12/10/07 |

Anecdote News - October 2007

By Daryl. Filed in Newsletter.

Welcome to the October 2007 edition of the Anecdote newsletter. In this edition we have:

• Book review: Wikinomics
• Technique: Most Significant Change
• What we're up to: Our engagements and upcoming events
• Productivity Tip: Rough sketching
• Breaking News: Steve Denning book launch

We hope you really enjoy reading it. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your comments, insights or feedback and feel free to pass this email on to your colleagues.

Regards -- the Anecdote team

Books we're reading...

Wikinomics How mass collaboration changes everything.
by Donald Tapscott and Anthony Williams
-- Review by Robyn Ciuro

I recently listened to a recorded version of 'Wikinomics' while I was travelling about in my car. Listening is probably not the best way to 'read' a work of this length. For one thing, it's really hard to take good notes while you've got both hands on the steering wheel. But you can get a reasonable overview of what the authors are trying to say.

I had previously listened to Thomas Friedman's book - 'The World is Flat', which I believe provided a deeper analysis of the issues and was a little stronger on theory. Indeed, I reached Wikinomics Disc Four of Ten before I began to feel I was getting some content of value.

The early reading was almost over the top in its unbridled enthusiasm for collaborative ways of working and the rise of social networking tools in a global market.

“ ... this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy.”

Tapscott and Wiliams identify and develop four major trends at work in the 21st century.

1. Openness
2. Peer Production (think Linux and Wikipedia)
3. Sharing
4. Acting globally

To work in this environment means that not only is top-down management giving way to horizontal collaboration but traditional boundaries impacting secrecy and patents are also disappearing. I particularly liked the discussion about websites versus vibrant communities.

'' ... 2006 was the year when the programmable web eclipsed the static web every time: Flickr beat Webshots; Wikipedia beat Britannica; Blogger beat CNN; Epinions beat Consumer-reports; Upcoming beat Evite; Google Maps beat MapQuest; MySpace beat Friendster; and Craigslist beat Monster.''

“What was different? The losers launched web sites, the winners launched vibrant communities. The losers built walled gardens. The winners build public squares. The losers innovated internally. The winners innovated with their users. The losers jealously guarded their data and software interfaces. The winners shared them with everyone.”

There's room for debate there but there is no denying the point Tapscott and Williams are trying to make. Engage your users or lose out.

Wikinomics is a good place to begin building an understanding of the technological changes driving today's economy. It does present a somewhat oversimplified and not particularly critical view of the wonders of globalisation. And if you don’t know what people are talking about when Web 2.0 enters the conversation then this is a good start.

The best value came in the final disc where the authors discuss the challenge of introducing collaborative, dynamic ways of doing things into workplaces so that open collaboration can flourish.

And in the spirit of practising what they preach the authors end with an invitation for readers (and listeners) to participate in editing the book via their wiki at www.wikinomics.com.

Techniques we're using ...

Most Significant Change

Most Significant Change (MSC) is useful for assessing the impact of hard to measure initiatives such as culture change, leadership training, aspects of change management, learning intiatives and management development. Anecdote has used this technique in these areas for IBM Australia, AstraZeneca and ANZ Bank.

''Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.''

When Einstein uttered these words little did he know that he was stating the case for techniques like Most Significant Change.

MSC is a simple process for helping senior decision-makers develop a gut feel for what an initiative has achieved. It's not a replacement for gathering and analysing the numbers. Rather is a supplemental evaluation that helps to systematically develop decision-makers intuitive knowledge. And research shows that many of the decisions we make are based on our judgements and intuitive, so it's a part of our knowledge we mustn't ignore.

There is a brief explanation about how MSC works on our blog.

Are you interested in learning the technique and are in a position, and have a need, to practice MSC? That is, you are often called on to evaluate programs and initiatives? Anecdote can help you. We've developed a unique service to run a one-week MSC pilot project in your organisation. After a full week of instruction, mentoring and feedback, you will have the confidence and knowledge to apply this powerful technique. If you would like to know more about running an MSC Pilot, please send an email to: info@anecdote.com.au.

