It's quite possible you'll lose your job as CEO if you are unable to persuasively communicate your company's strategy. Léo Apotheker, the recently fired CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has just learned this lesson.

Mr Apotheker was appointed CEO of HP in October 2010 less then a year before he was let go. Before HP, Apotheker was CEO of SAP at the end of a 20 year career with the German software giant. He left SAP under a cloud and in a memo SAP issued to its employees on his departure he said, "My communication towards you was not always optimal." This should have rung some alarm bells. 1

After about 5 months in the job (March 2011) Mr Apotheker announced the company strategy. They were going to expand into the cloud business, build out its software business, open up an app store and reinvest in R&D. The aim was to lift profit margins. They would move into business analytics. He promised to take a conservative approach suggesting there wouldn't be the massive company purchases like the Compaq or EDS buy outs HP had done in the past. 2

In August 2011 Mr Apotheker announces that HP will purchase British software company Autonomy for just over $10 billion and that he is considering selling the PC business.

In September 2011 Mr Apotheker is replaced with eBay's celebrity CEO Meg Whitman. The HP stock price during Mr Apotheker reign falls from $46 to $25.

Of course this is a high level telling of a CEO's demise which has many more twists and turns including the fanfare announcement of a new tablet to rival the iPad that was eventually withdrawn from sale only weeks after its launch. The important points to note in terms of communicating a strategy are these:

• Massive changes in mind are going to hurt you. Mr Apotheker suggested they weren't going on a spending spree then announces its third biggest purchase. Our Prime Minister in Australia, Julia Gillard, is suffering a similar fate. On election she promised not to introduce a tax on carbon. As of last week the Parliament has voted in a tax on Carbon (something I support by the way) and she has been crucified for it.
• A good strategy means something is going to change. That means there will be people who are strong supporters of the old way of doing things. The misunderstood Machiavelli put it this way, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Telling everyone you might sell your PC business only creates uncertainty. IBM pursued the same strategy of selling their PC business to the Chinese company Lenovo. IBM, however, sold the PC division before announcing it to the world. Sometimes its better to rip the band-aid off quickly.

The effectiveness of HP strategic story Mr Apotheker told (and there was a good chance he didn't actually tell a story) comes from not just what's in the story, its believability and novelty, but also how it is told and whether it becomes a story worth listening to, remembering, retelling and acting upon. Add to this the importance of consistency. From all accounts Mr Apotheker failed at each step. Now let's see how Meg Whitman fairs.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/business/09nocera.html
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/technology/15hewlett.htm

Why do airlines find it so hard to say sorry?

I have been doing a lot of travel lately, and today is no exception, with flying from my home in Melbourne to Brisbane to run a session on teaching leaders in an IT department to tell their strategic story.

Last night in Melbourne was pretty rough weather wise - massive downpours (the wettest September day in 56 years), lightening and thunder. This obviously caused significant travel disruption, with Melbourne airport being severely impacted with a number of postponed and cancelled flights. This meant that a large number of planes, and crew, were not in the right place for their departures this morning.

So for me, this meant a delay of 2 hours to my flight this morning. This has meant I have had to contact my client and move the session back, and for a number of the attendees this has meant that can only come to the first hour of the session. You don't want to incur extra costs by staying the night before, and I thought that by getting a flight which gave me an extra 2 1/2 hours of 'contingency' I would be fine. It was very stressful when this was not the case.

So when we finally get onboard the flight this morning, the announcement welcoming us started off quite well with the cabin crew member explaining the reasons for the delay (see my blog post on the importance of this). It then quickly went downhill.

Comments like; "so you should all feel lucky we are only two hours late", and "I am sure this short delay will not impact anyone", didn't lighten my mood.

However the thing that got me the most - not once did he apologise. The word "sorry" did not cross his lips. Even an insincere, 'you can tell he didn't mean it' kind of apology. Nothing.

I just don't understand why, on two counts. Why did he not say it, and why does it bother me so much?

I know it's not his fault. I know the reasons for the delay. But there is something about the acknowledgement of the impact on me and my day that needed to be said, whether he meant it or not.

This is not a solely Australian airline behaviour. After flying on the 6:20 a.m. London Gatwick to Edinburgh flight every week for nearly two years, and it being delayed more often than on time, not once did I hear an apology. Maybe it's just an airline thing?

I would love to hear people's views on those two questions I posed for myself: Why do airlines not say sorry?, and why does it seem to matter to me so much?

I might have to do some research myself on the power that comes from an apology. I am flying to Newcastle tomorrow morning, I might very well have some time on my hands...

How do you get your people to think about what the future could be, in a way that inspires them and starts to spark action, but also takes into account the simple fact that the future is unpredictable?

I was reminded of this challenge, yet again, last week.

We were working with a client on developing a session for a two day leadership conference focussing on bringing their strategy to life. As we were throwing round ideas on the types of things we could do, someone suggested an exercise that involved the participants spending time writing a magazine article about how things are for that organisation in 5 years time.

This triggered a recollection when we did a similar thing when I was working in the UK for the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). I was involved in planning and running a series of workshops for the management population of my division, working with American management guru Noel Tichy to bring his concept of " cycle of leadership to life. These were 2 day courses, and we ended up running them for nearly 5000 leaders, over a two year period in 2006 and 2007.

On day two there was an exercise where everyone had to draft a magazine article, for the leading business magazine The Economist, with these instructions:

You are assigned to write a cover story for the Economist - dated September 21st, 2012. The story is about the dramatic transformation of RBS, and how through your leadership and outstanding execution, RBS is achieving unprecedented success. The article should be written as if it were 2012 and should discuss the challenges RBS has overcome, how that was done and what the business now looks like.

Now to understand the rest of this story you need to know that RBS during that time was one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world. In 2005 it announced a profit of $A10.27bn, up 14% from the year before, and in
2006 the profit increased another 16% to $A13.69bn. By 2007 the profit stood at a very impressive A$15.33bn and the share price stood at $A8.94.

It was held up as a major success story in the UK corporate world, and its Chief Executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, who had been knighted in 2004, was a darling of Wall Street and the city in London. The feeling was that we could do no wrong, the business would just keep growing and growing, and become even more and more successful.

People spend an hour crafting these beautiful magazine articles talking about RBS and its success five years in the future. They then worked in three's sharing each other stories, before three or four of the best ones were shared with the whole group. I remember they talked about things like how RBS now had 500,000 staff (up from its 120,000 at the time), that its market share has gone through the roof (i.e. its share of the credit card market was now 80%, up from 20%), that the world's most innovative companies came to RBS to learn how to do it, and that its profit had just hit A$30bn a year.

At the time I thought the exercise was very useful. It created energy in the room, made people feel good about themselves and the organisation and all of what was mentioned seemed realistic and achievable.

