Frank O’Donnell
“What’s the name of the dog?”
The shout came across the newsroom before I’d even had time to feel good about myself. This was around 25 years ago, I was a journalist at The Scotsman, and I’d just filed what I thought was an important piece – an interview with a family who’d suffered the harrowing loss of their child to illness.
I had been pleased with my work. I had handled the situation sensitively and returned, notebook bulging with quotes and detail, one of which was a reference to the family pet.
“The dog?” I shouted back, defensively. “What dog?”
“The. Fa. Mi. Ly’s. Dog.” My news editor had started speaking in syllables. Never a good sign. It was clear to everyone in earshot that I was some kind of journalistic dullard.
“I don’t know the dog’s name,” I replied. “Why’s that important? The story isn’t about the dog.”
A massive sigh ensued. I was ordered to call the grief-stricken family and ask for the name of their beloved pet. And, while I was on, to double-check the breed and its coat colour.
I spoke to the family again, apologetic and a little embarrassed. There was a pause when I asked about the dog. They sounded mildly perplexed, understandably. They’d just shared some of the hardest moments of their lives with a stranger, and here I was calling back to ask about their pet. They were very kind about it.
I spent the next few hours – in fact the next few days – irritated that my apparent great work in landing this interview had morphed into a bollocking.
Friends nodded along as I re-told the story, incredulously. “Who cares about the dog’s name?” I said, over and over.
It was months before I finally understood what my news editor had actually been teaching me.
The facts of that story were important. The family’s grief was real and it deserved to be told carefully and accurately.
But facts alone don’t make people feel anything. It’s the texture around them – the small, seemingly irrelevant details – that makes a story stay with you long after you’ve forgotten the headlines.
These days I spend a lot of my time helping leaders tell their own stories better; it’s a core part of the work I do at Charlotte Street Partners. And many of them make the same mistake I did. People arrive with the facts straight, the argument clear, the data ready. What they’re missing is the dog.
Think about the last time a presentation or speech genuinely moved you. The chances are it wasn’t the data that did it. It was a moment: a specific place, a conversation, a feature that felt almost too small to mention. The best leaders understand this instinctively. They know that a story without colour and texture is just a sequence of events.
Most of us, though, fall short. Sometimes it’s through lack of confidence. Sometimes we hear: “But I just don’t have any stories.”
But everyone has stories. The barrier to telling them is often not knowing which details matter. The setting, the weather, the mood in the room, who else was there – these things can be either vital or irrelevant, depending on the story. Knowing what to include and what to leave out is a skill. And like most skills, it can be learned.
The best storytellers aren’t just better at recounting – they’re better at noticing. They catch the small moment before it disappears. They write it down – in a notebook, on their phone, wherever works – because they already know that these things have value. They have a system, however informal, for holding onto what most people let slip away.
The stories that work in business contexts are rarely the ones people expect. They’re not grand. They’re not dramatic. They’re a moment at a kitchen table, a question asked in a lift, a sentence that stuck with you from a meeting three years ago.
The challenge isn’t finding something worth saying. It’s trusting that the small things are enough – and learning to tell them well.
The dog’s name? It was Bella. I can’t picture her now, but I’ve never forgotten the lesson.