership group that I run. He was saying, this is sort of scratching an itch that I haven't. I haven't felt was served elsewhere. Like, I'm going back to my time in school or chopping it up with friends, dreaming of what if and the films we could make someday and all these things. Right. It's like, okay. He feels a certain type of implied alignment with how I'm doing the show, and I hope the introduction of every episode and the language I use around the show also does that.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:03]:
Right. The premise is about alignment. And so you mentioned doing that in the room. The story itself does that with your audience. And I kind of feel like there are pockets of the alignment pieces of a story, whether it's the first moments or throughout, the goal is to slow it way down and almost present little details, or this is the way I would do it, that feel like, is this advancing the action? And it is in so much as that it's deepening the alignment. So let me give you an example. I like to tell a story that reveals the power of just using personal anecdotes about literally any topic to connect with people, even if the topic itself isn't relevant. So I have one about making espresso that I love to tell.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:47]:
It's like a two minute little bit. And I can tell it in a speech, I can tell it writing, I can tell it on a podcast. And the whole thing is, I agonize over making espresso. And then I made it one time, and now I make it every day. And I discovered how much waste there was. I wasted a lot of time and energy agonizing over making espresso or asking my wife to do it for me or following influencers or whatever and people. I literally had someone at an event for architecture, engineering, and construction marketers who came rushing up to me after I gave it in a speech. She's like, as soon as you started talking about espresso, I thought, this isn't going to be relevant because I hate coffee.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:22]:
But she's like, but I found myself thinking about this thing in my work, or that thing in my work wherein I'm agonizing overdose, whether or not I should do it or outsourcing it. Right? And so in the moments where we slow down these little details, it almost gives the audience a beat to go, oh, this isn't about whether or not I've presented to some thunderbird room for a Fortune 500 brand like Scott. This is me having that tough conversation with my peer or my direct report. This is me having that call with a client to make the case for increasing their budget or doing this new initiative. Like, wherever you're trying to make the case for your work's value to other stakeholders, you're allowing your own details to come in by you slowing down and painting the picture of putting on the tie in the morning or what the waiting room before the big meeting would look like.
Scott Monty [00:39:13]:
Yeah, yeah. And I love particularly the waiting room scene, if you will. And I'm so glad you made me think of this, Jay, because I think it would really add an interesting angle to the story. It's one that's universal, where we have self doubt, where we are filled with anxiety, whether it's about espresso or making a big presentation. These moments of vulnerability, I think, are what make a story more human and more relatable. And ultimately, the payoff is at the end. Hopefully, if the story goes the direction you want it to go, that anxiety was all for naught, or it was energy spent in a positive direction that, okay, you wanted to make sure you hit every mark and that you made your point, and congratulations, you did. And, you know, there's one bit I have when I talk to people about storytelling.
Scott Monty [00:40:15]:
That's about building suspense. And that's kind of what this is. That there's a reason the story is being told and the outcome is going to be okay. But how you get there, the twists and the turns you take, that's what makes the story compelling. And the story about suspense comes from the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. I mean, this is a guy who knew how to do storytelling. And there was a story that Peter Bogdanovich, another great director, told because he was a protege of Hitchcock. And he met Hitchens at the penthouse at the Regency hotel in New York.
Scott Monty [00:40:53]:
And they were supposed to go for dinner, so they went and had a cocktail in the penthouse, and they started going down the elevator. And it's just him and hitch in the elevator. And the doors open. This little old lady gets on, and all of a sudden, hitch turns to Peter and goes, and when I entered the room, the body was just lying there on the floor. There was blood everywhere. And the little old lady is horrified at that point. And Hitch is continuing to tell the story. The elevator goes down a couple more floors.
Scott Monty [00:41:25]:
The doors open. A nice young couple get on. The doors close, and hitch continues. Ah, there was blood coming out of his eyes, out of his nose. There was blood all over the wall. And I looked at the man, and he opened his eyes, and I said, good. Go, man. What's happened to you? And just at that point, the elevator arrived at the lobby, and the doors opened, and Hitchcock just left and started walking across the lobby.