What we're up to ...

Consulting Engagements and Projects:

• Knowledge strategy program and regional deployment for government authority
• Establishing communities of practice within a global defence and aerospace company
• Ongoing leadership program for a multinational pharmaceuticals company
• Leadership development for defence organisation
• Fostering communities of practice within a global engineering company

Upcoming Events that we're running or attending:

16-18 October - Intelligence 2007, Hobart. Shawn presenting on knowledge retention
22 October - Knowledge strategy summit, Canberra
23-24 October - ActKM Conference, Canberra. Shawn presenting the after dinner speech
25 October - Seminar with visiting guest speaker Patrick Lambe. Open invite here.
30 October - Seminar for the Victorian State Library - Practical business narrative by Shawn
01-02 November - Australian Corporate Lawyers Association conference, Shawn is a guest speaker talking about CoP

Productivity tips ...
Partly because we're busy, but also as part of our quest for continuous learning and improvement, here at Anecdote, we're always looking for ways to improve our own personal productivity. We thought that we'd share a few tips and tricks ...

The power of the rough sketch

Sketchcast.com is a great service for making rough sketches and recording your voice over explaining the sketch as you draw it.

Here are a couple we've done.

* http://sketchcast.com/view/bUY1vy1/ - on why use business narrative
* http://sketchcast.com/view/9Oc490Z/ - on the relationship between projects and communities of practice
* http://sketchcast.com/view/1wE9sfp/ - on community of practice participation

Breaking News ...

We wanted to alert you to an fabulous new book by Stephen Denning. It's called The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative. It's published by Jossey-Bass.

The book has already received great reviews for several prominent people including Reed Hastings (CEO of NetFlix), from best selling leadership author, Jim Kouzes. The Financial Times said in its review (August 29): “If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their organisations are doomed.”

Shawn's read the first chapter and loves what he read.

To celebrate the launch, we've joined with Stephen and his colleagues, including Larry Prusak, Chip Heath, Jim Kouzes, Rob Cross, Seth Kahan, Richard Stone, Dave Zinger, Annette Simmons, Katalina Groh, Madelyn Blair, Katharine Hansen, Svend-Erik Engh, Randy Dipner, Daniele Chauvel, Connie Ingram and Stan Garfield - in offering to purchasers of the book dozens of free tools, papers, videos and other bonus items on leadership, storytelling and knowledge management at no additional cost to you. is offering. They will be distributed from his web-site beginning 12.01am GMT Monday October 15:

http://www.stevedenning.com/launch.html

Some of the gifts are in limited quantities. Get them while they last.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

14/09/07 |

Anecdote News - September 2007

By Daryl. Filed in Newsletter.

Welcome to the September Anecdote newsletter. It's been a busy but exciting past month. During August we celebrated Anecdote's third birthday and to mark the occasion, Shawn put together a number of short presentations exploring our history. This short history of Anecdote can be found on our blog:

In this edition of the newsletter we have:

* Book review: Understanding Comics
* Technique: Decision Games
* What we're up to
* Productivity Tip: TinyURL
* Breaking News

We hope you enjoy reading it. Feel free to send any comments, insights or feedback you might have.

Regards -- the Anecdote team

Books we're reading...

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

A couple of years ago now, I read Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age". This book had such a big impact on me, inspiring both a number of personal changes and a more recent career change! So when I read Dan's recommendation of Scott McClouds; "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" as "... one of the best books I've ever read.", I though WOW! that's some sort of recommendation, I've got to see this for myself.

While this book might have been Pink best book, for me that mantel is still held by J.R.R Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings'. Nevertheless, 'Understanding Comics' certainly is an extremely interesting look at the strange, and yet somehow familiar world of comics.

The first thing that strikes you is that the book is written as a book-length comic. A brave and innovative approach. Yet it's appealing, and 'walks the walk' in terms of applying his own craft as a means of demonstrating what he's talking about. An amazing experiential form of writing. It's easy to digest, whilst at the same time thought provoking and interesting.