On the 19 January 2009, RBS announced a loss of AS41.65bn, the biggest ever annual loss in UK corporate history. On that same day the British Government increased its holding in the bank to 70%, and the share price stood at less than 14 cents. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs, businesses within the RBS Group were sold and Sir Fred resigned, he was vilified by the British press, and his house was even attacked by angry protestors.

There is no way in 2006 or 2007 that we could see this downfall happening. It was completely realistic to think of continued success and global domination. The exercise seemed to do exactly what Tichy had wanted it to do, and people were still talking about months after the events. But every single prediction that 5000 people made about the future proved to be wrong.

How do you get your people to think about the future, and what it could be, but which also takes into account its unpredictability? How do you manage and deal with that paradox? Was the exercise we did at RBS 'wrong', or did it achieve what it wanted, if its purpose was to get people excited about RBS' future, and reinforced to them why they wanted to be there. Is it more of an engagement technique than a strategic visioning exercise?

I would really like to hear your views on exercises like this and your experiences of dealing with the challenge of trying to envisage a rapidly changing, unpredictable future and the value in doing so.

I was reminded, yet again, last week about the power that comes from overtly answering the "why?" question.

I was working on a client site when I saw this poster stuck on an external door:

The explanation below the main text makes this poster far stronger as an influence tool and more likely to stop people smoking directly outside the door. Why? It gives a reason not to smoke in that place.

The power of giving a reason was highlighted in research by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer as far back as 1978. She undertook a very simple experiment with students queuing up to use a library photocopier.

When students were asked; "Excuse me, I have five pages, may I use the machine?" 60% agreed to the request; 40%, however, said no and continued with their own copying.

When a reason was added; "Excuse me, I have five pages, may I use the photocopier, I'm in a rush" - 94% percent agreed to the request.

This makes sense.

However, what doesn't make sense is why the same number agreed when the request was changed to "Excuse me, may I use the photcopier because I want to make copies." This reasoning doesn't really make sense. Why would you use a photocopier if you were not planning to make copies? It is the same as no reason at all.

Langer therefore concluded that the key difference to whether the majority of people would agree to a request or not, was if a reason was attached to the request. If people at least tried to address the "why?" question.

Now I believe that any reason is fine, even it doesn't make sense, when you are asking a stranger for a one off favour. But when it comes to influencing behaviour on an ongoing basis in our homes and workplaces, the reason itself also becomes important.

There are a number of ways I think this poster works in getting across the reason not to smoke outside the door. It:

• makes the consequences of smoking in that location very concrete
• has narrative elements (although not fully a story)
• encourages empathy on the part of the viewer in order to gain compliance

Dan Pink has a whole section on his website about posters like this, which he calls emotionally intelligent signage that is well worth checking out.

For such a simple poster, it really does a great job of answering the "why?" question and positively impacting behaviour.

I want to expand a little on Mark's post and on the communication structure we're proposing. I hope you don't mind, but let me start with how the idea emerged.

My first real job back in the 1980s was to work for Oracle Systems, the database company. One day my manager asked me to give a presentation to a group of customers who were coming in that afternoon. I went into the boardroom, sat up my slideshow and then realised I had no idea on how to give a presentation. I called my manager in and confessed by ignorance and he gave me a crash course. At the end of his instruction he suggested I join a Toastmasters club, which I did.

At Toastmasters a meeting often starts by the chair asking someone to give a little 3-minute impromptu talk on just about any topic the chair nominates. You have no time to prepare, you just have to talk. Thankfully Toastmasters provides some strategies to structure your response and one that I remember was called PREP: Point, Reason, Example, Point.

Wind forward to the 21st century. After working with stories for some time now we've learned that telling a story before giving a rational argument can be effective in helping your audience to really hear what you're saying and perhaps even influence them in a new way of thinking. We came to this view after learning about the confirmation bias which tells us that if someone has a strong opinion, and your offer an alternative opinion, your attempt only serves to reinforce their strong opinion. Telling someone a story first, however, seems to loosen them up to hear your argument. We think this has something to do with the fact that stories provide a pull approach (the listener pulls the story to them) rather than a push approach (the teller pushes the information at the listeners).

So rather than Point, Reason, Example, Point (PREP) we are suggesting you should rearrange your responses to be Point, Example, Reason, Point (PERP); a small but significant change. And of course your example should be a story. And if you are uncetain what we mean by a story, please check out the story test.

This change to PERP will require us to change the way we present in organsations. The common approach goes something like this:

"Welcome everyone.

20 slides with lots of opinions, research, and clever argument.

"Now I would like to show you some examples." Well, you've already kicked off the confirmation bias and if they felt strongly against the idea they are just digging in their heels.

How about:

"Welcome everyone. I would like to share a couple of examples that go to the heart of what we are facing and where we need to get to."

You tell a couple of excellent stories

Now you make your argument.

I’m reading an advance copy of Andrew O’Keeffe’s new book ‘Hardwired Humans: Successful Leadership Using Human Instincts’. I am looking forward meeting Dr Jane Goodall when she launches the book on June 6.

One of the human instincts, ‘emotion before reason’ tells us that emotions play a huge role in our decision making. We jump to conclusions and the conclusions we jump to are normally negative. This has lots of implications in the workplace for communication and leadership. Andrew provides an example of this.

So, what do you think is going to happen?

Almost invariably people assume the worst when they are reading or hearing this story. The business is about to fold, or the couple are separating are common reactions. We don’t remain in a neutral state waiting for the story to unfold and we normally assume the worst. Humans are hardwired to screen for pain and danger first.

So, be leaders need to be aware that people are primarily emotional, not the rational beings we assume them to be in a work context. They will always jump to conclusions and that these conclusions will often be negative. Effective leaders are acutely aware of the primacy of emotions as they seek to relate to and influence others.

I have written this blog post to demonstrate one of the key story patterns we advocate in helping get your message across clearly and helping it stick. We use the acronym PERP: Point, Example, Reason, Point. In this post, para 2 is the Point, paras 3,4 and 5 are the example that illustrate the point, para 6 provides the Reason (the logic, rationale, evidence) and para 7 reiterates and expands upon the Point.

Give this method a try when you are next faced with getting your message across. We’d love to hear back from you on how it goes.

Is really listening to someone about your listening abilities, or is it about your motivation to listen? Is it about the 'skills' of listening or is it the desire to want to listen that makes the difference?

I have been running a series of workshops lately where we do a very simple listening exercise that gets the participants to actually feel what it is like not to be listened too. The exercise takes it from being a purely rational/logical thing (i.e. "I know that not being listened too isn't nice") to one where they actually feel the anger, frustration and almost diminishing sense of self worth that comes when you are not being listened too.

At the end of the exercise I do a de-brief and one of the questions I ask is; "What do you think is more important when you listen - your ability to listen, or your desire to listen?" You can see people have this light bulb moment as they realise it is not the ability side of listening that they are struggling with, it's the motivation to want to listen in the first place.