Scott Monty [00:41:53]:
And everyone in the elevator is looking at each other like, we know who this is, but what the heck just happened? And Peter runs across the lobby and catches up with Hitch. He goes, hitch, hitch, I gotta know what happened to that guy. What did he say? And Hitch goes, oh, nothing. That's my elevator story. Okay, okay.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:17]:
We're cooking with real propane now, because I feel like what you did in that room was something similar to what Hitch was doing. Not as over the top and sensationalized. Right. You know, there's a slippery slope from that. The master at work to these, like, sensational social media post hooks, right. Where it's like it's disconnected from the substance of the piece. It's meant to just sort of grab your attention at all costs. The Buzzfeed headline made ubiquitous.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:43]:
Right. It's not that. But in the room I wrote down, you gave him enough to lean in. So the tweet. I just want to pull up the tweet. Here's the. And what you're not saying is, so this is a replacement for Ford Motor Company's quantitative data and qualitative surveying of the audience. You're not doing that.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:04]:
You're not like, it solves all the problems all at once. You're also not explaining social media's value end to end all at once. You're just giving him enough that he wants to lean in and actually gives you credibility and time to continue to explain yourself and the ROI of your work. Right. And that's what that little illustrative tweet you sent out did. That's what the Hitchcock elevator story does. You know, even. What do you do? We're so bad at answering that.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:31]:
What do you do, Scott? We often just say things that end in such a big, bold period that nobody wants to continue talking to us. We end the conversation instead of saying something that creates intrigue, that people want to ask more and engage with you. Right. You know, so what do you do? I'm a writer, podcaster, and a consultant. Well, how about what do you do? So, you know how a lot of experts are publishing content online? Well, they're getting drowned out by people with hype. And I spent several years as an author and a speaker and a show host learning certain storytelling skills that most experts don't possess. So I help those experts, who mostly run their own businesses, adopt the storytelling techniques and the ways of standing out of people with substance. Not stunts, but maybe are a little more focused on being talent than experts.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:12]:
I want to make experts into storytelling talent. Right. Oh, okay. Tell me more about how you do that. Right. So, anyways, I'm getting really excited because the application for that lesson of the hitch story, but also the reason you showed Louis that tweet is endless. Don't give them everything. You rush through it, and you bore people.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:31]:
Give them that one thing that they need to, then that gives you permission to keep talking.
Scott Monty [00:44:38]:
Right. And we were very circumspect about what it is we were gonna put into that tweet. You know, we talked about it as a team, and we wanted to make sure it wasn't something that was gonna blow up. Wanted to make sure it was something that would get a response, and we wanted to make sure that it was something that was at the core of what every executive around that table was thinking about. Whether you were the CFO, the head of engineering, even the head of HR, this is something that was on Ford's mind all the time. And to take that and to put it out there real time, into the ether and see what the public reacted to it. Alan Mullally himself was a huge proponent of the two way conversation because he never had an opportunity to do that before. I was the first person, or I should say he was the first executive, first CEO to do a live Q and A on Twitter way back in December of 2008.
Scott Monty [00:45:36]:
And it was an off the cuff decision, and Alan was over the moon about it. But it wasn't until we could take this experience and bring it to life in that room for all of those executives that it really stood out to them.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:52]:
I broke down the three almost pillars or tent poles that hold this up, of that story, and I'm curious to hear from you. Of the three, which do you feel is strongest, like you've been developing it or delivering it really, really well, and which do you feel has the most to explore? So there's Louis. Right, central figure in the story. There's the tweet, which grips us because we want to see how this comes back later. Obviously, it's a little risky. It's illustrative, and it's not just in a slide. You're not sure what will happen by putting it out publicly. So there's Louis, there's the tweet.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:24]:
And then I wrote down Scott's internal world the before the meeting, after the meeting, because even your demeanor in delivering it today changed. There was stressed out Scott, then there was game, set, match Scott. So I felt like that part, that framing, was a big piece of it. So, again, the question here is, of those three things, which do you feel like it's all reliable? It works every time. Talking about Lewis, talking about the tweet, or talking about you before and after, and which do you feel there's the most to play with?
Scott Monty [00:46:56]:
I think the tweet and Lewis are probably the most grounded parts of the story. I mean, those are the old reliables that won't change. Describing Lewis's expressions and his reaction, that's all ripped from the headlines right there. The tweet is what it was. And framing the tweet, as I just did, in terms of it being part of everyone's subconscious at the time, an issue they were, they were concerned with. I think that's important, and I usually talk about that in the story. I'm surprised I didn't bring it out more. But to me, I think giving people a sense as to what I was up against, what I did, and how it turned out, you know, this transformation of me as a leader, it was really, I think, a career changing moment for me.
Scott Monty [00:47:51]:
Even though it was a small meeting, a brief meeting with a tweet, it really changed my perspective in how I worked with the rest of the executive team at that point. And it doesn't matter whether you're going in to present to a Ford or you're presenting to a new client or you're maybe trying to break some news to family members about something that's maybe fraught. I think the process is the same, and the comfort level and the reassurance and the doing your preparation and all of that. All of those lessons come out and show that kind of that story arc, as it were, that make it really, really relatable.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:32]:
I think my answer would have been a little different. That's interesting, I think, Louis. Well, not because it's not well delivered. It is very well delivered. But I was like, oh, I want to spend more time visualizing, Louis. I was just like, more to the point of the way you tell stories. Cause now everybody hearing this has a greater sense for your style and the way I've gotten to know it over the years. Like, I wanted a Scottism to describe Lewis.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:58]:
I got the. He's british, he's a CFO. All these things, the glasses, all incredible, all omitted by most business storytellers. So it's like 95% there. I wanted the little Scott flourish. Like, you know, I could see you chuckling yourself and being like, I mean, this is a guy. You've heard the phrase, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. This is a guy, you give him lemons.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:19]:
He's, like, far too sweet for my liking.