Not only does it explain how comics work but covers off a range of other comic related topics: looking historically at the use of comics as a medium; exploring the different styles and uses of transitions; time and motion and other techniques. McCloud also touches briefly on some weighty philosophical subjects, including the relationship between art and understanding. His look at the pictorial representation used in comics to explain the way that they represent the world and the reader is at first a little mind-boggling, but on further inspection is fascinating.

McCloud's use of a 'map' or triangular model of visual iconography to show the range of iconic abstraction to photographic representation (horizontal axis) and the range of ‘pure’ abstraction to representation (vertical axis) used in comics is useful. The plotting of different types of comics against this map was enlightening as it allows an insight into why artists may have chosen a certain style, and what they are trying to communicate through the art.

McCloud states that his goal in writing the book is to "encourage the reader to consider exploring, or continuing to explore comics on their own." Judged against this criteria, I have no choice but to say that he achieved what he set out to do. He has piqued my curiosity in the comic art form, and rekindled a dormant passion that I had for visual and graphic arts as forms of communication. I'm off to the library to dig out some comic books.

Techniques we're using ...

Decision Games: Developing intuition and problem solving skills through systematic and smart practice.

Meaningful experience improves your intuition by helping you to build patterns and mental models. Real life is experience is hard to beat but sometimes you don’t get the opportunity. And it may be that we can’t afford to learn from our mistakes. Anecdote recently worked on a project for a government department where we used decision games to help new starters get this practice. It is a technique described by Gary Klein in his book “Intuition at Work.”

Decision games help you:

1. Identify and understand the decision requirements of your job
2. Practice the difficult decisions in context; and
3. Review your decision making experience.

Decision games have a name, some background, a narrative description of the scenario itself and usually some sort of visual representation. They are stories that build to a climax and a dilemma. The actual decision is less important than the thinking that goes into it. It’s merely a device to trigger the decision making process and allow the group to talk about it and transfer their knowledge.

A decision game should use a personal experience that focuses on a type of judgement where people are repeatedly struggling. Stories collected from within the organistion are a good basis to build a game upon.

You can play decision games on your own but you lose much of the value gained from group learning. Small groups of six to eight people are ideal. The people in the organisation are the best people to develop the games and Anecdote can help facilitate the game development based on stories collected. Good learning can also come out of the process of constructing the games. You can even run a decision game online in a discussion forum.

You aren't just restricted to asking what decision they would make. You can also ask them what information they would gather, or what questions they would have, or how they would assess the situation. Ask them what problems the might anticipate, or what they would expect to happen in the future or what guidance they would offer. These are all ways people use their intuition.

They can also think about the external and internal forces that might be at work. What are the emotions and perceptions that might have influenced your decision and that might have influenced the behaviour of other scenario protagonists? Then consider what external factors might have influenced your decision and the behaviour of others in the scenario.

Here is an example of a decision game we used on our recent project.

-Giving someone a lift-

You have recently joined a government agency. The department was keen to employ you in this regional role because you will be able to work closely with the locals and form an effective link with the department. You have taken on a role as a project officer and will be helping, among other things, to organise job fairs in regional Victoria.

Two weeks ago your supervisor called you into her office and told you that you will be attending two job fairs, one in Bairnsdale and the other in Lakes Entrance. Your supervisor says you will need to take a government vehicle and there is one important rule that must be followed: only government employees can travel in the car because of insurance requirements.

Your supervisor has been terrific in getting you up to speed in the department. She really seems to care about your feelings and progress but at the same time it’s clear she is tough but fair.

On the day of the job fair you drive down early to Bairnsdale and the morning is a fabulous event for the department. All of the community is there and you catch up with plenty of people you have known forever and meet many more. You know there are some respected community leaders in town that you must catch up with so you drop in and pay your respects.

At lunchtime you realise you’d better get going to Lakes Entrance and as you start travelling out of town you notice a group of people next to the road. They are hitching tyo Lakes Entrance. They flag you down and ask for lift.

You remember the instructions you were given back by your supervisor.

Take three minutes and determine how you think you should proceed and consider the reasons for your suggestions.

