In his best-selling book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, published in 1997 by Harper-Collins, McKee argues that stories “fulfill a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living-not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience.” What follows is an edited and abridged transcript of McKee’s conversation with HBR. McKee believes that executives can engage listeners on a whole new level if they toss their PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead. McKee also serves as a project consultant to film and television production companies such as Disney, Pixar, and Paramount as well as major corporations, including Microsoft, which regularly send their entire creative staffs to his lectures. Emmy Award winner Brian Cox portrays McKee in the 2002 film Adaptation, which follows the life of a screenwriter trying to adapt the book The Orchid Thief. They have won 18 Academy Awards, 109 Emmy Awards, 19 Writers Guild Awards, and 16 Directors Guild of America Awards. McKee’s students have written, directed, and produced hundreds of hit films, including Forrest Gump, Erin Brockovich, The Color Purple, Gandhi, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Sleepless in Seattle, Toy Story, and Nixon. He then taught at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television before forming his own company, Two-Arts, to take his lectures on the art of storytelling worldwide to an audience of writers, directors, producers, actors, and entertainment executives. in cinema arts at the University of Michigan. An award-winning writer and director, McKee moved to California after studying for his Ph.D. Why is persuasion so difficult, and what can you do to set people on fire? In search of answers to those questions, HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer paid a visit to Robert McKee, the world’s best-known and most respected screenwriting lecturer, at his home in Los Angeles. Even the most carefully researched and considered efforts are routinely greeted with cynicism, lassitude, or outright dismissal. Too often, they get lost in the accoutrements of companyspeak: PowerPoint slides, dry memos, and hyperbolic missives from the corporate communications department. But despite the critical importance of persuasion, most executives struggle to communicate, let alone inspire. Customers must be convinced to buy your company’s products or services, employees and colleagues to go along with a new strategic plan or reorganization, investors to buy (or not to sell) your stock, and partners to sign the next deal. Persuasion is the centerpiece of business activity.
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