Scott Monty [00:49:21]:
But that's the thing, Jay. I would do that. You didn't get it in this version of the story, but I would do it when I'm up in front of a crowd and I would pick out a press picture of Louis where he just looked so dour, it looked like he sucked a lemon. I go, this is the guy I was presenting to, right? And then at the end of the story, I found a photo of Lewis trying to smile, doing his best job at smiling. It still looked awkward and I put that up at the end. I go, this is the Lewis that left that meeting. Right. So, visually, it worked really well.
Scott Monty [00:49:58]:
But I think you're absolutely right. Describing him in that kind of way would probably be helpful.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:04]:
It depends on the delivery and the medium and the audience, all those things. For sure. For sure.
Scott Monty [00:50:08]:
Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:12]:
I want to end here. There are. I got this advice, which I found laughable at the time, and I still feel like it wasn't the best advice, advice, or counsel that I received on my way out of Google, which was my first job out of college, was in the sales team broadly, but I was in account management, more specifically. And the director of the office at the time said, jay, just make sure this startup that you're moving towards, you feel is, it is a great place to go because you only get to play the Google card once. And even at the time, I was like, I don't think that's gonna be true. And the more I've invested in telling stories, that's definitely not true. Cause although the cache of saying I worked for Google lost its luster, as we've seen what big tech has become. But also, it's just so far in my past now.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:01]:
Oh, my goodness, the stories. You're somebody who I think could be trading off of what I see a lot of former brand executives trading off of, which is, well, because I worked for this business. Here's how we did it there. And I don't see that from you. I see I worked for this because I worked for this business. I have access to all this wonderful storytelling. How do you coach through an executive? And maybe you haven't. So we can go in a different direction to end, if not.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:28]:
But how do you coach through an executive as to how to pull from their experience when that experience is in the past? So the more they do it, the less relevant it feels because it's such a common, I don't know, behavior I see from a lot of executives I worked there. Here's how we did it. And I think a lot of people now see that as okay, but it's no longer that time period.
Scott Monty [00:51:52]:
Well, I think that's a very astute and relevant observation, Jay, and I think this is why the armor of timeless and timely works so well is because the things I point to are things that are not reliant on a particular technology or timeframe. I mean, yeah, we use Twitter, and, yeah, it happened in 2010, but this is a story that could be told in 1950 just as well as in, you know, 2024. It's about the human response. It's about presenting someone with something in a way that they hadn't seen it before and changing their perspective on something. So the lessons that I pull from my time at Ford, my time there, it was only six years, but I learned a career's worth of lessons while I was there, in no small part thanks to Alan Mulally and his leadership lessons, and I'm still digesting them to this day. It's been ten years since I left that company. I've noted down, like, the seven or eight precepts that he talks about. Things like, the purpose of life is to love and be loved in that order.
Scott Monty [00:53:12]:
To serve is to live, have fun, but never at other people's expense. And there's a handful of others there, but these are things that can apply to you as a human being as well as a leader. And to me, watching Alan as an authentic leader, he wasn't any different inside that boardroom as he was in front of a television camera, as he was in the hallway. That's who he was as a person. And I think there are character strengths within each of us. We each have different ones. And if we work on accentuating those strengths and really bringing them to the surface, that can help people understand who we are and what we value. And again, that's something that happens with your family, happens with your friends, happens in your job.
Scott Monty [00:54:00]:
When I first started on social media and people think, oh, you gotta be on with social media, how do you do it? I go, I'm just me. Is there another way to do this? And how exhausting it must be. I thought I to have to show up at work as this type of Persona and then shed that as you go out of the office and have drinks, and then shed that as you go home and communicate with your partner. Why dont you just be yourself everywhere and itll be that much easier, right? So I think the same applies to leadership and character development. And a lot of my coaching now comes through looking at auditing and accentuating peoples character strengths.
Jay Acunzo [00:54:54]:
How stories happen was created by me, Jay O'Connzo, and it's produced by share your genius cover art by Blake, Inc. Learn more about these kind, creative humans and how they might help you by checking their links in our show notes. And while you're there, please explore my sponsor link so I can keep the show going and growing. Big thanks to everybody supporting the show as a listener, a sponsor, or a partner. If you want to create more valuable, more original content and tell stronger stories to support your cause, please consider my free newsletter@jacunzo.com. you can also explore the membership program I run for content creators and storytellers. It's called the creator Kitchen. Found@creatorkitchen.com my mission is to help people differentiate and resonate through their substance and stories, not hollow stunts.
Jay Acunzo [00:55:43]:
Thank you so much for listening. I'm back with another episode of the show really soon. I'm actually working on a couple things. I'm working on more episodes and a special bonus type of episode where we're going to go a little bit deeper into the moments that people like you keep telling me, really, really grip you and help you immediately apply what you're.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:02]:
Learning to your own work.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:04]:
So stay tuned for that. A special kind of episode we're going to experiment with coming up, as well as more great episodes like today's with Scott. Again, thank you for listening. And as always, please keep making what matters, because when you matter more, you need to hustle for attention less.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:19]:
See ya.