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Romeo and Juliet (or the top-grossing movie of all time, Titanic). All
Connection plots inspire us in social ways. They make us want to
help others, be more tolerant of others, work with others, love others.
The Connection plot is the most common kind of plot found in the
Chicken Soup series.
Where Challenge plots involve overcoming challenges, Connec-
tion plots are about our relationships with other people. If you’re
telling a story at the company Christmas party, it’s probably best to
use the Connection plot. If you’re telling a story at the kickoff party
for a new project, go with the Challenge plot.
T H E C R E AT I V I T Y P LOT
The third major type of inspirational story is the Creativity plot. The
prototype might be the story of the apple that falls on Newton’s head,
inspiring his theory of gravity. The Creativity plot involves someone
making a mental breakthrough, solving a long-standing puzzle, or at-
tacking a problem in an innovative way. It’s the MacGyver plot.
Ingersoll-Rand is a giant company that makes nonsexy products
such as industrial grinders, used in auto shops to sand down auto bod-
ies. Historically, Ingersoll-Rand had been slow at bringing new prod-
ucts to market. One employee, frustrated by the average four-year
product life cycle, said, “It was taking us longer to introduce a new
product than it took our nation to fight World War II.”
Ingersoll-Rand decided to do something about the slow develop-
ment cycle. The company created a project team whose goal was to
produce a new grinder in a year—one quarter the usual time. Stan-
dard theories of organizational culture would have predicted a slim
chance of success. The grinder team, however, did a lot of things
right, including the use of stories to emphasize the group’s new atti-
S T O R I E S
229
tude and culture. One story, for instance, involved a critical decision
about whether to build the new grinder’s casing out of plastic or
metal. Plastic would be more comfortable for the customer, but
would it hold up as well as metal?
The traditional Ingersoll-Rand method of solving this problem
would have been to conduct protracted, careful studies of the tensile
and compression properties of both materials. But this was the Grinder
Team. They were supposed to act quickly. A few members of the team
cooked up a less formal testing procedure. While on an off-site cus-
tomer visit, the team members tied a sample of each material to the
back bumper of their rental car, then drove around the parking lot with
the materials dragging behind. They kept this up until the police came
and told them to knock it off. The verdict was that the new plastic com-
posite held up just as well as the traditional metal. Decision made.
In the history of the Grinder Team, this story has become known
as the Drag Test. The Drag Test is a Creativity plot that reinforced the
team’s new culture. The Drag Test implied, “We still need to get the
right data to make decisions. We just need to do it a lot quicker.”
The famous explorer Ernest Shackleton faced such enormous
odds in his explorations (obviously a classic Challenge plot) that
unity among his men was mission-critical. A mutiny could leave
everyone dead. Shackleton came up with a creative solution for deal-
ing with the whiny, complaining types. He assigned them to sleep in
his own tent. When people separated into groups to work on chores,
he grouped the complainers with him. Through his constant pres-
ence, he minimized their negative influence. Creativity plots make
us want to do something different, to be creative, to experiment with
new approaches.
T
he goal of reviewing these plots is not to help us invent stories.
Unless you write fiction or advertisements, that won’t help much.
The goal here is to learn how to spot the stories that have potential.
230
M A D E T O S T I C K
When the Jared article hits our desk, we want to spot the crucial ele-
ments immediately. Guy faces huge obstacles and overcomes them—
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