Craft and deliver compelling, efficient, convincing stories about your business, service, or product!

Lean Storytelling:

• Shape and structure your story, with the foundational building blocks, to setup the core.
• Extend and complete your story, with additional elements, and complexity, to fine-tune.
• Specialise and deliver your story, in various formats to different audiences, for influence and leadership.

What is it? What for? What's in it for me? How do I start? Read more below...

1. Why?
2. Methodology overview
3. Q&A / FAQ

It was made, battled-tested, and refined so that people communicate clearly, in a standard and proven manner, the way humans have told stories since the dawn of humanity, by giving and taking stories, living the feeling of adventure.

Lean Storytelling is designed for leaders and managers who want to be much more efficient in their communication style.

Shape and structure your story, given the widely used, but implicit ingredients. Then deliver your story in any format or context.

People know how to "receive" a story, as they are used to "receiving" novels, series, movies... But people have difficulties to properly "send" stories by respecting the untold, implicit secrets, that humanity has used since forever.

Lean Storytelling is a structured technique for crafting clear, compelling stories—especially for business, product, and service contexts. It draws on best practices to ensure your audience understands, resonates, and remembers your message.

Lean Storytelling has been crafted for business, product, and service: whether you want pitch or test an idea, refine and develop , or delierv and promote development and promotion

This helps align teams, reduce friction, and clarify the "why" behind any story.

Become crystal clear in your communication, impact more, influence harder.

flowchart TD Basic{{"`*Basic Story*`"}}-->TargetB["`**Target**`"] TargetB-->ProblemB["`**Problem**`"] ProblemB-->SolutionB["`**Solution**`"] SolutionB Detailed{{"`*Detailed Story*`"}}-->TargetD["`**Target**`"] TargetD-->EmpathyD([Empathy]) EmpathyD-->ProblemD["`**Problem**`"] ProblemD-->ConsequencesD([Consequences]) ConsequencesD-->SolutionD["`**Solution**`"] SolutionD-->BenefitsD([Benefits]) BenefitsD Full{{"`*Full Story*`"}}-->ContextF ContextF{{Context}}-->TargetF["`**Target**`"] TargetF-->EmpathyF([Empathy]) EmpathyF-->ProblemF["`**Problem**`"] ProblemF-->ConsequencesF([Consequences]) ConsequencesF-->SolutionF["`**Solution**`"] SolutionF-->BenefitsF([Benefits]) BenefitsF-->WhyF{{Why}} WhyF classDef default fill:#f8f9fa,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px,rx:8,ry:8; 

• Target: The user, the client, the buyer—the hero of your story, the one who experiences transformation
• Problem: The challenge or antagonism your Target faces
• Solution: Your offering (keep it concise; avoid over-explaining)

• Target
  • Empathy: What the Target sees, feels, hears, and says
• Problem
  • Consequences: How the Problem impacts the target’s daily life, the pain that is felt
• Solution
  • Benefits: The tangible advantages your Solution provides to the Target

• Context: The environment in which the Target operates
• Target
  • Empathy
• Problem
  • Consequences
• Solution
  • Benefits
• Why: The core motivation or guiding principle behind your story

In case an option is absolutely needed, and you can't live without:

Optional Additions (use as needed):

• Challenge: Pose an open question to engage your audience
• Quote: Validate an element with a relevant quote
• Data: Bring facts and figures that proves your point
• Alternatives: Highlight unsatisfactory solutions the hero has tried
• Competition: Acknowledge competitors, but emphasize why your solution is superior
• Unfair Advantage: What makes your solution uniquely effective, and difficult to imitate
• Warnings: Potential pitfalls or risks
• Self-Benefits: How you also benefit from the solution
• Call to Action: What you want your audience to do next
• Failure: Share a past failure or setback to build credibility and context
• Same-same: The same type of people have lived the same story

Use with extreme care:

• In one story:
  • Use extension pack
  • Target multiple personas
  • Address multiple problems
  • Bring multiple Solutions
• Blend story arcs:
  • Merge stories with multiple common elements
  • Cross-over stories in the same timeline/universe
  • Sub-story or "mise en abyme"

