At Experience Institute, we test every workshop before it goes out into the world.

When we started prepping for our recent open workshop for L&D Leaders, Crafting the Story of Your L&D Work, we built it around a trusted framework: Marshall Ganz’s Public Narrative. Ganz is a lifelong activist and Harvard professor who studied the difference between organizers who spoke at their audience and organizers who moved their audience to action.

His model — Story of Self > Story of Us > Story of Now — has helped countless leaders connect on both a logical (the head!) and emotional level (the heart!). And it does produce stories that move. We teach it in our Stories that Move workshop, and we love it.

So… we just assumed it would work.

THANK GOODNESS we tested it.

Because it didn’t work. At least not in the context of L&D leaders trying to communicate the impact of their programs. Or at least not as well as we had hoped.

What went wrong?

The biggest issue? The Story of Self felt like the wrong starting point. When you’re trying to show the value of a learning initiative, the most compelling story often isn’t about you — it’s about someone transformed by the program.

So, we got to work (again!).

Sara, our host, was traveling like crazy in the weeks leading up to our event, so Amelia and I prototyped live and traded lots of async voice memos with Sara. We put ourselves in our partners’ shoes — remembering moments when they needed to make a case for more investment, more buy-in, or more time. I built a story as if I were an L&D leader asking her CEO to fund a second cohort of a beloved program during a time of company-wide cost-cutting. Amelia built one as the Head of Innovation & Strategy trying to communicate the ROI of a week-long innovation sprint. And Sara built one about asking a podcast host to feature her as a guest.

We built a lot of stories. Then we took them apart. We looked for what worked. And what didn’t.

And, ultimately, we came up with a five-part structure that L&D leaders could use to move stakeholders to action:

1. Know Your Audience: Who are they? What do they value?
   
   

2. Zoom In: One learner. One breakthrough.
   
   

3. Zoom Out: Show scale — use data to back it up.
   
   

4. Connect to Their Heart: What’s the shared purpose? The bigger picture?
   
   

5. What Now?: What’s your call to action?
   
   

But… let’s be honest: “Audience > Zoom In > Zoom Out > Heart > Now” isn’t exactly catchy. It’s a Frankenstein framework. And we know from experience that if the tool we’re teaching is not simple, memorable, or visual, it’s not going to stick.

So, we reimagined it as the Mosaic Model for Stories that Move.

Just like a mosaic, your story is made of small, meaningful pieces that come together to form a bigger picture. It goes like this:

• Micro – Zoom in on one story of change

• Macro – Show impact at scale

• Meaning – Connect to shared values

You tell it forward — but you build it backwards. And when it works? It really works.

One L&D Leader from a company you all know (and probably love) said:

“I am so excited about this storytelling framework — this is going to be a game-changer for me when simplifying and landing a message.”

Give it a shot!

1. Download the Mosaic Model Worksheet

2. Try it out in your own work

3. Reply here and let us know how it goes — or what you'd like us to build next

The story of your work deserves to be told — and remembered. I hope what we came up with can make that just a little bit easier for you.