ABSTRACT
The greater sustainability story has many storylines with many assumed and unexamined drivers and endings. In studying the behavior, stories and culture of the legal 'corporate person', Joel Bakan and a team of independent psychologists have routinely witnessed corporate behavior demonstrated to be irresponsible, manipulative, reckless, superficial, particularly through the stories it told itself and its stakeholders and customers. The time horizons of the stories need to cycle dynamically between the now, the past and the future. While there is power and potential in the sustainability story, there's an equally important urgency to establish a mindfulness and ethic to the conversation we are having on storytelling. The transmission or data-transfer model of storytelling emphasizes a communication culture of sound bites, monologues, carefully crafted narratives and talking points. Fact telling creates scenarios where it's often less about winning the argument through the facts, and more about whoever tells the best story, wins.