Adapt your stories to various constraints:

• Text: ASCII, PDF, ODF
• Images: PNG, JPEG
• Videos
• Hybrid: slidedecks, illusrated texts

Specialise story to:

• Stakeholders
• Buyers
• Investors
• Collaborators

Build + Extend + Deliver = Get feedback and restart!

flowchart TD Build("`**Build**`")-->BasicXXX{{"`*Basic Story*`"}} BasicXXX-->DetailedXXX{{"`*Detailed Story*`"}} DetailedXXX-->FullXXX{{"`*Full Story*`"}} Extend("`**Extend**`")-->AddonXXX{{"`*Additionnal elements*`"}} AddonXXX-->ComplexXXX{{"`*Complex reality*`"}} ComplexXXX Deliver("`**Deliver**`")-->Format{{"`*Custom Format*`"}} Format-->Audience{{"`*Specific Audience*`"}} Audience classDef default fill:#f8f9fa,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px,rx:8,ry:8; 

Ask for workshop

Use the Canvas

Use the experimental app

Lean Storytelling ("TopSol Playbook") is a collection of recipes, templates, and best practices designed to help you craft effective stories for business, service, and product contexts. It serves as a practical field guide, not a rigid framework.

This approach is ideal for:

• Product Owners/Managers
• Scrum Masters and Agile coaches
• Designers
• Engineers
• Marketing professionals
• Sales teams
• Founders, and C-level executives
• Leaders and Managers
• Freelances

Beyond only telling stories, Lean Storytelling is a powerful tool that helps you refine your assumptions and hypothesis, your unique or key value proposition, and/or unique selling point, by iterating on what is convincing with feedback loops.

Applications:

• Describe Backlog, Epics, User Stories in Agile teams (Scrum/Kanban), helping to visualize expected outcomes
• Test and get quick feedback on solutions or value propositions in customer interviews, supporting Lean Startup and Design Thinking
• Sell products, features, services or solutions
• Set the messaging, so you reach properly your target, and it's awin
• Do clean and lean developer advocacy, by sending the signals the right way
• Describe the experience you offer, with clear benefits

Benefit: Propser Storytellng synchronizes and aligns people.

A well-crafted story can be delivered in various formats:

• Spoken: Podcasts, ads, videoconferences, videos, meetups, speeches, public speaking
• Written: Blog posts, slide decks, tickets, social media, specs
• Visual: Images, videos, schemas, drawings, infographies

This is the old name for Lean Storytelling.

• Playbook: Emphasizes practicality and avoids the term "framework"; it’s not an advanced storytelling technique.
• TopSol: An acronym for the core elements:
  • To: Target (the people or personas you’re addressing)
  • P: Problem (the challenge they face)
  • Sol: Solution (what you offer)

Lean Storytelling builds on established methodologies:

• Lean Canvas by Ash Maurya (free online course)
• Monomyth (Hero’s Journey) (Wikipedia)
• The Golden Circle ("Why How What") by Simon Sinek (TED Talk)

• Star this repository
• Share within your networks
• Ask questions or suggest improvements via issues
• Submit patches or merge requests
• Share your knowledge and experience
• Test the alpha app and send feedback

Yes! Lean Storytelling is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to:

• Share: Copy and redistribute in any medium or format
• Adapt: Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially

Yes.

• For up to 10 people
• Duration 1.5 hours
• Hands on, practice hard, straight to the point, learn by doing, peer review

Contact me: LinkedIn

Keynote: 20 min or 40 min

• Roots of humanity storytelling
• Reverse-engineer Hollywood-style storytelling
• Master the craft and art of business storytelling

Contact me: LinkedIn

Copy this file in you own drive: "Lean Storytelling Canvas TEMPLATE (please copy, do not edit)"

Ask me for the PDF, ODF, Docx versions

Ask me for Mural, Miro, Notion, etc.

Yes, this is being vibe-coded under AGPLv3 license: try now, contact me: LinkedIn

If there is demand: contact me: LinkedIn

Yes, contact me: LinkedIn