When asked they can all tell you what you need to do to be able to listen better, from a skills perspective - mirror body language, lean forward, make eye contact, avoid distractions etc. etc. A good outline of some of these were covered in a blog Shawn did in May last year.

However, these things only become useful if you want to listen in the first place.

For me listening, really listening to someone, is an issue of motivation first and foremost. Once I want to listen to you, then my skills and abilities to listen can really kick in.

One of the basic requirements for any form of successful communication is the listener understands what's being said. However we often face the challenge when trying to get our message understood of the "curse of knowledge".

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.

The term was first coined in 1990 by a Stanford University graduate named Elizabeth Newton. She created a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: 'tapper' or 'listener'. Each tapper was asked to pick a well-known song, such as “Happy Birthday,” and tap out the rhythm on a table. The listener’s job was to simply guess the song.

120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only three of the songs correctly: a success ratio of 2.5%. But before they guessed, Newton asked the tappers to predict the probability that listeners would guess correctly. They predicted 50%. The tappers got their message across one time in 40, but they thought they would get it across one time in two. Why?

When a tapper taps, they are hearing the song in their head. Go ahead and try it for yourself - tap out 'Happy Birthday'. It's impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can't hear that tune - all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of strange Morse code.

It's hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song.

So, what can you do to overcome the curse of knowledge, especially if you work in very specialised areas full of jargon, technical speak and acronyms? Use specific, concrete examples.

Specific, concrete examples (aka stories) work particularly well in overcoming the curse of knowledge, because they allow us to give examples that people create and can 'see' in their own minds. It takes the abstractions and the jargon and makes them real by allowing the listener to understand what you actually mean.

For example, the other day I was working with a large financial services organisation and they were showing me a clip of their CEO talking about their four focus areas for 2011. In it the CEO said; "We are not easy to do business with" and then moved on to talk about the initiatives underway to rectify this.

As I watched all I could think was; "What do you mean, please give me an example so I can understand". Don't you think a short story showing how difficult they are to do business with would have really helped viewers understand what they meant as well as making the video much more compelling? Imagine how much more compelling it could have been if that story was also about the human impact on customers?

The CEO knew exactly what they meant by the term "We are not easy to do business with" but I suspect across the organisation there were many people who didn't.

In Made to Stick Dan and Chip Heath tell a story about how FedEx used a specific example to bring to life the company’s strategic aim of being "most reliable shipping company in the world." "In New York, a FedEx delivery truck broke down and the replacement van was running late. The driver initially delivered a few packages on foot; but then, despairing of finishing her route on time, she managed to persuade a competitor’s driver to take her to her last few stops." Stories like this are tangible demonstrations of the company’s strategy and help take abstract notions and make them real for people to understand.

So if you want to make sure you are avoiding the curse of knowledge and reducing the gap between you as the 'tappers' and your audience as the 'listeners' use concrete and specific examples. When I say "concrete and specific", I mean focus down on a specific moment and tell a story about that. This would mean instead of saying "delays in our mortgage process" is an example of "difficult to business with", tell a story. Maybe:

Barbara Jones, a customer since she was at school, had shifted out of her house that day. She had packed all of her furniture into a removal truck, and was now parked outside the house she thought she had just brought being told by us there was a delay in processing her mortgage approval. She was now facing the prospect of a two day delay, with no where to stay, a furniture truck full of her everything she owned and her cat in a cage on the back seat. All because of the failings of our mortgage process.

I had a throughly enjoyable afternoon on Saturday learning not only how to make great coffee, but being surrounded by stories.

The course was a present from my wife for Christmas and took place at the Home Barista Institute, just round the corner from the Anecdote office here in Melbourne.

The course was delivered by Rita Zhang who began by telling a fantastic 'Who am I' story. She told a series of shorter stories about how she fell in love with coffee, how she used a mentor to help her develop her business and how she started teaching courses on coffee. She brought to life each of the scenes in real detail (e.g. describing a sunny Saturday afternoon when she went and visited a 'bright spot' coffee shop that her mentor recommended), she used suspense and surprise in the stories (e.g. how she lifted up a takeaway coffee from the same shop and discovered a love heart drawn in the latte foam) and also linked them together to create a cohesive account of how she came to be there, teaching that course, on that day. These short stories gave a fantastic insight into Rita and where her passion for coffee came from.

Stories were also included in two other aspects of the course.

Each of us had to introduce ourselves by telling stories of good and bad coffee experiences we had had. After seven years in the UK I had no shortage of bad coffee stories! It was a nice way to be introduced to the other attendees and hear a bit about them and why they were there, in a very non-threatening and insightful way.

Stories were also used by Rita to bringing to life the history of coffee, right through from how coffee was discovered (the story of the 'dancing goat'), through to how Pope Clement VIII played a key role in coffees acceptance into Europe in the 1600s.

Overall a fantastic day, not only because I was learning how to make great coffee (which now requires some serious practice on my part!), but also because I was reminded, yet again, about the power of stories.

Why do some business storytelling efforts fail spectacularly? I hear sponsors of some of these failed attempts (they're brave enough to call us in after their bad experience) saying, "storytelling just didn't suit our culture" or "we just didn't click with the person we brought in to help us." I suspect these are merely superficial explanations.

The storytelling spectrum is a simple but useful idea I learnt from my friend and storytelling expert Mary Alice Arthur. Imagine a spectrum of storytelling. At one end is Big 'S' Storytelling which includes those beautifully crafted stories we see in movies, novels, plays and even the latest Playstation games. Big 'S' Storytellers understand plot structures, character development, scene design and a myriad of other storytelling principles and practices. At the other end of the spectrum is Small 's' Storytelling where we find the stories we tell on a daily basis in conversations, anecdotes, recounts and examples.

We've focussed our attention on the Small 's' end of the spectrum (the anecdotes, the real life experiences) and have inched our way toward the Big 'S' end, but not too far for reasons I'll explain in a moment. There's lots to learn from the Big 'S' end but business people don't need to be screenwriters or playwrights. Putting too much storytelling craft in how you communicate can lead you to fall into an even bigger trap. And this trap is similar to one discovered in robotics in the 70s.

In 1970 a Japanese robotics researcher, Mashahiro Mori, noticed that as he made his robots more humanlike their attractiveness increased, but only to a point. After that they became creepy. It was only when it was impossible to tell the robot from the human did they become attractive again. Mori called this dip in comfort levels (Shinwakan) the Uncanny Valley.

Source: Crossing the uncanny valley, The Economist, Nov 18th 2010.

We witnessed the impact of the Uncanny Valley at the movie theatres in 2004. Pixar released The Incredibles at the same time Warner Bros. released The Polar Express. The Polar Express used live action performance capture techniques to make almost humanlike animated characters with an eerie result; not what you want for a Christmas tale. The Incredibles were clearly animations and it became a box office hit.