We had heard this story told in the early stage of the project and there were some interesting solutions presented by staff and managers. But when it was presented as a decision game with a mixed group of new starters and experienced staff we were amazed at the variety and number of great new options that were suggested by the group. Experience teaches the biggest lessons and makes the biggest impressions.

What we're up to ...
Consulting Engagements and Projects:

• Aboriginal Staff Induction project for Large Government Department
• Knowledge Strategy program and regional deployment for Government authority
• Evaluation of a systems implementation for a large construction company
• Leadership program for a multinational Pharmaceuticals company
• Business strategy and leadership development for Defence organisation

Upcoming Events that we're running or attending:

• 04-Sep - Anecdote: Narrative Techniques for Knowledge Retention breakfast. Sydney, AU.
• 05-Sep - Anecdote: Narrative Techniques for Knowledge Retention breakfast. Canberra, AU.
• 06-Sep - Anecdote: Narrative Techniques for Knowledge Retention breakfast. Melbourne, AU.
• 19-Sep - Attending Intranet '07 Conference. Sydney, AU.
• 16-19 Sep - Attending AIM Conference, Sydney, AU.

Productivity tips ...
Partly because we're busy, but also as part of our quest for continuous learning and improvement, here at Anecdote, we're always looking for ways to improve our own personal productivity. We thought that we'd share a few tips and tricks ...

tinyURL:

Have you ever experienced the frustration of sending a web link (URL) in an email only to realise that it has 'broken' when sent, causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? I have: that was until a friend pointed me towards a simple solution ... tinyUrls.

What is it? Simply, it's a website http://tinyurl.com that enables you to turn a URL that looks like this:

http://yellowpages.com.ausearchpostCategory
Search.doheadingCode=22276&sortBy
Alphabetical=false&businessType=comic+books
&sortByClosestMatch=false&sortByDistance
=false&sortByDetail=true&locationClue=All
+States&stateId=9&safeLocationClue=All
+States&currentLetter=

into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/3yus53

To do this, all that you need to do is copy and paste the long URL from your browser into a box on the tinyURL website and hit a button.

You can then copy and paste the tinyURL into your email. This URL will not break and never expires, meaning that the URL can be accessed at any time in the future, or can be re-used.

A simple solution that works well.

Breaking News ...
Last week we delivered our Narrative Techniques for Knowledge Retention seminars to audiences in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. We had some great conversations, shared our ideas and also learnt a lot.

Knowledge retention is certainly a big issue that many organisations face, not only in the coming years with the 'baby boomers' leaving the workforce, but also in the more immediately future. With today's employees constantly on the move and a high churn rate in the labor market new types of employee-employer relationships are created. Business is now complex, interconnected, messy and unpredictable.

New approaches and different ways of working together will be required to deal with this. That's why narrative techniques - stories and intuition - should play an important role in organisations knowledge retention strategy, particularly in the key area of transfering knowledge. Why? Because narrative techniques are a great way to get a handle on this messiness. Listening and working with the stories people are telling in your organisation delivers facts in context with emotion, and carry with them some of the messiness inherent in the business environment. We've shared a couple of videos on our blog of our client, Arthur Shelley from Cadbury Schweppes, talking about how knowledge has been lost, shared and recovered in his organisation, which illustrate the power of narrative.

If you'd like to know more about our approach to knowledge retention or if you're interested in attending a seminar on this topic in the near future, send an email to: info@anecdote.com.au.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Permalink | Comments (2)

19/05/07 |

Anecdote News - May 2007

By Shawn. Filed in Narrative, Newsletter.

** Anecdote News **
Brought to you by Anecdote - Putting Stories to Work
http://www.anecdote.com.au

Discovering lost knowledge

Clients often ask us to suggest tangible ways to minimise
the impact of people leaving their organisation. The exodus
might be due to people retiring or in the case of one
organisation, people leave because the culture says
“you need to move positions to show your career is progressing.”

In one case everyone in a regional outpost was new to the job
leaving the team of 16 without a good understanding of the
work that has been done in the 15 years their group has been
operating. To be effective this regional group needs to know
about the scientific studies that have occurred in their region.

