Storytelling can be your only solution to tell complexity. Sometimes you have to deal with a problem so complex in such a little time that it is impossible to know everything about it. You should map it out, identify all components, and delineate all relationships between them. Knowing boundaries, constraints, forces, and influences is fundamental to make sense out of something complex. But sometimes you have no time to do it. So, putting together a story, in its simplest form, a context: somebody needs to do something because they want it or because somebody else wants it, they learn something about the possible roads to take, they take into consideration possible scenarios and, finally they make a decision with all of the implications and consequences that it entails.
You won’t create a perfect and durable solution. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, you will be wrong or very wrong. But telling a story using the elements you have at your disposal and adding a bit of imagination allows you to get unstuck and get out of the paralysis from analysis. Most of all, a story is the most immediate means you have to communicate your lacks, your missing pieces, your speculations. It’s a way to work, productively and provocatively, without knowing exactly what the work is that you have to do.