There is something like an Uncanny Valley of Business Storytelling. We can improve our storytelling with techniques applied from the wealth of storytelling techniques used by the best screenwriters, playwrights and novelists, but only to a point. After that business storytelling drop into an Uncanny Valley. At the bottom of the valley the storyteller's efforts seem artificial, forced and clumsy. Sometimes this happens when people in the organisation believe they need to understand sophisticated plot structures, vocalisation techniques and beats and scenes to apply storytelling. Frankly, I think you can love storytelling too much and try too hard. Sometimes a storytelling professional believes that to be a real storyteller you need to be a performance storyteller. This often results in the storytelling voice. You know that one that sounds like the person has just started a children's story with Once Upon a Time. Again the result is the Uncanny Valley.

Yes, you can learn a lot from Big 'S' Storytelling but it's folly to try apply too much. In the end so much can be achieved just helping people to be mindful of their experiences and the experiences of the people around them and work out what these experiences mean. With this understanding recounting an experience can be a powerful illustration of what you believe is important. And told as a story on the gentle hills above the valley will mean people with remember it and maybe even be inspired to take action.

When we collect stories in companies one of the most common anecdotes is the one about the boss who fails to recognise their staff's work. People want to be thanked, appreciated, recognised regardless of their level in the organisation or their level of skill or expertise.

Dan Ariely conducted a simple experiment described in his latest book, The Upside of Irrationality, which shows that a simple nod of appreciation is more than a nicety, it's a business necessity.

This is how it worked. Imagine a room where you might have a university exam--hopefully this doesn't send chills down your spine. Sitting up front is the invigilator keeping an eye on your every move and ready to collect your paper at the end. In this case each person collects a single sheet of paper from the invigilator that's covered in words. Your task is to circle any two letters that sit side-by-side and are the same. When you finish one page you return it to the invigilator and get another sheet until you can't be bothered doing it any more.

There are three groups in this experiment.

For the first group when they return their sheet the invigilator gives a friendly smile and a nod of thanks.

People in the second group returning their paper are ignored. The invigilator doesn't even look up. Their sheet is turned faced down onto a pile and without a word a new sheet is given.

The invigilator for the third group takes the sheet and without looking at the contents shreds it in front of the participant before handing them another sheet of paper to work on.

On avergae the first group that gets the nod of appreciation complete 9.03 sheets. Not bad for such a boring task.

The third group are ritually humiliated by the invigilator by shedding their work complete on average 6.34 sheets.

So what do you think happened for those people who were ignored? Are they somewhere in between groups 1 and 3?

Group three who received no feedback completed on average 6.77 sheets, very similar to those people who were practically abused as their efforts were destroyed before their eyes.

It would seem that authentic appreciation for a job well done goes along way to boost productivity and if you are one of these bosses who figures, "hey, they're smart people who know what to do. They don't need my praise." think again. You could be really holding them back.

Thomas Jefferson was a great believer in luck, and he found that the harder he worked the luckier he got. His friend and fellow signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin, shared this belief in hard work and self development. From a remarkably young age Franklin understood the importance of practice. Not the kind you get knocking a tennis ball around with friends. But that drilled, repetitive practice of hitting the same shot over and over again. Benjamin, however, didn't have his eye on Wimbledon (actually it's kind of a temporal impossibility), rather his ambition was to be a man of letters.

The Anecdote blog is all about how leaders can return humanity to the workplace and the vital role stories play. I get a little tired of leaders who hear about the value of storytelling and then tell me they don't have the time to learn how to do it. The fact is it takes practice to be good at anything. Some estimate 10,000 hours of practice. But it is not just any type of practice. You need to engage in deliberate practice just like Ben Franklin did to be world the renowned writer and communicator he became.

Terrence Gargiulo and I and going to share some of our ideas about storytelling deliberate practice in a webinar next week. Please feel free to come along and join our conversation.

We're doing this webinar twice, one timed for Asia Pacific and the other for the Americas. Just click on the link of the webinar you want to attend and fill in your details.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Aust. EST

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM USA PDT

The story about Ben Franklin comes from his autobiography. You can read the whole thing on Google Books.

My friend Greg Stewart is putting his blogging efforts at Clarity Rules behind a movement he cares deeply about: the pursuit of clarity.

His manifesto is simple:

There is a great movement afoot, and I want to help:

Tribes have been started by the likes of Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen, Nancy Duarte of Slide:ology, Dan Roam, Barbara Minto, Chip and Dan Heath and many others, and more and more, their work is having an effect on all of us:

We are improving the way we think and present.

Clarity Rules is a call to arms in support of this growing movement.

Its goal is to spread this good thinking. To be another voice insisting that clarity is an absolute necessity. To unpick tangled thinking. To smooth out waffle. To kill off bad presenting altogether. I want Clarity Rules to be a place where everyone can come and share their stories of clarity winning over obscurity, and to make sense of how it can be done.

I want use this blog to assemble everyone's great ideas and techniques into a series of Clarity Rules we can all share and use.

So let me add some stories and some ideas for better clarity.

Yesterday I blogged about Richard Branson and his simple story to launch Virgin Money. That’s clarity.

A couple of weekends ago my daughter attended a presentation to help her pass her Japanese exams with 1,000 other Victorian students. The presenter read their slides for 90 minutes. That lacks clarity.

But then the presenter switched gears and had two past students role play a good and bad Japanese exam interview. That’s clarity.

Consultants using big words to make them sound more important and intelligent with gems such as transformational leadership, team-based solutions, re-engineered synergy, enhanced competence and retrospective coherence. That lacks clarity.

One of the reasons why these abstract concepts are lost on us is that we don’t have the real life experiences or stories of others’ experience to make sense of them. They are labels without an anchor.

So here is my clarity rule: when introducing a concept that your audience might unfamiliar with, illustrate the idea with a story to ground it and make it concrete.

Greg’s blog is in my must read RSS list because I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to be a better communicator. Plus he’s a friend. We're never short of something to gas bag about.

In the 1970s Irene Pepperberg was studying for her PhD at Harvard in theoretical chemistry but wasn't really loving it. Then she learned about the interesting work that was happening in training animals to communicate with humans. People were working with chimps and dolphins and amazing strides were being made. She was hooked and threw in her chemistry studies and switched to working with animals,

She decided her animal of choice would be a parrot. You would train them to talk and they lived for a long time. So Irene got a Grey Parrot and called him ALEx, which stood for Avian Learning Experiment.

But the research community thought she was nuts. Parrots had small brains, the size of a walnut, and weren't parrots merely pets anyway. How could she be objective in her research? Getting funding was hard but she managed to get a one year grant to get started.