To re-find this knowledge the group is planning to invite past
employees to a world cafe. But because the current team is
new and they only know some of the past employees, they are going
to ask the people they know to name others they should invite and so
on until they get as many names as possible.

The event will be part reunion and part world cafe where
small tables will be manned by a person from the current team
and past employees will join each table and talk about the projects
they remember were done in the region. All the ideas are captured
on butcher's paper tablecloth and the visitors rotate to the next table
where their table facilitator fills them in on the conversation that's
happened so far prompting people to remember new projects.

Questions that elicit stories

We've written quite a bit on how to elicit stories and the questions you
should ask, and the ones to avoid.

• Questions to elicit stories
• Crafting good anecdote circle questions
• How Do You Create Story-Eliciting Questions?

One of the things we said is, “use 'when' and 'where' questions and
avoid 'how' and 'what' questions.” Questions like “When have you
been inspired at work?” tend to elicit stories. While questions like,
“What do you think about your work?” tends to elicit abstract opinions.

There is an exception that always bothered me. The simple question,
“What happened?” This is a great story collecting question. Well it hit me
yesterday while listening to a talkback radio host, Richard Stubbs. His
show is all about eliciting stories from his listeners and yesterday he
wanted stories about the things people achieved this week and he
simply asked, “What did you do?”

So 'what' questions that focus on actions elicit stories. Other 'what'
questions such as “What do you think?” or “What do you feel?” will
likely result in opinions.

========

If you enjoy Anecdote News, please forward it to
friends and colleagues. It comes to you every Month
from learning and change consultants and corporate
anthropologist Anecdote. You can sign up for this newsletter at:
http://www.anecdote.com.au/subscribe.php

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

19/02/07 |

Anecdote newsletter February 2007

By Shawn. Filed in Narrative, Newsletter, Storytelling.

This newsletter was sent to our subscribers a week ago. If you would like to receive this information with all the other of our newsletter subscribers, just go here. I’ve also created a new category ‘newsletter’ so you will be able to view all the newsletters we send out in the future.

Good morning,

I have just discovered an excellent exercise you can try with your colleagues, clients and loved ones. I’ve used it a couple of times this week and people get it. It’s called ‘tappers and listeners’ and is one of the many engaging stories in Dan and Chip Heath’s new book, Made to Stick. Here’s how it works. Ask your audience to participate with you in a little game. You will tap out a song with your fingers or a pencil and you ask the audience to guess the song. Pick two songs everyone knows well—I was using Happy Birthday to Me and Advance Australia Fair. Most people are unable to guess correctly, though Happy Birthday is a lot easier than Advanced Australia Fair. In fact, Elizabeth Newton, a PhD researcher from Stanford, found that, on average, only 2.5% of the listeners she tested could guess the song. But here is the rub. When she asked her tappers how likely it was for the listeners to guess correctly, they expected the listeners to get is right 50% of the time. The tapper has the song in their head and can hear it as clear as a bell. They are cursed with their own knowledge and expect everyone else to hear it as easily as they do. Every communication suffers from the same dynamic and this newsletter is no exception. I’ll do my best to fill in the taps with a few melodic whistles.

With that said, welcome to our first newsletter for 2007. We hope you have had a good holiday break and are have broken all your new year’s resolutions :-). It has been a fast start for us being busy getting ready for our workshops in the USA, helping a community of chocolate experts see their social networks, coaching a Paris-based CFO on storytelling, using stories in a leadership development program, and leading a change management initiative in support of an IT implementation. All this activity might make us tired if we didn’t love our work so much.

We were going to have a theme for this newsletter like ‘Doing knowledge strategies’ or ‘Getting a community of practice started’ but some other tidbits of interesting information appeared that we thought you might like (as an aside, Shawn has written a 3-pager on how to start a community of practice and if you would like a copy, just sent him an email-shawn@anecdote.com.au). Why don’t we start with a mystery story?

Why should we care about mystery stories?