In the first 10 years Alex learned 50 labels for objects. He could tell if an object was one of 7 colours, up to 5 shapes, whether the shape was 2-6 cornered and what material is was made from, such as wood.

Irene would ask him questions and Alex would answer.

"Alex, what's this?"

And he would say, "block."

"Good birdie, and what colour?"

"Blue."

"Good boy, and what shape?"

"Four corners."

"And what matter?"

"Wood."

But despite the progress Irene struggled to get significant support for her work. Grants would come one year at a time rather than the 3-4 years that was normal. Her marriage broke down but she kept going with her research with Alex.

When Alex was 15 they were asked to do a BBC radio interview. By this stage Alex was developing quite a personality because he could now ask questions and interact with Irene.

To start the interview Irene was in a room with the radio host where Alex could not hear what was happening. She told the audience that she was holding an orange square piece of wood. And then the audience hears Irene's heels, click, click, click, as she walks into the room with Alex.

"Alex I'm going to ask you some questions, we are going to do some work." Irene shows the wooden square and says, "What colour?"

And in his little birdie voice Alex says, "No, you tell me what shape."

"OK Alex, it's four cornered. Tell me what colour."

"Tell me what matter," says Alex.

"OK Alex it's wood. Can you tell me what colour?"

"No, how many?"

"Alex, there is only one toy here. Alex, come on, what colour?"

"No, tell me what shape."

"OK Alex, time out, you are misbehaving," and you hear Irene's heels click, clicking as she starts to walk out the door, giving him a time out, and then comes a little birdie voice,

"I'm sorry ... come here ... orange."

Alex and Irene became famous in both the popular press and among her academic colleagues. They had achieved so much to show how animals can communicate with humans.

Sadly Alex died in 2001 aged 30, twenty years younger that what Irene expected and she was devastated. But she showed everyone that amazing things can be done with time, persistence and a parrot with the brain the size of a walnut.

I heard this story on The Moth podcast. You can hear it here.

We have been keeping in touch with Kevin Bishop in the UK since running our Influencing Change workshops earlier in the year. A useful idea when trying to achieve change is to make the invisible visible. Kevin has just sent us an excellent example of this.

One of the main issues in the United Kingdom election campaign has been around the economy and how to reduce the huge Government budget deficit. The recession has left a record £163.4bn (AUD$269.2bn) hole in the UK Government's finances in the last financial year, as tax receipts dried up and public spending kept rising. This has meant that Britain's national debt is now an eye-watering £950bn (AUD$1.565 trillion).

These are huge numbers to try and comprehend. What is the actual difference between a million, a billion and a trillion, and how do you make this somehow real for people (including me!)?

This explanation really helped me come to terms with these huge numbers, in a format I could understand. It says:

• 1 million seconds is equal to 11 ½ days
• 1 billion seconds is equal to 31 ¾ years
• 1 trillion seconds is equal to 31,710 years

So the difference between a million and a billion is the difference between 11 ½ days and 31 ¾ years (11.5 days vs. 11,315 days)!

All figures were taken from this article.

Yesterday I ran a workshop for a group of executives on how to find bright spots in your organisation (groups of people who excel with the same resources as everyone else) and then work out ways to transfer the behaviour evident in these bright spots to other parts of their business. I tried to help them feel what this is like to transfer these bright spot behaviours by telling some stories. I think I was moderately successful. It was clear to me that many participants favoured the analyse-think-change approach while I was advocating see-feel-change (Kotter and Cohen make this distinction in The Heart of Change).

I wish I had some videos like these ones that really help you feel it. In this case they have a road safety message. In both cases they trigger a future story for us increasing the chance we will modify our behaviour. Which one of these two videos had the biggest impact for you?

This post is by our guest blogger, Kevin Bishop, who recently was in Australia and ran a series of workshops with Anecdote on Influencing Change. Shawn met Kevin last year in London. Kevin was responsible for the change program for 40,000 people at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

I have seen examples of this around what a meeting actually costs (see http://www.effectivemeetings.com/diversions/meetingcost.asp ), but have never seen it around preparing documentation. Can you imagine the different conversations in that Executive meeting if they were confronted with a figure of say $25,000 in preparing a pack for their approval? A figure which could equate to employing a person, full-time, in the organisation for six months.

I've just found Garr Reynold's recent post on stories and experience. He makes the good point that people remember stories because they convey emotions, which is very true. We remember what we feel. In this post I would like to briefly explore another reason why we remember stories and touch on the types of stories which are most memorable. Let's take the last point first.

Garr tells us that he visited Haleakala National Park in Japan The park has beautiful but dangerous water falls and sign-posts warn visitors to be careful. Garr noticed that one of the sign-posts seemed more effective that the others because it included actual news clippings of people who had lost their lives. These tragic incidents were told as stories.

Apart from the obvious emotion these stories generated what else might be drawing our attention to these stories? One possibility comes from taking a human evolution and natural selection perspective. Over the 10,000s of years our species has been evolving we've been preoccupied by our own survival (avoiding death), the survival of our children (continuing the species) and sex (creating the next generation). Consequently we care deeply about death, sex and the safety of our children. Any story that feature these topics gains our attention. It helps explain the proliferation of hospital and police dramas on our TVs. So stories of death are hard for us to resist and warning signs that contain these types of stories are attention magnets.

It's true that we remember what we feel but we also remember what we conjure for ourselves. To illustrate this point would you please read this story. I have some questions at the end.

OK, as you were reading this story what could you see in your mind's eye? Could you see the mother and son having dinner? Did you see them walking arm in arm? Did you see him ring his mother? Did you see the envelop and the receipt it contained?

People see stories. We literally re-experience the story with the person telling it and this act of re-creation make the story our own. We remember what we can see and experience.

OK, what about this.

• Stories are memorable because they evoke emotion.
• We remember stories because we visualise what's happening and create our own personal version of the story
• Three of the most memorable types of stories feature death, sex and the safety of children.

What did you see? If you are like me you didn't see a thing. Dots points and opinions don't create imagery and therefore don't conjure emotions and are mostly forgettable.

The story was posted to PassionHR list 16/3/10 by Mannish Aggarwal

Hat tip to David Zinger's post 23 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource Zingers (No. 13) for the link to Garr's post.

It's interesting how we often don't make a comment when someone provides a great service day in, day out but we really notice when someone recovers well when the chips are down.

So if you are anywhere near Coburg and need printing services I highly recommend Kelvin's Kwik Kopy shop. Here is his address and contact details.

Kwik Kopy Printing Centre Coburg

Kelvin Minerds

583 Sydney Road, Coburg, VIC 3058

Phone (03) 9354 5822

This morning, Shawn and I compared recent airline lounge experiences. Mine went a like this

One could argue that the Qantas staff member was being consistent (fair, equal) in her application of the rules. A good thing you might say, except that a very frequent traveller left with the resolve to travel VirginBlue in the future. In Shawn's case, the staff exercised some autonomy, weighed up the situation and decided to be flexible, whilst still making it clear that it was 'against the rules'. Which is the better example of customer service? It reminds me of my time in the Air Force where our mantra was "Rules are for the guidance of the wise and for the blind obedience of fools'.

This article gives an overview of a new book by Jason Jennings, 'Hit the Ground Running' about the secrets of winning CEOs. He didn't find the most successful CEOs any smarter; they were 'smart enough'. This similar to Gladwell's view in his latest book 'Outliers'. Jennings describes these successful leaders:

what differentiates them from their peers is their authenticity, humility, their determination to never make a decision without contemplating it’s long term consequences and their genuine affection for their workers, customers, vendors and suppliers and shareholders...these leaders are incredible listeners who never tire of asking questions.

The author rails against conventional business wisdom, the Gerry Maguire style "show me the money" approach that brought us the GFC and many corporate and leadership disasters. The book has 10 'rules' for successful leaders, a few of which are listed:

1. Practice the golden rule in everything you do - you will reap exactly what you sow
2. Gain the belief of everyone around you instead of demanding of expecting respect.
3. Ask everyone around for help; don’t pretend to have all the answers or the plan. Remember what happened to Carly Fiorina at HP. On her first day she announced to the company that she had the plan and strategy for HP. Everyone felt left out, came to hate her and her regal ways and during her reign she halved the companies value.
4. Work ruthlessly to simplify everything instead of making it more complicated.
5. Make sure that everyone in the company knows the strategy and their role in its achievement.
6. Cultivate a fierce sense of urgency in everyone because either things aren’t going well and you need to fix them fast or things are going well but the world (and your circumstances) are going to change and you need to be ready.

Why do so many leaders and organisations behave counter to these concepts? They all seem pretty logical. For me, its a good example of the 'knowing-doing' gap: we know this stuff is important but we just don't do it.

It sounds like organisations that apply the rules above would be pretty good places to work. Shawn and I are fortunate in that our narrative insight approaches are about bringing the 'rules' above to life in organisations. As a result we get to work in some pretty good organisations on projects that make a difference. Pretty cool huh?

You can imagine my surprise when on day 1 of the conference I found myself sitting at the same table as Dan Kirsch. I've never met Dan. I've seen some of his posts in ActKM but top-most in my mind was that Dan was the guy who triggered the events that led Yahoogroups to delete the ActKM forum. At first we didn't say too much to each other and then I found myself next to Dan in the line for lunch, so I asked him, "so from your perspective what happened to our YahooGroups forum?" We sat down and he told me the story.

I came away with a different perspective on those events and it reinforced for me the importance of listening to other people's stories to make connections. Stories told and listened were creating new connections throughout the conference. You could feel the energy it was creating among the 150 delegates.

On the first day I started off sitting next to Kerry from CPA. She couldn't believe how small Luna Park was because as a 12 year old she used to think it was an enormous theme park where you could get lost for hours. Context is so important on how we view things. We were blessed with sunny Sydney days and being right on the harbour we looked out over the harbour bridge and the opera house. Spectacular venue.

Rather than give you a blow by blow description of the conference I thought it might be more fun (especially for me) to just recount those things that grabbed my attention.

I enjoyed Frank Connolly's presentation the most. Frank is the co-ordinator for the Victorian Public Sector Continuous Improvement Network. It was like watching a stand up comedian. Not in the sense of delivering funny lines but in just how relaxed he looked and how well he connected with us. I really admired how Frank phrased his ideas, which were focussed on creativity and how we talk to each other. He told us when he was uncertain of what he knew, he spoke directly and plainly, and showed real empathy for the discipline and his place in it. He was creating a space that encouraged conversation. Frank also left us with this enduring image: "KM is like pushing a loose stool up a hill with a toothpick."

When Dale Chatwin from the Australian Bureau of Statistics was presenting I felt myself cheering him on. Dale was one of the few presenters who had the courage to admit their efforts to establish communities of practice were less than successful. It was a warts and all expose describing how ABS mandated CoPs based on IT consultants recommendations and from what I could read between the lines it seemed that CoPs were mainly viewed as online discussion forums. Dale and a few others knew better and are working to turn things around.

You might have seen me tweeting about On the Origin of Stories. One of its themes is just how important play is for animals, such as lions, because it creates a safe way to learn how to fight and hunt and by practising these things strength, agility and speed also improves. With humans we engage in cognitive play through storytelling, dance, painting, singing etc. Somehow however we've managed to kill many of the opportunities in organisations for cognitive play, with the exception of mind games. So it was refreshing to experience Patrick Lambe's session using his KM Method and Culture cards. At each table we played a set of games which got us talking and thinking in new ways. Great fun.

Roberto Evaristo from 3M showed us how they are mapping the skills of their employees using network graphs. I've been involved in a number of skill register projects and most have failed because they require a lot of time to compile and are rarely referred to which in turns diminishes the motivation for anyone to keep them up to date. Roberto's approach seemed different because senior folk were using the network graphs on a regular basis to decide who would be on what team, where learning efforts should be focussed and who might succeed another based on capabilities. You can imagine that these types of decisions matter to people and would give you plenty of motivation to update your details.

I have to admit I'm normally a KM conference-goer who leaves the room when the software vendor sponsoring the event stands up to speak. I know this is disrespectful but as a delegate I've found that I normally gain much more from the discussions with colleagues in the networking lounge than hear what is often merely a sales pitch. But on day 2 of the conference I was the conference chair so there was no skipping out of the room for me. As a result I was pleasantly surprised by Cuneyt Uysal's presentation from Open Text. Cuneyt (pronounced Jenai) gave us a good context for what was happening in social software. This quote sticks in my mind, "young people only use email to communicate with old people." It checks out with my 14 and 16 year old but like all definitive statements it's not the whole story. Most importantly it reminded me of what was happening in the software world and I was chuffed to see that ideas that I blogged about years ago are being incorporated into mainstream products such as social ranking of search, idea crowdsourcing (but I didn't call it that) and easily incorporating video.

Dave Snowden spoke a couple of times during the conference starting with the conference keynote. The idea that got me interested was the concept that it's not that useful to think of tacit knowledge as something that's in your head but that it's contained throughout your body. I was sort of expecting Dave to go the next step and say that tacit knowledge extends beyond your self and incorporates tacit knowledge of those people and things you are connected to or surrounded by. It reminds me of the network controller who couldn't remember what he knew in his lounge room or that classic of anthropology, Cognition in the Wild where each navigator alone was unable to explain or dock an aircraft carrier, but together they could.

During the conference I heard a some speakers recount the meme, "we learn best from failure." I'm not sure this is entirely true. Anecdotally I remember distantly when I read about the Ritz Carlton approach to conveying values using stories and I'm now delivering a similar approach to a client on the topic of innovation. Here I've learned from a good practice. As Bob Dickman once told me, "you remember what you feel." I can imagine memory being a key first step to learning. And some research shows it's more complex than just learning from failure. Take this example. The researchers take two groups who have never done ten pin bowling and get them bowling for a couple of hours. Then one group is taken aside and coached on what they were doing wrong and how they could improve. The other group merely watches an edited video of what they were doing right. The second group did better than the first. However there was no difference with experienced groups.

So I'm hoping we will have many more presentations at KM conferences like Frank's and Dale's which open up the possibilities, speak plainly and directly without jargon and doublespeak.

Thanks to the conference organisers, Ark Group, and especially Valerie and Aimee, for being attentive and putting into practice the ideas for improvements year in year out. It was a worthwhile and enjoyable event.

Last week I gave a presentation to the Canberra Pecha Kucha group on complexity. I subsequently recorded the presentation and loaded it to youtube.

Pecha Kucha (explained in a you tube video here) is a presentation format where you have 20 slides and each slide is visible for 20 seconds. Putting the presentation together highlighted a number of things, the most important of which is that it reminded me that organisations and governments still have a long way to go to be able to make effective progress with complex problems. I am hoping the youtube video will help raise awareness of this issue.

The Pecha Kucha format was very useful in helping to really focus the message. All of the presentations last week were excellent, one in particular was very moving. Having seen a range of quite bad Pecha Kucha presentations previously, my conclusion is that you need to practice the Pecha Kucha a few times for it to work.

My thanks go to Scott Sharpe for following up a conversation on the night where I attributed the quote "I have written you a long letter as I didn't have time to write a short one" to Mark Twain. Scott did some checking and it turns out that this quote is often mistakenly attributed to Twain. It is actually Blaise Pascal's and the correct quote is "I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter." Thanks Scott.

Senator Kate Lundy hosted yesterday's Publicsphere #2 event on Government 2.0. I attended Parliament House for the morning and 'watched' online throughout the afternoon (using the live blog, video stream and the twitter traffic (#publicsphere). It was interesting to watch presentations to an audience of 150 people, the majority of whom had laptops open and were twittering (about the event in the main) and googling relevant info to add into the twitter traffic. Personally, I felt a little overwhelmed by the many channels of information and didn't get much value from the presentations themselves.

Things I liked about the event were:

• 15 minute presentation format - this forced speakers to have a few clear messages
• The diverse technologies available meant there was something for everyone
• Meeting some very interesting people and catching up with some people that I haven't seen for ages
• It was very well organised and all up it ran pretty smoothly
• Seeing the passion in Kate Lundy's eyes for getting this stuff happening

Things I didn't like about the event were:

• A constant stream of presentations with no provision for discussion. It appeared that the organisers thought that electronic interaction via twitter and commenting on the live blog obviated the need for people to speak to each other. Exacerbating this was the preference for eating into the few breaks to make up time.
• Realising that I couldn't cope too well with the multiple inputs while attempting to build a mind map of things that resonated with me (and watching others appear to handle it with ease). I did learn a lot about twitter on the day.

One of the key themes was the urgent need for change in the people component of the equation. Politicians and public servants live in a culture where behaviour is focussed on control of information, avoidance of risk etc. Not that they have any bad intent, they just live in a world where this is the norm. Nearly every speaker touched on this issue. Nonetheless I expect that tradition will hold and only a miniscule proportion of funding will address the change component. One approach is to find out government positive deviants and work out how to influence others to adopt their behaviours and methods. There must be some out there.

A couple of week ago a 28 year old naval engineer delivered his baby son based on watching some DIY YouTube videos. When I heard this news I realised that the DIY video's time had come and it wouldn't be too long before we see its wide adoption in organisations.

I've been a long-time user of screencasting technology such as ScreenFlow as a way of recording how to do things on your computer. As an example here is a 3 minute guide on how to establish a cash flow schedule in Salesforce.com.

How to establish a schedule in Salesforce from Shawn Callahan on Vimeo.

Notice how I've preceded the instructions with a story that conveys why it's important to go through these steps.

1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

If you don't know what TED is, you don't know what you are missing. You can see some of my favourite TED videos here.

This list is from Presentation Zen.

Last year I wrote about how the skill to apologize will become even more valuable as the world get even more complex and speedy. Things will go wrong.

Well it looks like some books are being published on the topic. Here's what Tom Peters has discovered.

In What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, Marshall Goldsmith proclaims: "I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make. It is the centerpiece of my work with executives who want to get better."

All I can add is:

Amen!

I believe that skill at Apologizing is nothing short of a "strategic competence"!

"Strategic competence"? Absolutely! Customers lost for want of a timely and sincere "I'm sorry. My fault" number in the billions, from restaurant diners to aircraft engine purchasers.

And now there's an entire book on the topic arriving May 1, Effective Apology: Mending Fences, Building Bridges, and Restoring Trust, by John Kador.

Read a whole book on the topic?

Yes!

Damn it!

Stra-te-gic-com-pe-tence!

In addition to being an excellent "how to" guide, the book also captures hard evidence. For example, with a new policy on apologies, Toro, the lawn mower folks, reduced the average cost of a claim from $115,000 in 1991 to $35,000 in 2008—and the company hasn't been to trial since 1994. The VA hospital in Lexington, Massachusetts, developed an astonishing approach to apologizing for errors (forthcoming—even when no patient request or claim was made). In 2000, the overall mean VA system malpractice settlement was $413,000. The Lexington VA hospital settlement # was $36,000—and there were far fewer per patient claims to begin with.

At a recent leadership program we were talking about values and a participant related a recent experience: "Another manager gave one of her staff a real serve in front of the whole office. I was appalled, it set such a bad example. And one of our values is respect for the individual". When I asked what happened when he 'called' her on the behaviour, the reply was a blank look and "er, well, I didn't say anything".

According to Human Synergistics data, the number two style for Australian and New Zealand mangers is 'Avoidance' (number one is Oppositional - oppose ideas and be critical of others). So, imagine 10 million managers and workers in Australia avoiding having difficult conversations.

Avoiding difficult conversations like the example above has a huge downside when it comes to organisational values. If behaviour that contravenes your values is not 'called' then you are effectively condoning it. So, having difficult conversations is critical in bringing your values to life. A value is only a value if you do something when it is contravened.

When we work with organisations to improve their ability to have these difficult conversations we find a few gems, like "One of my fellow managers, who is also a friend, is very loud. She is a good person, and a good manager, but she just talked too loud. I wanted to talk to her about it but I knew she wouldn't take it well. But I had to do it. And you know, she took it really well, was grateful for the feedback. It really surprised me".

A key behaviour we encourage groups to adopt to make these conversations possible is 'Call me on it...respectfully and with good intent'. Would your organisation be a better place if these difficult conversations were the norm rather than the exception?

To paraphrase Annette Simmons, "People wont listen to you until they know who you are and what you want." And one of the best ways to introduce yourself and answer these two questions is to tell a story that reveals something about your character and experience.

The challenge for many people, however, is to find and tell a story that doesn't sound like you are just blowing your own trumpet. One approach is to take the spotlight off yourself and make someone else the lead. You can then play the supporting role.

When I introduce myself to a new audience I often tell the story of how I got started in storytelling by meeting Dave Snowden. Dave is a world leader in knowledge management and narrative techniques and is an impressive speaker and storyteller.

At this point you might want to have a look at this video where I tell the story of how I met Dave. After you've watched the video, and before you read on, please jot down what you inferred about me after hearing the story and pop your answer in the comments. This will help illustrate a key point to this approach.

For those of you that didn't watch the video, here's the basic plot. Dave comes to Canberra and presents at a seminar I organise. He captivates the audience for the whole day with stories and new ways of seeing the world. I'm so taken with the performance that I resolve to do similar work one day and that night write a story and send it to Dave. He admonishes me for missing the whole point of his work, which is to help organisations make sense of their own stories, not to craft stories. We become friends and I join to lead his research centre on complexity in Australia and New Zealand. Then I leave IBM to set up Anecdote in 2004.

So Dave is front and centre in this story. He is the star but I play a significant supporting role.

When I ask the participants of our storytelling for business leaders workshops (which I'm giving in London in June) about what they infer about me after hearing this story (I tell the story at the beginning of the day and ask for their feedback in the afternoon), they say the following:

• you are passionate about storytelling
• you are willing to take risks
• you have large organisation experience
• you've worked for a highly respected company
• you are confident to share your mistakes
• you are experienced in storytelling

I never get the sense that they think I'm a poser (mind you, that might not be saying). To the contrary, it feels like we make a connection quickly and the workshop is off to a good start.

So think about those times when you'd lent a helping hand, where you'd help create the conditions for others to succeed, and tell these stories to introduce yourself and build rapport. These stories speak volumes about who you are, what drives you and they reveal your character; the pre-requisites for trusting collaborations.

More people will be looking for jobs this year. Sadly unemployment is rising. Getting a job interview will be tough so it will be doubly important to make the best possible impression as the interviewer pokes and probes to get an idea of who you are and whether you’ll fit in.

Job interviewers these days know the importance of stories. They know that stories give a good insight into your capabilities and experience. They call it behavioural interview technique, which is just a fancy title for collecting stories from you. So you’d better have some stories to tell that reveal your character, skills and attitude to life.

Many people talk about stories but I’m continuously surprised how many of these people can’t differentiate between a story and an opinion. This is important because you need to know what a story is so you know what you are looking for.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb for identifying stories: if what you are saying starts with a time marker such as, “In 2003 ...” or “Three months ago ...,” then there is a good chance you're telling a story. If after that time marker you recount a series of events, one connected to the next, then you are telling a story.

The previous 4 paragraphs do not contain a single story. Here is an example of a story (personal experience, an anecdote):

I ran my first anecdote circle in 2000 while working for IBM. I was helping Land and Water Australia develop their knowledge strategy and my first session was with a group of CSIRO scientists. Before the session I remembered the advice given to me by my colleague, Sharon Darwent. She said: “Just be comfortable with any silences and when someone provides an opinion ask for an example.” So I started the session and ask my first question. Everyone just looked at each other in complete silence. I held my nerve for what seemed liked an eternity and eventually one of the scientists spoke up with a sigh, “OK, I’ll go first ...” After that the stories flowed. They went for a couple of hours non-stop.

You can see the video version of me telling this story on YouTube.

Finding our own stories

There are two ways we remember our experiences: attached to emotions or attached to imagery. Therefore we need to use both to recount what we know.

Start by drawing a timeline of your career. Plot the significant events (work and personal) and jot down next to the events how you remember feeling: excited, angry, pumped, disappointed.

When an event springs to mind recount it out loud to yourself, or even better, tell it to someone. Avoid writing these recollections down verbatim. Just right some rough notes. Otherwise the temptation is to recount the experience they way you’ve written it which will sound unnatural.

You should have 4 or 5 stories now. Let’s switch to visual queues to remember some more. Head over to flickr or iStockphoto and select 30 images at random. Look at each one and see if any experiences spring to mind. Again recount them and jot down some rough notes.

One of the best ways to remember your own stories is to hear others. Find a couple of colleagues, friends and just get reminiscing about the good old days. Make notes about any anecdote that springs to mind about your own experiences at work focusing on the ones that set you apart. In fact you should always carry a story notebook to jot them down because they often creep up on you by surprise and I will guarantee you will forget it instantly if you don’t either write it down of have the opportunity to tell the story a couple of times.

Practising and improving your stories

Your first retellings will tend to be rambling and, quite frankly, boring. The rambling nature of the story, however, is often reduced by telling the story to people and watching their response. Getting feedback in the form of their response to your story (facial expressions, comments - nothing formal) will tell you what to keep and what to jettison. But you can do more.

You can increase the impact of any story in three ways:

1. be specific and avoid generalisations. Instead of saying, “I once worked for company that sold database software.” Say, “While the pre-sales manager at Oracle Systems ...”
2. the story has to about a specific individual trying to achieve something, ideally with some obstacle that they eventually overcame. Avoid stories about companies, departments and even teams. Tell stories about people who have names. Instead of saying, “In 2004 the risk assessment team was facing a problem ...,” say “Charles Kleiner in risk assessment was facing a problem.” And of course you were instrumental in helping Charles overcome this obstacle.
3. help people visualise what’s happening. The best stories are ones that the listener can picture vividly in their mind’s eye. Instead of of saying, “We drove up to the vineyard ...,” say “We drove up to an adobe-style vineyard with acres of vines all around us ...”

Every story we tell gives people an insight into who we are. They are quite revealing. So before you tell them to an interviewer it’s a good idea to tell your stories to a friend and ask them about the qualities they inferred about you based on the story. Is it resilience, courage, persistence, creativity etc.? You will surprised to find that a story which you thought, for example, was about persistence, comes across to the listener as arrogance. You will want to avoid those ones.

Speaking of things to avoid, no one want to hear your life story. They can read that in your resume. They want to hear about the specific moments in your life where you made a difference. Use your stories.

Now you should have a dozen good stories to tell at the interview. Practise them whenever you can. In casual conversations, when the time is right, say something like, “Yes, that reminds me of ...” By practising your stories in natural, conversational settings you will be in a better position to repeat your story in this natural way at the interview which will convey tremendous confidence.

Good luck with the job hunt and let me know whether your storytelling efforts made a difference.

I would like to thank Michael Specht from our Jelly coworking group who pointed out to me the increase need for job hunters to be able to better find and tell their stories.