Robert Cialdini discovered a secret to learning in 2005. As a world-leading psychologist he was surprised he didn’t already know this secret but now swears by it. He was researching a new psychology book we wanted to write for a general audience and wanted to know the characteristics of effective science writing for an informed public readership. Most of his review confirmed what he already knew: must have a clear and focussed point, well written, concrete examples. The big surprise for Robert was that the best examples where written in the format of a mystery story.

Robert’s laboratory is his classroom so he tried out the approach there. A typical lecture, before using the mystery story format, would end with his students starting to pack up five minutes before the lecture’s scheduled finishing time. When he presented the same information as a mystery story, and he was yet to reveal the who’d dunnit, the students remained totally engaged and didn’t move, even after the lecture was supposed to have finished. It was like magic.

So here is the structure Cialdini discovered in his review and then wrote up in volume 24 of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

• Pose the mystery
• Deepen the mystery
• Home in on the proper explanation by considering (and offering evidence against) alternative explanations
• Provide a clue to the proper explanation
• Resolve the mystery
• Draw the implications for the phenomenon under study

To test this out I wrote a blog post using the mystery format called ‘What is happening to Melbourne's trains?’ I would be grateful to receive your feedback. Just leave comments on the blog post.

Cialdini, R. B. (2005). “What’s The Best Secret Device for Engaging Student Interest? The Answer Is In The Title.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24(1): 22-29.

How to find great stories to retell

Telling a story is an effective way to spark action, convey values and communicate ideas. Facts alone are insufficient. So how do you find great stories to tell? How much detail do you include? What do you leave out? What is the best way to present your story?

Our storytelling process is a simple set of activities to help you find relevant and powerful stories, help you decide how to construct your stories, and suggests a set of tips for the best possible storytelling.

The best stories to tell are your own stories. You know them. They're real. And hopefully they'll sound real. Authenticity and plausibility are hallmarks of successful business storytelling. The starting point is to become aware of just how effective stories are in communicating ideas and sparking action. Before you have this awareness interesting things will happen and you will barely notice them as great material. You need to become mindful and take note of your experiences. A good way to do this is to search through your personal history for remarkable events. This search is harder than it sounds because we need prompting to remember our past. Therefore, a good way to make progress is to enlist the help of a provocateur, an interviewer.

In eliciting stories from an individual, the role of the interviewer is to help you remember what you know.

What Does The Interviewer Need To Do?

The interviewer's job is to create a relaxed, conversational environment that helps you remember your past in a way that encourages a candid response. They need to put you at ease, listen to what you say and really care about the conversation. If you sense the interviewer does not care or is distracted you are less likely to reveal your experiences.

The reason why you would want to reveal your experiences is that it will help you remember other experiences. The more stories you retell to the interviewer, the more aware you become of your own stories and the number of potential stories for retelling increases.

The following approach is for conducting one-on-one interviews. If you have a group of people who you would like to share their experiences, we suggest you read the Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles

One-on-one interviews can be quite arduous for the interviewer. The interviewer is under pressure to keep the conversation going while trying to remain focussed on what the interviewee is saying, keenly observing possibilities for unearthing new and interesting stories. Consequently, they need to do their homework and be prepared.

What Does Doing The Homework Involve?

The interviewer needs to know the interviewee's important life/business events. What jobs has she held? What projects has she been on? What roles has she performed? Whom has she worked with? How long has she been with the organisation? The interviewer needs to collect as much information as they can in order to pinpoint important events and relationships that might form the basis of questions.

How Do You Work Out Which Themes To Explore?

It’s impossible to garner every story from a person’s life so a substantial amount of selection is required before you start. Selecting a few themes to explore is a good approach. Three themes are usually enough for a 90-minute interview. I suggest you choose the themes based on the ideas you wish to convey in the stories. The themes will influence the questions that we will create to elicit the stories.

Simply brainstorming the themes is an effective approach.

How Do You Create Story-Eliciting Questions?

We have outlined a process for creating story-eliciting questions in the Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles. In addition to this resource, here are some further suggestions:

Start with the simplest and least confronting questions. The following format can be a useful way to get started:

"You started in the HR department in 1995. What was it like when you started?"

This type of question gets people in the right mindset to reminisce. Another way to phrase this context-setting question is to ask:

"What was the HR department like when you worked there?"

After you get your subject talking you can then get into asking your meatier questions. Don't forget: one question at a time, relish silence and listen carefully.

Colton et. al. (2006) provide some excellent example question templates. 

• “Tell me about a time when ...” “Tell me about a moment when ...”
• “you or your project faced a dilemma in a project
• “you or your team experienced a significant turning point
• “you dealt with a real crisis on a project. What happened before, during and after it?
• “you felt really proud to be part of something
• “you took a real risk and it paid off or didn't pay off
• “you were really inspired by what was going on around you
• “you encountered an obstacle and overcome it
• “you saw (one of your organisation's values) really brought to life/being acted out
• “your partnerships were working really well
• “you saw positive changes happen as a result of your work

Throughout the interview, you will need to adapt and respond to the stories being told. Colton et. al. (2006) provide some common situations and possible responses.

Setting the scene: “I’d like to hear you tell your story in your own words, to get under the skin of it.” “Are your ready to start?” “Take a moment to think back …”

Beginning: “So tell me about how you first got involved with/ met/ starting doing X?” “How did it begin?”

When things are too general: “What were some of the memorable moments?” or “for instance?” or “can you give me an example, so I can picture it?”

Qualifying the difference: “Can you pinpoint a time when you really saw you were making a difference?” “What did that feel like?”

Engaging emotions, finding turning points: “Can you remember a particularly magic or moving moment? One that really sticks in your mind?” plus follow-up comments like “what did that feel like?” or “you must have been proud to be part of it”.

Audiences and messages: “Who should hear this story?” “If you were telling this story to X what key messages would you want them to take away?”

Catchy title: “Hearing you tell your story I listened for nice turns of phrases. But if this story were a book, what would its title be" Can I suggest X?” Note: this is a really important part of the process. Titles should contain the essence of the story and make it really memorable. People also appreciate you playing back their words--it makes them feel both heard and creative.

Digging deeper: The best results were when we reflected back saying things like "so it sounds like you really had your work cut out ..." etc.

Direct and indirect: Direct questions can sound quite intimidating and block people: “Were you frightened?” Whereas indirect questions can prompt deeper recall and develop empathy” “It sounds like that might have been quite frightening for you?”

Interrupting: Interrupting, to check facts or to express surprise can send people off in a different direction to the story they wanted to tell. Containing your surprise is important to prevent diversion from the original direction.

Silence: Holding long pauses feels unnatural but allows the story to unfold.

What Other Ways Can An Interviewer Help A Subject Reminisce?

On our blog, we reported on a project that aims to help the elderly reminisce as a form of therapy. This reminisicience work has many good ideas for memory triggers to help people recall their stories.

Related Blog Posts & Whitepapers From Anecdote

• Some more words to elicit stories
• The difference between a sound argument and a good story
• Which story-based techniques are most used?
• Story telling versus story writing
• Telling stories for a living
• Building trust and rapport in Anecdote circles

For our readers in North America – Narrative Techniques for Business workshops in Seattle and Boston (end of March)

There are only a couple of weeks left to register and receive the early bird discount for our Narrative Techniques for Business workshops. If you are interested in getting hands-on experience with our techniques simply check our the workshop description and send me an email requesting a registration form.

Social network analysis workshop in Melbourne

On the 22nd and 23rd March Andrew will be running a 2 day workshops titled “Practical Social Network Analysis: Skills and techniques for facilitating organisational change.”

This workshop is for those looking to:

• Build their confidence and expertise in applying the theory and practice of social network analysis for facilitating change
• Gain an understanding of the key concepts and models which inform the practice of social network analysis and sensemaking for change in organisations
• Gain enhanced understanding and capability to use and apply the specific software tools for conducting social network investigations within your organisation

As a special offer, the first 5 participants to register for this course will receive a free copy of Rob Cross’ book “The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations.” Regarded as one of the most practical and comprehensive guides written to the application of social network analysis within organisations.

To find out more about this course including how to register simply down load the registration brochure here: http://www.anecdote.com.au/files/Social_network_analysis.pdf

 

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack