| 11/03/10 | | Research shows that stories create personal motivation and increase productivity |
The second Tuesday of every second month the Strathmore Unicorns Junior Basketball Club's committee meets. I'm the club Secretary and last Tuesday we were discussing the perennial topic of how to encourage our players (and their parents) to pay their registration fees on time.
Each year the Treasurer send a letter to laggards warning them that if they don't pay their fees they will not be insured and wont be able to play. This letter might have worked in the past but over the years coaches rarely stop their players from playing because of outstanding fees. So unless we become more draconian, the threatening letter approach has run its course.
As everyone was chatting I was recalling Influencer's six sources of influence and based on that model I suggested an alternative that appealed to personal and social motivation of an important person on every team: the team manager.
Here are my two suggestions. Love to hear yours in the comments.
Personal motivation initiative: we are creating a one-page handout describing why the team manager is an important role and listing four things every manager must do to be great at the job. The first on the list is to collect registration fees on time. I did think we should include a short story of how a manager did one of these tasks (more on this idea below).
Social motivation initiative: For the next four months we will share with all the team managers the overall percentage of teams that are all paid up and either congratulating them of getting all their fees in or encouraging to be as good as the rest. The overall percentage at the outset will be large which will send the message that most people are paying (social proof).
To add to this thinking I discovered this morning some important influence research which shows how stories can be added to this mix with tremendous effect. Over at the Inside Influence Report Noah Goldstein reports on Adam Grant's research showing that reminding people of the meaning and significance of their work can double their productivity. And he did this by simply sharing stories from those people who benefited from the call centre worker's hard work: in this case benefactors of a fundraising organisation.
Here is how Grant ran his experiment. Working in a fundraising organisation call centre, Grant divided his participants into three groups: people who were reminded of their personal benefits of the job; people reminded of the significance their tasks was having on the benefactors of their work; and the control group. The personal benefit group read stories from other employees about the benefits of the job such as money, skills and knowledge. The task significance group read stories from the people the organisation was giving scholarships to and how these scholarships effected their lives. The control group didn't hear any stories.
Here's how Golstein reports the results:
What they found was amazing. Employees in the Personal Benefit and Control conditions looked almost exactly the same after the intervention as before it in terms of amount of donation money raised and the number of pledges earned. Yet, those in the Task Significance condition earned more than twice the number of weekly pledges (from an average of 9 to an average of 23) and more than twice the amount of weekly donation money (from an average of $1,288 to an average of $3,130). Additional analyses suggest that the huge increase was driven by previously unmotivated employees increasing the number of calls they made per hour.
So my question is who's story does the team managers need to hear? I can't imagine hearing a story from the committee of how getting the money in on time will motivate anyone. Perhaps it needs to be a story from one of the players that received a scholarship or from a parent in the under eights who gets reduced fees to get them started. Or maybe it is a story from one of the coaches who all just received new coaches tops.
Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 108-124.
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| 18/02/10 | | Book review: Switch—How to Change Things When Change is Hard |
It was going to be difficult to surpass their last book, Made to Stick, where they showed us that people wont pay attention unless our message is simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and a story. And it was going to be even harder practising what they preached to make Switch stick. But I'm delighted to report that they've pulled it off and have created an engaging and useful work on how to change things when change is hard.
Switch is arranged around an analogy (immediately visual and sticky). When we are making a decision we're often torn between our rational, logical reasons and our emotional, intuitive feelings. Chip and Dan ask us to imagine an Elephant and its Rider (the mahout). The Rider represents the rational and logical. Tell the Rider what to do, provide a good argument and the Rider will do it. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. The Rider might like to avoid that hamburger and chips but there is very little the Rider can do if the Elephant really wants it (OK, so I'm telling you what happened last night). To complete their analogy they include the Path they are travelling along. If the Rider can direct the Elephant down a well prepared Path then there is a good chance for change. The Path might represent, for example, access to user friendly technology or effective office space design. Switch is arranged in three parts: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.
On Saturday in 2000 ... In 1990 ... A doctor was asked ... Crystal Jones joined Teach for America in 2003 ... These are the first few words of the first four chapters and apart from the last chapter each starts with a story. And within each chapter are more stories. These stories are well chosen and illustrate the behaviours we need to adopt to effect change. The whole book is focussed on behaviours and rightly makes the point that change comes from changing people's behaviour. That's the level you need to take. A leader cannot afford to stay aloof. For change to occur they need to get into the detail as well as stay strategic.
As a business storyteller Switch is a treasure trove of stories to be retold in organisations. Last week I was running a strategy workshop and I wanted the group to identify a set of guiding principles for their organisation. So I told them the story of the Brazilian railway that was going broke and how Alexandre Behring and his CFO created four rules to guide everyone's spending behaviour to get them out of debt. I shared the rules with the participants and they knew exactly what I meant and were able to easily create their own guiding principles. Strategy execution is a change initiative and Chip and Dan advise us to script the critical moves.
Here is the structure of the book. Notice how each section is a pointer to behaviour.
Direct the Rider: Find the bright spots; Script the critical moves; Point to the destination
Motivate the Elephant: Find the feeling; Shrink the Change; Grow your people
Shape the Path: Tweak the environment; Build habits; Rally the herd
On page 58 we encounter our first clinic and I must admit I groaned slightly when I bumped into it. Getting me to do exercises while I'm reading is normally a pain. I was going to just skip the clinic but decided to have a read and the thing I noticed was that the repetition of the ideas in another context was really helping me to remember. I knew repetition is important but I guess the story approach sucked me in and reinforced it.
One the first things I check when I get a book like Switch is to see whether it is comprehensively referenced and what type of studies are being referred to (if any). Switch passed with flying colours. The endnotes are expansive and they share a swag of evidence for each point they make and often used the psychological experiments as stories rather than just presenting the facts.
Switch is a book that will be read by senior leaders. It's engaging, well written, funny in parts and insightful. If you're an change practitioner in an organisation I recommend you buy a handful of copies and give them to your leaders. In my experience they wont read it right away but then they'll jump on a flight and start and wont stop. At this point you'll not only have a supporter but someone who will compel your involvement. Malcolm Gladwell has served me well in the past and Switch is in the same league.
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| 17/02/10 | | Some tips for capturing stories on video |
A few nights ago I watch Changeling starring Angelina Jolie. It's directed by Clint Eastwood (has he ever directed a dud movie?) and I was fascinated by a short documentary we found in the DVD extras where Clint explained why he never calls out 'Action' when directing a scene. As an actor Clint found a director's call to 'Action' off putting. He was immediately reminded that he was an actor, acting and his performance suffered. Instead Clint calmly and quietly says things like, "OK, in your own time ..." or "when you are ready ..."
I'll add that advice to my repertoire of tips for getting people to tell their stories on video. I like to use my Flip Video to make rough and ready clips. Here are the seven things I keep in mind when filming:
- Sit the person in front of plain background--you don't want to be distracted by what's behind the storyteller
- Have light come in from the side (sit them next to a window) to give their face more depth. But not in direct sunlight.
- Hold the camera as still as I can.
- Start filming well before you ask the person to recount their experience and engage them in some idle chit chat. This gets them used to being filmed.
- Keep the camera as close to my face as possible and tell the storyteller to tell me, not the camera, the story. Ask them to look me in the eye. With the camera close by it will look like they are looking at the camera.
- Keep filming after they finish their story. You never know what they will say after they relax and then there is plenty of space to edit the ending.
- Try to avoid making noise and nodding while they are telling their story (hard to do). Otherwise your sounds and movement also get captured.
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| 11/02/10 | | Leaders should tell a story to explain why |
On a recent trip to Canberra I was lining up to board the plane. Behind me was a young family. Their young son, probably four or five, was quizzing his dad.
The boy said: "Why are we in the line?"
"Because we are getting on the plane," his dad replied.
"Why are we getting on the plane?"
"Because we are visiting Grandma in Canberra.," says dad.
"Why are we visiting Grandma?"
"Because we love Grandma and she likes us to visit."
Our urge to know 'why' is deeply embedded in our psyche. From an early age we want to know the reason things happen. It helps us predict what might happen in the future and makes us feel safe.
The desire to know why doesn't diminish with age. If a CEO announces that the company is shifting direction to concentrate on customer service, everyone in the company will want to know why.
And if they haven't been told the story of how the shift came about, they will create their own story.
Imagine two colleagues chatting after the CEO announcement to focus on customer service.
"After all these years banging on about innovation, now it's customer service. What's that about?" says Paul
"Well, I heard the new chairman is a zealot for customer service and at his last position there was a dramatic improvement when they focussed on their customers. He must have twisted the CEO's arm," says David
"Good to know the CEO can think for himself," Paul chuckles rolling his eyes.
If leaders don't tell the story that explains important decisions then employees will use the best information they have to create their own story. At best this only confuses everyone and stalls action. At worse the new direction is actively undermined by the competing stories.
You might be thinking, "so do the senior leaders simply spin a story that's serves their purpose?" You could try but employees are too smart to believe a porky pie. It's in everyone's interest for the leaders to tell what really happen to prompt the change. There are two things someone hearing the story will ask themselves before they will really listen to what's being said: is it relevant? and, is it plausible? Fail these two tests and you may as well be telling the stationery cupboard. With something as important as a new strategic direction it's vital that all the leaders want and can tell this story.
We call this type of story a strategic story and we've been having fun helping some interesting companies find and tell their strategic story.
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| 2/02/10 | | One public workshop this year: influencing change with stories |
We often get asked whether we are running any public courses on our techniques but for the last couple of years we have reserved these courses for our clients.
But this February and March we are running one workshop on influencing change with stories in collaboration with Kevin Bishop, most recently the Royal Bank of Scotland's change manager in the UK.
If you would like to attend here are all the details.
We only have limited places so please let us know as soon as you can to secure a spot.
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| 11/01/10 | | A story designed to change your mind |
Seth Godin has a new ebook out called What Matters Now. It consists of 80 or so thought leaders each with a page to talk about an idea that matters to them. Each idea is summed up in a single word such as Dignity, Autonomy, Attention, Difference. You can download the ebook here.
Dan and Chip Heath have a page with the title, Change. They incorporate three ideas in their one-pager that is dear to our work: stories, positive deviance and changing behaviour. Here is what they wrote.
A troubled teenager named Bobby was sent to see his high-school counselor, John Murphy. Bobby had been in trouble so many times that he was in danger of being shipped off to a special facility for kids with behavioral problems.
Most counselors would have discussed Bobby’s problems with him, but Murphy didn’t.
MURPHY: Bobby, are there classes where you don’t get in trouble?
BOBBY: I don’t get in trouble much in Ms. Smith’s class.
MURPHY: What’s different about Ms. Smith’s class?
Soon Murphy had some concrete answers: 1. Ms. Smith greeted him at the door. 2. She checked to make sure he understood his assignments. 3. She gave him easier work to complete. (His other teachers did none of the three.)
Now Murphy had a roadmap for change. He advised Bobby’s other teachers to try these three techniques. And suddenly, Bobby started behaving better.
We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”
You’re probably trying to change things at home or at work. Stop agonizing about what’s not working. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s working well, right now, and how can I do more of it?”
Chip and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick and the soon-to-be-released book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.
It's not a coincidence that the Heath brothers decided to tell a story to illustrate their idea and try and persuade the reader to adopt a different approach to change. They dedicate a chapter to the power of stories in their book, Made to Stick and conclude the book saying that most of the other effects described in the other chapters are encapsulated in stories. So let's look at some of the features of this story and why it might be effective.
The simple story structure creates an image for us of both Bobby and Murphy (and let's not forget Ms. Smith). I can see Bobby sitting on a swivel chair restless and bored. If the story creates vivid images for us there is a good chance it will grab our attention and we will remember it. We've all seen Bobbys in our life, so it's easy to picture him in this story.
Names are important. Humans care about other humans. We want to know the names. Case studies often lack names and suffer for it. Again it creates attention through authenticity and empathy for people.
Also notice how they start with the story and then provide the advice. They didn't want the reader to slip into a confirmation bias where we automatically discount suggestions as our first instinct. The story first allows us to pull the idea to us, own the idea ourselves before a suggestion is made by the experts.
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| 7/01/10 | | Three ways to make your strategy stick |
In my hands is a corporate strategy. It’s a glossy six-page document designed for every employee to memorise and enact. There are seven themes each with three sub-themes. There are also seven values. All the information is presented as dot points well set out with lots of white space for easy reading. Sadly this strategy is unlikely to stick. Perversely, it could even cause the exact opposite behaviour the leaders desire. Here are three reasons for my statement.
1. It’s hard to remember a set of ideas without an organising schema. Neuroscientist John Medina reminds us that we need to get the overall gist of something before we can attend to the details. Watch this video for an example of what he means.
One way to provide the overall context for a strategy is to create a strategic story that places the company’s directions within a schema. That way people get the gist of the strategy and can then attach more and more meaning.
2. Too many things on our mind diminishes our willpower. Implementing a strategy requires willpower and as a recent Wall Street Journal article describes it only takes a moderate cognitive load before we succumb to temptation. In my opening example here are at least 28 things to remember about the corporate strategy which will definitely overload our ability to remember it but more importantly it could be sapping our will to stay the new strategic course.
In one experiment conducted by Baba Siv at Stanford University undergraduate students were divided into two groups. One group was asked to remember two numbers and the other had to remember seven numbers. They then had to walk down a hall and choose one of two snacks: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit. The students remembering the seven numbers were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake than students with two numbers to remember.
In applying this idea we would be better off introducing parts of the strategy over time so people can concentrate on one or two changes at a time, perhaps over a 90 day period, before introducing the next part.
3. We remember what we see. In a corollary to the aphorism, 'we remember was we feel,' it is also true that we much more likely to recognise and recall something when we can see it. As John Medina puts it, “The phenomenon is so pervasive, it has been given its own name: the pictorial superiority effect.”
This idea immediately gets us thinking of the splendid pictures we can include with our strategies, those striking images that conjure the essence of what our company is all about. This is the standard approach but there are two other types of images you should consider back-of-the-napkin drawings and the images created by stories.
Dan Roam has created a business from helping people sketch out their thinking, back-of-a-napkin style. In his book with the unsurprising title, The Back of the Napkin, Roam illustrates the power of a simple diagram to share an idea. If you can’t sketch it on a napkin, forget it, it’s too complicated. So ensure everyone can tell your company’s strategic story with the aid of some simple sketches.
Effective stories paint pictures for us as well. When someone recounts a compelling story we visualise what’s happening. And because we are playing out the action in our mind’s eye the story becomes memorable for us. If we tell the story a number of times it becomes embedding in what we know. As the story researcher Roger Schank said, “To tell a story is to remember.”
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| 26/10/09 | | How can we work out our corporate values and help everyone know what they really mean? |
Most organisations I know have a set of stated values. You know what I mean, things like integrity, professionalism, respect for the individual. And in most cases they've been developed for the wrong reasons. And when developed for the right reasons, most employees don't understand what the values mean anyway. Let me explain.
Often the starting question for establishing a set of organisational values is, "Which values should we hold each and everyone accountable for so our organisation thrives?" This gets translated to "What values do our stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers) expect us to hold?" The list is then drawn up and the result is a moribund list of words.
I was reading a paper by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras and they suggest an alternative set of questions (in my words): "What values do we deeply hold that reflect the essence of our company?" and "Would we still hold these values if they created a disadvantage for us if things changed?" If you can answer these two questions in the positive then you've identified your core values. What I found really interesting was looking at some examples Collins and Porras gave and noticed how each company held a different set in that the usual suspects weren't repeated: they didn't all have to value innovation, or customer service, or integrity. The lists I'm seeing are starting to look the same.
Sony
- Elevation of the Japanese culture and national status
- Being a pioneer - not following others; doing the impossible
- Encouraging individual ability and creativity
Merck
- Corporate social responsibility
- Unequivocal excellence in all aspects of the company
- Science-based innovation
- Honesty and integrity
- Profit, but profit from work that benefits humanity
Walt Disney
- No cynicism
- Nurturing and promulgation of "wholesome American values"
- Creativity, dreams, and imagination
- Fanatical attention to consistency and detail
- Preservation and control of the Disney magic
Collins and Porras' research shows that companies who have enduring values and a clear purpose out perform their competitors. But here's the thing, their core values are not chosen because they think they will be competitive advantages, rather they are chosen because they are held deeply by the core group. Art Kleiner, who wrote a terrific book on core group theory, makes the good point that "The organisation goes wherever its people perceive that the Core Group needs and wants to go. The organisation becomes whatever its people perceive and want to become." And this is double true for organisational values.
Values and meaning
When I worked at SMS (Australian consulting company) in the 90s we had three values: add value, maintain unity, enhance reputation. I knew what the 2nd and 3rd values meant but 'add value' was a bit fuzzy for me. Value fuzziness is a common problem. And you've probably guessed what I'm going to suggest as a way to provide meaning: that's right, STORIES.
Imagine if for every value everyone can tell one or more stories to illustrate what that values means. I often ask people to give me an example to illustrate a value and in many cases all I get is a very intense look of someone desperately trying to remember a story to tell. I've said it before but if a company values [insert value] then it should be teeming with [insert value] stories.
Tyco has worked this one out. Tyco is a global business involved in fire safety, security and manufacturing. A few years back they released a booklet called Doing the Right Thing: The Tyco Guide to Ethical Conduct . For each ethical guideline they included one or more stories that either illustrated what the ethical value means when it's working or what it looks liked when it is broken. For example, Tyco values safety and a healthy work environment and here are their stories of that value when it's broken.
Unsafe Behavior Related to Health, Safety, and Environmental Issues Looks Like …
To save money at his plant, Sam provides half the number of safety goggles as there are employees on the line and instructs them to share.
Piette, the plant operations manager, instructs her people to dump used machine oil on unused acreage at the back of the facility.
Al, the plant manager, allows the contractor responsible for the removal of organic waste material to dump it in a local lake.
At Anecdote we do a lot of work helping organisations find and tell the stories that illustrate their values and also help design systematic ways to embed those values throughout the consciousness of everyone in the organisation. It is only by working at this level of values and purpose can people make the best decision possible in a complex and dynamic environment. Rules don't cut it. And if we think about what really makes an organisation it's those thousands and thousands of decisions are made each and every day, each one guides by the values in action.
Collins, J.C. & Porras, J.I. 1996, 'Building Your Company's Vision', Harvard Business Review, vol. September-October, pp. 65-77.
Kleiner, A. 2003, Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success, Currency Doubleday, New York.
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| 11/10/09 | | Celebrating Story |
I'm sitting here watching the sun peak up over the trees and bushes that define the boundary of our backyard thinking about the enjoyable conference I attended last week. It was called Celebrating Story and it was held at the Abbotsford Convent. Andrew and Sasha Rixon did a tremendous job organising the event. They created a lovely atmosphere that encouraged everyone to open up and share what they knew.
There were a few aha moments for me at the conference. The first came chatting to David Drake. Actually it all started listening to his presentation where he mentioned that some story practitioners dealt with stories as commodities. This made me bristle a little so I asked David after the session what he meant. What I learned from this conversation was something I knew from my knowledge management interests but never thought to apply it to stories. If you view a story as a thing then you will focus on the story structure, its impact, the lessons that can be drawn from it etc. and you will have a tremendous urge to capture it and store it in a database. If you view storytelling as a process you'll focus on the people involved in the moment, the narrator, the listener, the context and the environment and will probably look for ways to create these types of experiences. One view is neither better nor worse than the other, you need both. But it is worthwhile pulling yourself up now and then and being mindful of your perspective.
Have you seen playback theatre? It is when a troupe of improv actors act out, at a drop of a hat, a story contributed by the audience. Melbourne's Playback Theatre were a feature of the conference and I learned some valuable lessons from them.
Here is little technique the playback folk used which I think is great. I can see myself using it to help people enrich their visual palette when telling a story. Pair people up: a storyteller and a listener. The storyteller has to start their story by describing the place where the story begins: It all started in a tiny red brick house on the upside of the street. The poplar trees were blowing in the wind and my Dad was sitting on the front steps ... That sort of thing. The listener then has the job of interrupting the story at anytime to get more description. "Popular tree?" they might ask, at which point the teller needs to say more about the popular trees until the listener says "continue." The storyteller then just keeps telling their story from that point on. One of the variations they had us do is then walk side by side and reflect on our stories. There is something about strolling which improves the conversation. I'm sure Jane Austen would have had something to say about this phenomenon.
The other thing that was a little bit confronting for me, but highly valuable, was when the playback performers facilitated a large group to break down and respond to a story I told. They essentially played back the story and then yelled out the feelings they had when listening to the story. It was surprising what people felt really passionate about and helped me understand some of the really important things that were in that story.
My last discovery was fairytales. Andrew Rixon has been trying to convince me of the importance of fairytales in a business context and I must admit I dismissed them as too 'out there' for my business clients. But Andrew ran a session where the group explored a single issue (getting unstuck) and then in small groups we had to create a fairytale that illustrated elements of that issue. Ours was 'awareness and options' and we had no problem coming up with a dragon-killing knight and his inability to see what was really happening around him. The fairytale structure is a ready made collection of metaphors that any group can use to explore organisational issues.
My presentation was on our leadership development program where we use stories from the organisation to illustrate good and bad management behaviours. I also used the opportunity with a room full of story practitioners to explore some of the challenges we face in our work. The two I shared were the general inability for many people to identify a story because we interpret many things as stories and so find it difficult to differentiate a story from opinions; and how using the term 'storytelling' on a corporate setting can make people uncomfortable and how other language can be used.
Well done to Andrew and all the other people involved in organising the event. It was great fun.
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| 2/10/09 | | How to tell a story |
Some great advice from Scott Simon.
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| 28/09/09 | | More than just a launch |
Stories are our natural way to plan. We imagine how things are going to work out, who are the players, what incidents might befall us and what we’re going to do to avoid these traps. We remember what happened last time and what we must steer clear of. We think about those good bits we want happening everywhere in our company. We envisage the opportunities and understand the sequence of events we believe are necessary to make it happen. And then, if we are like most executives, we encapsulate our strategy in a set of dot points that immediately strips it of most of its meaning. It becomes a shell of its former self, a strategic skeleton.
What often happens next involves dangling these strategic bones at one or more major gatherings of the company. We launch our strategies and leaders say things like, “This new strategy will guide our actions and decisions for the next period of growth”. But the context is missing. Employees find it hard to understand, and remember. What’s the significance? What does it look like in practice? And as a result they find it difficult to see their place in the strategy. They also find it hard to see the strategy in their own workplace. “What do we actually do?” they say. There’s little to connect their own story to the company’s mission.
It doesn’t need to be like this.
Anecdote’s program keeps the stories in your strategy so that employees understand its meaning and significance while encouraging everyone to actively participate in the strategic process. Our aim is to harness the natural power of stories to bring your strategy to life. The primary objective is to help everyone in the company identify the vital behaviours that must be in place for the strategy to succeed. And then we help create the opportunities to design and implement small changes to bring those behaviours about. And in doing so really making your strategy stick.
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| 18/09/09 | | Dan Pink on Motivation - and his subtle use of stories |
Dan Pink TED talk has an important message: what scientists know about the detrimental effects of incentives remains largely unknown and unpractised by managers. He argues, which I totally agree, that we need to create workplaces which provide autonomy, possibility for mastery and purpose. These factors truly motivate us.
The video, see below, is also interesting for how Dan users stories. Take a look first then I will make some comments below.
Dan is very aware of the power of stories. In his book, A Whole New Mind, he dedicates a chapter to how important storytelling is as a skill. But he also knows that business people are scared by the term and when they hear the word 'story' they assume what is being said is made up, fluffy, unbusiness-like. So Dan frames his presentation as a legal case, focussed on the evidence, with the full persuasive power of the best legal minds (mind you he does some lovely self-deprecation at the start of the talk to connect with the audience).
Dan even goes as far as saying, "this is not a story, it is a fact ..."
But here's the thing. Dan's talk is full of stories. In fact he employs one of my favourite story patterns: the scientific experiment. Scientific experiments are great because to explain them you have to tell what the scientist did and when and the best ones of some unanticipated result--terrific elements for a story.
I counted 7 stories in Dan's presentation (one every 2. minutes or so). Quite a few for someone is telling the audience that he is not telling a story.
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| 3/09/09 | | Telling success stories |
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| 1/09/09 | | Moments |
These moments, beautifully depicted in this video, are the stuff of anecdotes, all those little stories we tell everyday that form the chatter that keeps us connected.
via The Obvious
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| 28/08/09 | | Contrary to popular belief, business stories are mostly short |
There's a perception in business that stories are long and time consuming. "I don't have time to tell a story. I'm just going to give them the facts," I hear business folk say.
The reality is quite different. Every month or so I run a storytelling for leaders workshop. One of the first activities I often run is a jumpstart storytelling session. Each person has 90 seconds to tell their story and from my observation most people finish within a minute or even less. It doesn't take very long to tell a story. See for yourself. Check out the stories we've published here over the years, read them aloud and see how long they take.
Sure, there are the epic stories told by professional storytellers than can last for hours but business stories are mostly short.
This Johnnie Walker ad is a good example of a longer story you might hear in an organisation when someone is recounting the story of a project, a team or in this case, a company. Note how Robert Carlyle gives us the names of the people involved. We are interested in this type of detail and it's often omitted in business stories.
BTW, what did you think of the props? Did they distract you from the story or help build the picture?
Thanks to Terrence Garguilo and Kathy Hansen for finding the video
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| 26/08/09 | | Value of Storytelling - when terminology gets in the way |
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| 19/08/09 | | Learning business storytelling through observation and mimicry |
Just spent a fabulous day at NAB's new Academy running our storytelling program. Wow, what a venue. We were in the Scribbler room: wall-to-wall whiteboards, pin boards and butchers paper. A facilitator's dream.
After arriving home, and relaxing with a glass of wine in hand, I was chatting to Sheen about her day. She's learned heaps of new ways to teach her 4-7 year olds at her new primary school. In particular the school's emphasis on whole language has enabled Sheen to put these ideas into practice. I asked how she learned these new techniques. "By watching and listening to my colleagues and then giving it go myself," she said.
Makes sense. It's an approach we can all use to develop our business storytelling skills. The pre-requisite is to be able to identify stories when they are being told, but with that skill under your belt it's time to don your ethnographer hat and watch your fellow storytelling colleagues in action.
In particular keep an eye on when they tell stories, and when they don't. How do they move into telling a story? What type of stories do they tell? Are their stories designed to teach, illustrate values, spark action, convey a vision? Where do they tell stories (one on one, informal gatherings, meeting, presentations)? And most importantly watch those people who are listening. What is the response?
By reflecting on what you observe you can then have a crack yourself. And don't forget to set some time aside to reflect on what happens. Then rinse and repeat.
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| 12/08/09 | | How to illustrate the value of storytelling - stories are memorable |
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| 29/07/09 | | What's your point? |
When was the last time you heard one of those rambling stories that seem to go on and on and quite frankly you couldn't see the point? Is there someone in your organisation renowned for these types of tales? Sadly these people are labelled bores and often ignored.
There is one important thing you can do to ensure you stories are not boring.
Know the point of your story
Doug Lipman says we need to know the most important thing about our story. What does the story mean to you? What do you love about it? Why is it important? Once you're clear about what it means to you it will change how you tell the story: you can remove the extraneous (listeners in organisations value brevity); and you can emphasis the important.
As soon as you start telling a story your audience will most often than not give you the time to complete it (this is a valuable characteristic of stories) but at the same time they are also evaluating its relevance. Stories are our main conduit for sharing social information about the people and situations that effect us. So does this story tell me something new that will help me to act more effectively?
So that your audience gets where you are coming from from the outset, it can be useful to make a short statement before the story starts to give the listener a hint about the story's content and possible relevance. For example, in a meeting I might say something like:
You know what, sometimes small things can make a big difference. Just three weeks ago ...
There are other times when you want the meaning of the story to emerge slowly, you want the audience to let the story wash over them and let them discern the meaning entirely for themselves. Shock, horror! The meaning a listener takes away from a story can be different from the one you intended. This feature of stories scares the pants off folk in organisations. Of course the same is true of any communication but we think we are more control when we are telling our audience what to think--but we're not. I suggest we all recount our stories to trusted advisors and ask them what they draw from it and see if it coincides with your own meaning.
All our stories will benefit from knowing their main point as well as the other sub-points that lie beneath the surface. Part of our practice in becoming business storytellers is to take the time to discover and understand the meaning of our stories.
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| 27/07/09 | | Webinar—Three Questions We Usually Get from Leaders About Storytelling: Reflections, Discussion & Tools |
Terrence Gargiulo and I are conducting two webinars in August where we will talk about some of the important lessons we've learned while helping leaders become better storytellers. It's going to be an interactive format where you'll be able to ask questions. The sessions are 45 minutes. Just click on the session that suits you best to register.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 12:30 PM - 1:15 PM Australian EST - click here to register
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 12:30 PM - 1:15 PM US PDT - click here to register
Here is our little marketing blurb about the events.
Are your leaders great storytellers? And, why should you care anyway?
With over forty years of combined experience, two of the world’s leading narrative consultants divulge some of what they have learned. Join Shawn Callahan of Anecdote and Terrence Gargiulo of MAKINGSTORIES.net for a 45-minute rousing interactive discussion rich with examples and practical tools.
I wonder…
Will you be as surprised as we were when we discovered the “Triple Threat,” of storytelling for leaders?
Find out the answers to the three questions we get asked the most. Prior to the event we'll share a white paper on leadership and storytelling. Following the webinar we'll send you a job aid that we use in our work. So give us the pleasure of your company and interact with your peers to take a nuanced but deep dive into the art and science of leadership through narrative.
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| 18/07/09 | | Persuasion, facts, stories and the law |
Court cases are decided on the basis of the facts and evidence presented. Or are they?
I have long believed that court cases are essentially a battle of stories, and whoever tells the most plausible and persuasive story wins. This article might change your mind as well: The Arsenal of Persuasion: Make your closing argument a really good story. The article has some great examples of the persuasive power of stories.
Thanks to Stephanie West Allen for the link via the WorkingStories list.
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| 12/07/09 | | Fast Company recommendation |
I just noticed that Fast Company expert blogger Thomas Clifford has listed Shawn as one of 7 interesting storytellers to follow on Twitter. I better start following him :-)
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| 10/07/09 | | Places to meet for communities - an important ingredient |
Three weeks ago I arrived in London for a couple of weeks work and a couple weeks holiday. One of my must-see destinations was the water pump in Broadwick Street, Soho, which was the main contamination source for the 1854 cholera outbreak (my family think I'm crazy). This pump is also the star attraction on John Snow's famous map showing the geographic distribution of deaths from the cholera outbreak and is one of the earliest example of epidemiology (in case you were wondering, I studied geography at uni). So imagine my surprise when I arrived at the pump to find it was also a community of practice meeting spot for Soho cycle couriers.
I wandered about the pump for a while taking photos (to the cyclists' amusement) and listened to their conversation, which of course consisted of telling stories of what happened in the morning and over the week. Nothing written down, no social software, just oral storytelling.
Finding or creating these places for community in organisations is an important step is supporting communities of practice. Ideally they should be somewhere you can eat, chat informally and know that when you arrive, there will be other people just like you to share your stories with.
You might be thinking, but what if my organisation is distributed and we can't get everyone in one place? Well, do what the London taxi drivers do, form clusters across the network to tell your stories. Here's a photo of one group of taxi drivers who meet on Russell Square (there is a little group of them behind the silver taxi).
To link across the small groupings the taxi drivers use technology: blogs, newspapers, websites, radio.
Meeting in small clusters for oral storytelling and linking across these clusters for wider knowledge sharing might be a useful pattern to adopt in organisations.
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| 4/06/09 | | Why don't positive stories carry? |
Something got me thinking about City of Port Phillip's Non Crime Hotline this morning. They have a phone number you call to report good news stories. I rang the council and found that Peter Strecker was now in charge of this initiative and he told me that it was in hibernation. It turned out that they got very few calls. There received some great stories, like the one about the busker who had a fight erupt in front of him so he started playing "Always look on the bright side of life" and everyone started laughing and the fight stopped. But there wasn't enough to sustain the program. So why are we reluctant to share positive stories?
Perhaps part of the reason is that it's hard to see the impact sharing a positive story might have. When we tell the busker story we can see it's amusing and uplifting but perhaps not that instructional unless you're a busker. Whereas a negative story gives us a warning on what to avoid. Consequently we are only willing to exert a small effort to pass on positive stories and ringing a hotline and listening to a recorded message might be too much of an impost. If we were aggrieved in some way (a negative story) we probably have more energy to have our story heard and therefore more willing to jump through some hoops.
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| 22/05/09 | | The co-evolution of technology and organising |
The technology we use changes the way we organise and the way we organise effects the technologies we use. This hand-in-glove interaction is called co-evolution. Take the example of the invention of the spinning frame during the industrial revolution of the 18th century. The spinning frame made possible large scale cloth production and created the need for factories, which in turn affected how water and steam were used to drive machinery in those factories.1
Are we seeing a similar co-evolution between information dissemination technology and how knowledge programs are organised? The two killer apps for the PC have been the word processor and the spreadsheet. With these two tools we were able to create documents. Consequently many knowledge sharing initiatives focus on creating and sharing documents. This limited us to sharing what we could write down.
YouTube started in 2005 (here is the first video uploaded to the site). It’s a site for sharing videos. Now that it's easy to share videos more companies are building this form of information dissemination into its knowledge sharing programs. The interesting thing is that the tool changes the type of knowledge shared. It seems to me that videos encourage us to share practices and tell a story of what happened or how to do something. This type of knowledge helps us share values, principles and lessons in a more compact and digestible way. Sure, documents can be used to do that too but that wasn’t the default use and it took so much effort.
As we witness the rise of the video we'll need to develop other skills to make the most of it. Most importantly, you guessed it, video creators will need to be adept at finding and telling stories. Just as we learned the language of documents (structure, headings, font sizes, margins, footnotes etc.) we will need to learn the language of video. And that language will partly involve characters, events, action, time and place.
1. Beinhocker, E. D. (2006). The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Boston, Harvard Business School Press.
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| 22/05/09 | | London public workshops in June |
Just a quick note to say it is just over 4 weeks before we get together in London for our two workshops (24 & 25 June). Looks like we have a good turn out but if you are thinking of coming along I need to get all the registrations complete in the next two weeks.
Send me an email if you want a registration form and here is the description of the two narrative based workshops.
And just to get a bit of a flavour for my approach you might like to check out this presentation I did this week.
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| 13/05/09 | | How to be memorable and inspire action at work by telling stories |
Thanks to all my Twitter friends who helped me refine this article. It was a fun process that reinforces for me the strength of social computing approaches for collaboration.
The main purpose of this whitepaper is to introduce senior leaders to the idea of business storytelling and demonstrate its importance, especially in the increasingly complex and unpredictable world we live in. It also provides some approaches to how you find and recount your experiences in a business context.
I encourage you to send a copy to your CEO, or better still your CFO and CIO, and help them realise that people only remember what they feel and despite the painful sounding name, people don't feel bullet points.
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| 13/05/09 | | Stories and video how-to guides—screencasting Salesforce.com |
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.
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| 12/05/09 | | The TED presentation commandments |
- Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
- Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
- Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
- Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
- Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
- Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
- 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.
- Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
- Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
- 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.
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| 10/05/09 | | Creating stories |
My friend Terrence Gargiulo and I were chatting last week about the role storytelling plays for leaders and we agreed that the leadership-storytelling triple-threat was the ability to elicit stories, tell stories and trigger stories. When we say trigger stories we mean that a leader does something that's remarkable so people tell the story of what happened. So on this theme I was tickled pink to receive this video from Victoria Ward. A terrific example of a leader triggering stories.
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| 8/05/09 | | Day 5 of Story Week |
So its Friday and here we are at the end of Story Week. Many thanks to all of you who contributed and here is our final story - something serious...
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| 7/05/09 | | Day 4 of Story Week |
Our fourth story for Story Week is from the UK - please tell us what you think.
No red signal when minister plays with train set by Adam Sherwin (From Times UK Online)
All aboard the Adonis Express. Frustrated commuters will get direct access to the Transport Minister next week when Lord Adonis embarks upon a railway voyage to criss-cross Britain in six days.
The Minister will board the Paddington to Truro sleeper service on Easter Monday, just one man, his laptop and a £375 standard class Rail Rover ticket. On Saturday he will arrive in York after a 1,500-mile Michael Palin-style trip, involving 45 trains and extensive knowledge of the timetable. He will speed (hopefully) through Cornwall, East Anglia, the West Midlands and up to Aberdeen, before arriving in North Yorkshire to a hero’s welcome. Any signs of cabin fever will be logged on a Times Online blog.
A spokesman said: “Andrew is travelling solo and is happy for commuters to chat to him.”
Lord Adonis tells us: “My plan is to get to railway lines I have rarely or never used. Nothing beats first-hand experience when you are responsible for a major public service.”
Network Rail is advised to clear the line of engineering works.
A prize for the best picture of Lord Adonis captured on the rattlers.
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| 6/05/09 | | Day 3 of Story Week |
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to Story Week so far. Continuing with our theme of "leadership", today we are featuring a story from Dr Fiona Wood, who was recognised as "Australian of the Year" for her work after the Bali Bombings. And we'd still like to hear your ideas for Friday's story.
When I saw the burns patients and I saw that we needed something radical to actually cover these large areas, that had to be more... They had to be smarter than traditional split-thickness skin grafting. We had to be able to do this better. And that was, I guess, the gauntlet that I threw down to myself. On the Sunday morning after the Bali bombing I got a call from the registrar, who is a very close friend of my senior registrar, who actually on Saturday had left for his holiday to Bali. Our first patients arrived in the early hours of the morning and they were the most severe patients, the most severely injured. And my overwhelming memory of that is the relief on their faces as they arrived at Royal Perth and spoke to us just before they were incubated for ventilation and for the treatment to commence, that relief on their faces. We were full at the time, so we started putting our disaster plan into action. And as the Sunday developed it became apparent that there was going to be a significant need, not just for the Perth Burns Unit but for the Australian Burns community as a whole. When the Bali bombing situation arose we did in fact deal with 15% of our annual workload in a day, but it's the sort of situation that we've been training for a long period of time and when you're involved in it and actually active in doing things it's a very motivating situation because you are able to influence those lives, not always to a positive outcome but we did our best.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1711934.htm
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| 5/05/09 | | Day 2 of Story Week |
Day 2 of Story Week is here. Yesterday we had a video with a big Story. Today we have a snippet, a small story of a day-to-day interaction in a workplace. Our theme for the week is leadership, so look at the story in this light. Think how you would feel in the same circumstances. And of course, please pass this on to your networks and encourage them to join the fun. The more, the merrier. N.B. We have yet to finalise a story for Friday - is there a video of a story on the theme of leadership (preferably involving a woman) that you'd like to suggest?
... we organised a workshop, it was really high pressure and done at very short notice. It ended up being a success, but the CEO was there, and I thought it was one of those things where the team had all sort of pulled together, and it could of fallen over, but it didn't. At the end of the workshop, it had all gone well, there was a perfect window there for the CEO to come up to the team and say "Good job". I don't know the CEO at all, but it was a perfect opportunity for him to go and get some easy PR, or even at least say good stuff, and pass it on. But he just left. I mean, he may have had a thousand other things to do, but it was one of those things.
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| 4/05/09 | | Story week is here |
The Story Week is here! Over the next 5 days, we'll be offering you 5 stories - some momentous, some more low-key - and we're inviting you to tell us what you think of them. After you have viewed, read or heard the story,we'd like you to fill out the form below and maybe tell us a story of your own. We will be publishing (under a creative commons license) the aggregate results from this little experiment and also some of the stories that you tell us. So without further ado...
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| 17/04/09 | | Story week is coming |
Anecdote, Sparknow and Innotecture have been working together for a little while now to find out a bit more about what stories have influence and impact. We've found quite a difference in views, even among ourselves. So we're inviting our combined readership and their networks (and their networks) to participate in Story Week (starting May 4th) Over 5 days we're going to show you 5 stories from different people in different formats, intended for very different audiences and settings. You're going to tell us how you respond to them. We'll tell you what you collectively told us. We'll all learn something in the process. Oh, and it will be fun, too.
Watch this space...
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| 17/04/09 | | Three story plots we humans dearly love |
The authors of Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath, point out that there are three story plots we humans dearly love:
- the creativity plot where the protagonist solves one or more puzzles through shear ingenuity, persistence and always with a dash of dumb luck. The DaVinci Code is an example.
- the connection plot where people come together from different walks of life: different race, class, affluence, nationality, power. This week Sheen and I re-watched the movie Notting Hill which is definitely an example of a connection plot: famous celebrity connects with impoverished book store owner.
- the challenge plot where the protagonist faces a daunting challenge, everyone is sceptical whether is can be done, and especially by our hero, but in the end she triumphs. You might not have heard of Susan Boyle but this video is a classic example of a challenge plot told in 7 minutes.
Now you might be thinking, "how does all this relate to stories in a business context?"
Successful leaders are people who are able to change the minds, feelings and ultimately the actions of people who follow their lead. And stories play a fundamental role in helping people change their minds. Don't just take my word for it. Howard Gardner, the Harvard psychologist and author of Changing Minds wrote: "The principle vehicle of leadership is the story: The leader affects individual behavior, thought, and feelings through the stories that he and she tells."
So to succeed as a leader it's important to build your repertoire of stories but you don't want to recount just any story. You want to be mindful of the things that happen in your life that others will find interesting, inspiring and meaningful and by knowing these three plot types you can be on the lookout for these experiences. Let me finish with another quote from Gardner: "One of the most powerful weapons in the possession of leader-storytellers is the lives that they lead. To the extent that leaders embody the stories that they tell, the leaders' examples will increase in power."
Gardner, H. (1999). "The vehicle and the vehicles of leadership." American Behavioral Scientist 42(6): 1009-1023.
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| 11/04/09 | | As a business person, why care about storytelling? |
In 1993, as the co-founder of photographic library startup, I travelled to Los Angeles to check out one of America’s largest commercial photographic collections. Remarkably they were well underway converting their film stock to Kodak PhotoCD, a proprietary digital format launched the year before. We were impressed with Eastman Kodak because it looked like they were taking digital photography seriously. The shift to digital was really happening. It was an exciting time. So we began to furiously scan our 100,000 images. At the time it seemed that Kodak was riding the digital wave. They were a digital camera pioneer building the first digital camera in 1975. This 110 year old manufacturing giant, however, missed the digital boat. Their share price today is less that what it was for them in the 1950s. So why did Eastman Kodak falter? Why did it take them so long to really adopt a digital approach to their products and services? What held them back?
Ted Turner (founder of CNN) joined his father’s billboard advertising business full-time in his early 20s. His father, Ed Turner, was a child of the depression and his parents almost lost everything during that dark time. This only strengthened Ed’s resolve to succeed and he promised his parents to work hard and one day be a millionaire and own a plantation and a yacht. By the time Ted joined the billboard company his father had all those things and Ted remembers clearly his father taking him aside and saying, “Son, you be sure to set your goals so high that you can’t accomplish them in one lifetime. That way you’ll always have something ahead of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low and now I’m having a hard time coming up with new ones.”
Perhaps Kodak reached their goals in the early ‘90s and was struggling to set new ones. Kodak was the predominant force in the photographic industry. It had succeeded through its many advances in chemical processing and manufacturing streamlining. At the same time it was more than aware of the new digital technologies yet profits were coming from its established business lines. In the minds of their leaders they knew how to succeed. They had done it for so long. So don’t fix what’s not broken.
We see this ‘I know what’s right’ mentality in our leadership programs. Just last week Mark was running a leadership program in Sydney and the most senior person in the room approached Mark and said, “I really just wanted to come to see what the troops were learning and keep an eye on things.” He had been with the company for 20 years and believed he’d seen everything and didn’t need to learn anything new. He told himself a story along the following lines: “I’ve been in the business for 20 years now and I have seen it at its best and its worst and I have survived and thrived. So I pretty much know what I’m doing and that it works.”
Our stories, collectively and individually, have a profound affect on what we believe is possible. Therefore the challenge for leaders is to both understand the stories affecting individuals and groups and then know how to define and tell (ideally through wide participation) new stories that set the direction for the company. But that’s not all. The greatest challenge is to help people hear, remember and believe where the company is headed and then inspire people to act in line with that belief.
Whether the leadership team at Kodak had seen the need to redirect towards a digital future in time is hard to say. But even if there was a resolve to go digital, were the leaders equipped with the skills to create the new stories and have them stick in a meaningful way?
Aligning everyone’s actions to the company’s strategy is equivalent of finding the corporate Shangri-la. It can be done. Take IBM’s turnaround for example. Lou Gerstner arrived as the new CEO in 1993 at a time when IBM was on the endangered species list. Gerster had been CEO at Nabisco and American Express and before that he was a director of McKinsey Consulting. He’d seen hundreds of strategies and knew that most are the same—it’s extremely difficult to have an unique strategy. What makes the difference, however, is executing the strategy. Gerstner set about turning around IBM by telling new stories about their direction such as the new emphasis on services and the growth that will come from software. And of course this wasn’t done by Lou alone. He worked hard to develop a good team who understood the stories and could act in a way that created new stories that reinforced the strategy. I joined IBM in 1999 and experienced the last years of the turnaround. It was an inspiring place to work.
This post is the beginning of a series I have planned that looks at why storytelling is a vital leadership skill. Some of the topics I will cover include how stories are memorable, how they show commitment, how they inspire people to take action, how they reduce anxiety, how they share lessons, how they convey values and how they change minds.
References
Gerstner, L. V. (2002). Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround. New York, Harper Collins.
Turner, T. (2008). Call Me Ted: The Autobiograhy of the Extraordinary Business Leader and Founder of CNN. London, Sphere.
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| 27/03/09 | | How to tell a story about yourself without sounding like an ego-maniac |
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.
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| 18/03/09 | | A leader's role to trigger stories |
Yesterday I popped out for a meeting at the National Australia Bank. They have a new CEO, Cameron Clyne, and last week he announced a restructure that has substantially flattened the organisation. While the restructure has been the topic of lots of conversations and stories inside and outside the bank, Cameron has done two other things that has got employees talking.
Meeting rooms are always at a premium in large organisations and NAB, at their beautifully designed Docklands headquarters, is no exception. Until Cameron's intervention there were meeting rooms set aside only to be booked by general managers. That's no longer the case. Anyone from the rookie analyst to the CEO has the same rights in booking and using any meeting room in the building.
The second change involves the CEO's lodgings. The previous head honcho and his staffers resided in an office referred to as the bubble. There were two levels of security to gain access to this space and the CEO would catch the elevator from the car park to bubble without having to venture through the rest of the building. Cameron is dismantling the bubble and is relocating his office next to the internal cafe, without any special refurbishment to his new space. You can't miss the dismantling as it affects half the foyer. A pretty clear symbol of change.
Now these stories might not be 100% factual. But as story guru Robert McKee points out, "What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens." These are the stories some staff are telling about the new CEO and they view his actions as exciting and energising. In their mind a wonderful change is going on.
Then something interesting happened in the meeting. The person I was talking to said it was incredibly difficult to gain direct access to the CEO. That he had a coterie of minders that he brought from New Zealand with him that intercept any approach. And that this is how it should be because he is an incredibly busy man with tremendous responsibilities.
It's interesting that the positive stories created by the meeting room and bubble change seemed to create a positive aura over other activities involving the CEO.
A lesson for leaders is that in addition to be able to find and tell your own stories, it's also important to do things that create positive stories in the organisation. Be remarkable so people remark on your behaviour. But also listen to what stories you create and what people infer from them.
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| 12/03/09 | | Does your story have impact? |
I'm working with Victoria Ward and her colleagues over at Sparknow at the moment evaluating a set of stories for their likely impact. We do a lot of story impact assessment at Anecdote because when we collect stories we always end up with too many to use in a workshop and therefore must select a sub-set. Sometimes culling is done by our clients, sometimes by us. But regardless of who does it you need a set of criteria to make the selection.
So here's our assessment criteria for likely impact. I should say, however, that it can only be an assessment of likely impact because people are affected more or less by stories based on their experience. I've told the one armed karate kid story many times and mostly people find it amusing and insightful. On one occasion, however, a woman who was listening to the story teared up.
- Clarity—you hear or read the story once and you get it. It's simple, clear and has a good narrative structure (time markers, characters, begin-middle-end). That structure components don't have to be too sophisticated. We have found some of the most powerful organisational stories would past a screenwriters test or have the hero's journey structure, for example.
- Emotional—it gets you in the gut. It doesn't matter what emotion it evokes but impactful stories evoke at least one strong emotion.
- Believable—it doesn't sound like bullshit. Facts and figures help but not too many. Details help with real people's names and specific dates and times.
- Transport—it transports you to relive the experience. You can see, hear, touch, smell and taste the experience.
- Surprising—it throws you a curve ball that you weren't expecting.
- Relevant—does it talk to the topic under investigation
If your story rates well on all these criteria there is a good chance it will be memorable and persuasive which means it's likely to be retold. And when that happens then the story has real impact.
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| 17/02/09 | | How to segue to a story |
When I teach storytelling techniques I'm often asked, "So how do I insert my story into the conversation?" The funny thing is we are all doing it all the time. We are mostly telling each other stories about what happened or what will happen. It's only when we become self-conscious of our storytelling efforts that we freeze and it feels abnormal. To get past this paralysis the first step is to forget about stories and only think of examples and experiences. You have an example or you are recounting an experience. It's simple. It's natural.
Today I spent the afternoon with Viv McWaters and had a lovely time talking about ways to get people to experience business storytelling in a workshop environment. More on that later. But we also talked about the ways people segue into a story. Here are some ways people do it:
- Let me tell you about a time when ...
- Here's an example that really illustrates my point ...
- I've seen this work over there ...
- I remember when ...
- Let me tell you about a group who ...
Of course an effective way is just to launch into your story but avoid prefacing it with, "I've got this great story to tell you ..."
Can you suggest other ways to move from facts and opinions into a story in a business context?
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| 13/02/09 | | Storytelling in Canberra |
Jack Dalton (Raven Feathers) is a professional storyteller from Alaska. I was fortunate to see him perform a traditional Yup'ik story on Wednesday as part of the National Multicultural Festival here in Canberra. The 'Creation Story' was about how Raven (a magical and mischievous character in Yup'ik folklore) created man and tried to show him 'the way': essentially using no more from the environment that he needed, and how man repeatedly failed to heed this message. Very relevant to the sustainability challenges we are currently facing.
Chandni and I had a great conversation with Jack over coffee about the differences and similarities between using story to keep folkloric knowledge alive (Jack) and using storytelling in the world of business (Anecdote).
If you are in Canberra, the festival is hosting the 'Canberra Cares' concert on Saturday to raise funds for the families affected by the devastating bushfires in Victoria. It will be a great afternoon of Latin music and dance, so get on down and enjoy the cool weather and hot acts!
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| 29/01/09 | | Use stories to communicate the value of collaboration |
In the previous two posts (Shawn's on his forthcoming presentation and Chandni's about collaboration between Google and P&G) have used specific examples to illustrate how collaborative practices can add value to an organisation.
In many cases, the value of collaboration is difficult to articulate using numbers. We (not surprisingly I guess) strongly advocate that organisations systematically identify, collect and communicate their collaboration 'success stories'. Our experience is that these stories are critically important when the inevitable question gets asked about why we are investing in collaboration. We have developed a CoP Health Check and stories are a key part of this process.
A recent article in the Washington post (via Seth Kahn and the Working Stories list) describes how an Indian company has a 'chief belief officer' who uses mythology to help managers make meaning of their roles. A quote from the article is very relevant given the way many companies are reacting to the global financial crisis
He likens layoffs to the slaughter of cows, which Hindus revere as symbolizing life. "The standard Western management principle is 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it,' " Pattanaik said. "In our ethos, 'if you measure it, you destroy it.' "
We have blogged previously about the fallacy of the 'if you can't measure it ..." mindset previously. But for those with roles related to collaboration etc this can be a nervous time as companies look to shed staff to save money. Word on the street is that some of our friends have already been 'made redundant'. It might look good on the P&L, but it can also be like draining the life-blood out of organisations.
Stories help us communicate value when things can't be measured, and they are powerful tools in persuading people and changing their minds. As an example, some time ago, Rio Tinto produced a video on one of their success stories and made it publicly available (I notice it is now available on YouTube). We have used this video extensively as it provides a concrete example of how collaboration creates value and how communities of practice can operate. In late November, I met with a CEO who had been tolerating the creation of communities of practice in his professional services firm. I showed him the Rio Tinto video and his face lit up and he said "I get it. That's what I want. Why didn't I get shown this video years ago?"
So, if you have lots of metrics but not many examples it might be time to sniff out and articulate a few success stories.
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| 13/01/09 | | For job hunters—finding and telling better stories |
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:
- 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 ...”
- 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.
- 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.
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| 9/01/09 | | Practicing great customer service, one story at a time |
Many posts ago, we shared the example of the Ritz Carlton demonstrating that 'A company that values customer service should be teeming with customer service stories'.
Here's another living example: Sparkspace
They have created a dedicated blog to record remarkable customer service. This is how they started with the idea.
We've challenged our company to create 100 customer service "sparks" over 100 days. The sparks can be simple gestures or grand WOW experiences. The catch is that they must be something we may not have done before this challenge.
Isn't it just a wonderful way to engage staff in doing the right thing and inspiring good action (through stories of their colleagues). And this can be so easy to implement.
Not a bad challenge to start the new year with!
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| 10/12/08 | | Business story-listening and storytelling in London |
We are running two workshops in London this June:
- Narrative techniques for business (story-listening)--24th June 09
RSA House
8 John Adam Street
London - Storytelling for business leaders (storytelling)--25th June 09
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London
The cost for each workshop is £350
Email us for a registration form.
These two methods are inextricably linked, which we've attempted to illustrate in this diagram.
If you want to learn about these methods and you live near London, here's your chance. Just email me and I will send out a registration form.
Below is a full description of each workshop.
Narrative Techniques for Business
- What's really going on in your organisation?
- What are the touch points where small changes can transform behaviour and morale?
- How can you develop a common understanding of what needs to be done and generate the resolve to do it?
Surveys and metrics can uncover trouble in an organisation, but they usually don't help you identify the reasons for dysfunctions, let alone generate the resolve to springboard people into action. Instead, learn to use stories as listening posts and tap into the emotion to spark action. From time immemorial, stories have contained collective lessons in condensed form. When gathered and examined, stories that are told in your organisation reveal important themes and patterns that in turn indicate effective solutions.
This one-day workshop, led by Australia's leading experts in story listening, teaches you to gather and make sense of stories so as to see revealing patterns and use them to gain traction on solving messy organisational problems or reaching complex goals.
After a full day of instruction, practice and feedback, you will have the confidence and knowledge to apply these powerful techniques within your organisation.
Who should attend?
Anyone struggling with thorny human problems or complex goals such as the following will gain value from this workshop:
- creating culture change
- building trust
- making mergers and acquisitions successful
- capturing the knowledge of retiring employees
- extracting lessons from projects
- improving occupational health and safety
- managing risk
The instruction is grounded in insights from organisational development and the science of complexity as well as in years of hands-on work with a wide range of organisations.
Practical, hands-on training
Story listening is not something you can learn from a manual. This workshop teaches how to find and collect stories, how to make sense of the stories and then how to design interventions that improve how things work. Participants practice each step in the process with one another and receive feedback that improves their understanding and ability to work with organisational stories.
Workshop topics covered include:
- when narrative approaches make sense and when to use other techniques
- how many participants to involve in story gathering and the characteristics you should look for in selecting them
- two techniques that effectively elicit stories from just about anyone
- which media to use for preserving and analyzing stories
- ways to extract meaning from a large volume of stories
- how to formulate ways of tackling truly complex problems based on lessons from the stories
By the end of the day, you will be prepared to run a story listening project using the narrative techniques you have learned and practised. This might aim at collecting lessons learned from a large project, improving employee satisfaction, smoothing the way for massive organisational change or enhancing occupational health and safety.
Here's what previous participants have said
"Anecdote is a great concept, and delivered with very high quality. Honest, thoughtful, valuable. The staff are very generous with their expertise and resources. They are open and approachable, acknowledging both their achievements and how they learned from their mistakes. These people are the real thing. You get a strong sense of how these processes can be applied in business settings. A really great workshop." Ian Colley, MakeStuffHappen
"We were looking for a fresh approach to get the business involved in cultural development. So instead of telling employees the results of our cultural survey and getting them to fix it, we wanted it to be owned by the business and have them discover for themselves the underlying reason why things are the way they are, in a new, explorative and interesting way. So we used Anecdote. It's the narrative discovery approach that provided such rich information about our culture. We would have never been able to get these insights without it. Plus the subsequent cultural initiatives would have missed the mark completely." Andrew Petersen, Challenger Financial Services
Storytelling for Business Leaders
We all need better ways to persuade, share what we know and help those around us make sense of the complex world we live in. Developing our innate storytelling skills helps build confidence, convey ideas clearly and effectively, and probably most importantly, present to our colleagues our humanity.
We all want to convey our ideas with impact, yet eyes instantly glaze the moment you beam your PowerPoint presentation laden with slide after slide of dot points. We know informally that stories are engaging; we tell them at dinner parties and people listen and they 'get it'. Yet few leaders systematically harness storytelling to communicate ideas, convey the organisation`s values or inspire and motivate people.
What the one day workshop is all about
Telling business stories is not about concocting events and delivering your tale to an enraptured audience. Rather, it relies on people retelling their own experiences in an authentic and empathetic way. Anecdote has developed a three-step process to guide you.
Prospecting
Everyone has stories to tell, but in many cases we are unaware of them. Prospecting involves creating a conducive environment for people to remember their stories. This might involve one-on-one interview techniques or group processes.
Patterns
We can improve the way we tell our stories by understanding the story structures and patterns appropriate for the task. During the workshop, we will explore a few key patterns and help participants re-craft their stories based on these story patterns.
Performance
Effective storytelling comes from a belief that the story is authentic. People judge authenticity on how the storyteller delivers their story. Participants will learn ways to develop a comfortable delivery style and feel at ease at telling stories regardless of the setting. This workshop is for anyone wanting to improve their ability to find and tell their own stories within a business context.
Who should attend
This workshop is for anyone wanting to improve their ability to find and tell their own stories within a business context. It is also for people wishing to improve their leaders’ ability to communicate ideas and engage staff in developing new behaviours.
You should attend this course if you are interested in:
- communicating your organisation`s mission, vision and values
- helping leaders motivate and inspire
- conveying desirable behaviours
- sharing knowledge
- becoming a more effective leader
- sparking action
- having people really listening to your ideas.
What you will learn and leave with
- a better understanding of what makes an effective story in a business context
- a newly discovered story- re-crafted story from your own experience
- understanding of how to best craft questions to discover stories
- ways to interview people for stories and facilitate anecdote circles
- when to use what story pattern - build confidence in telling your story.
What attendees have said
'Shawn has a most honest, open and engaging approach which is what is shown to work best with this technique and creates an enjoyable workshop.'
'The workshop covered a lot of territory in a way that combined analytical rigour with a clear and informal delivery. I recommend it without reservation.'
'There's loads of value in the Storytelling for Business Leaders workshop, and it's been a useful part of my leadership development activities.
In my role as Chief Sustainability Officer I'm often using stories about how our clients thinking has shifted around sustainability... they're often very powerful. The workshop has given me ideas and tools on how to actively include stories into presentations to give a better sense to people of who I am and what I stand for, as well as to illustrate key messages. I know they're having effect because of the feedback I receive - that they reflect an authenticity that is engaging - and because I hear people sharing these same stories.'
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| 9/12/08 | | The one place to attend our storytelling for business leaders workshop in Australia next year |
If you were wondering how you might attend one of our Storytelling for Business Leaders workshops when we've discontinued our public program, I have some good news. I'll be delivering it at Ark's Strategic Internal Communication conference on the 19th of February. The other place you'll be able to attend this course will be in London in the last week of June. Just send me an email if you are interested in attending the London workshop.
I'm also giving a presentation at the conference on communities of practice, based on our CoP projects this year.
Ark is offering a 20% discount for readers of the Anecdote blog. Just quote "AG-ANEC" when you register.
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| 13/11/08 | | Fired up and ready to go |
I was in Singapore last week helping a group of leaders learn how to find and tell their own stories. No templates, no recipes, just helping them become mindful of their own stories and showing that storytelling is a visual practice. Don't try and remember the words of a story, remember the pictures.
Like many of these sessions some people were naturals and others found it difficult to move from a didactic approach to communicating. There was one gentleman from India who I could tell was struggling. Luckily he was teamed up with a woman from Japan who really understood the idea of personal stories. At the end of the workshop he came up to me and thanked me for the day and said, "I can see how important telling your stories is because I have just seen you change the mood of the group and build a rapport with all of us by simply telling your stories. That's what I will take away with me today."
I was reminded of last week's workshop (stories beget stories) watching this short video of Barack Obama out on the hustings. He tells the story of how he came to use the chant: Fired up; ready to go. To key to good storytelling is detail, detail, detail and painting pictures for the audience's minds eye. How do you feel at the end of this story?
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| 25/10/08 | | Narrative medicine |
Doctors can easily get into the pattern of treating their patients like a slab of meat to be fixed. Anyone who's spent some time in hospitals have seen doctors waltz into the room, grab the chart from the end of the bed, mumble a few things to themselves, say a word or two to the patient and disappear as quickly as they arrived.
So it was heartening to see that there is a movement building called narrative medicine where doctors read and discuss stories about patients, literary stories and poems. This New York Times article is well worth the two-page read to see what some doctors are doing to engage the emotions of their interns and ensure humanity is returned to the doctor-patient relationship. By reading stories such as Empty Pockets and discussing what it means to the doctors they are creating a space for valuable conversation. This is similar to the Ritz Carlton example. And when asked about the time commitment:
And the time commitment? “It does get pretty busy,” Dr. Kaplan conceded. “But if you want to make time for it, you can. Spending a half hour a day to remember that we are all human, not just doctors or pharmacists or nurses or patients, is important enough that I think you should do it.
via Stephanie West Allen on Working Stories
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| 23/10/08 | | Storytelling for Business Leaders - London |
Today we've set the date for our Storytelling for Business Leaders workshop to be held in London. I'm looking forward to this trip and catching up with all the good folk in that part of the world who have kept up an interest in our work here in Australia. Please drop me a note if you would like to meet up while I'm there. And we would greatly appreciate your help passing on this message about my visit.
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| 22/10/08 | | Money as debt |
I was amazed when I watched this presentation about the history of banking. I had no idea that banks could conjure money from nowhere and loan it to you. Thanks to Euan Semple for the link.
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| 7/10/08 | | Values in action stories |
Most organisations have a set of values statements. Many of these do not reflect reality as displayed in the behaviours of people within the organisation. For example...'we value working collaboratively' is displayed on the wall but people are told "do it my way or else" by managers; deriding other areas of the business is effectively endorsed when people are not 'called' on the behaviour.
We had a fun day on Thursday running our 'Storytelling for Business Leaders' workshop in Sydney. The group chose 'values in action' as one of the story patterns they wanted to examine in detail. We came up with four questions you can ask to help identify the values at work in organisations:
- Think about a time when a manager made a tough decision, and did 'the right thing rather than the easy thing'. What happened?
- When have you seen someone 'cross the line' and they were 'called' on it. Alternatively, have you seen people 'cross the line' without being called.
- When have you felt uncomfortable about something your boss has done?
- When have you felt proud to work for this company?
Can you think of other questions that could help explore an organisation's values?
I also related an example of a values in action story from our workshop in Brisbane in August.
A company introduced a new health and safety policy for mobile phone use while driving. The policy was "engine on, phone off". Some time after the policy was introduced the company did a random call-around of about 50 employees. A senior manager answered his phone while driving. The response was "turn around, return your vehicle, give the keys to reception and clear your desk. Your employment with this company is over". The rationale was that the manager could not help enforce a policy that he was abusing himself.
For me this story says very clearly 'we value health and safety'. However, the story didn't seem to be well received by the workshop participants, possibly because firing the manager seemed a little draconian. What do you think?
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| 7/10/08 | | Please elaborate |
Examples, especially in the form of stories, help us make sense of what someone is saying. This is partly because when we listen to an example we are using our natural pattern matching abilities (something our brain has evolved to excel in) to link the example with our own experience. We then adjust our understanding based on the new input.
So it makes sense that examples also increase our ability to remember the main idea they illustrate.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska put this idea to the test. They asked 22 students to read an essay about a fictitious African country. The essay consisted of 32 paragraphs, each paragraph with a single, main idea sentence followed by none to three one-sentence examples. Here is an example paragraph from the essay.
Virtually all social reforms of the early 20th Century were the personal responsibility of King Manual. A state run medical service was established by King Manual in 1900. A system of primary education was created under Manual's direction in 1920. The forceable recruitment of native workers was stopped by Manual in 1915.
When they were done the researchers asked the students to recall the main ideas.
The result: the more examples (at least up to three), the better the recall of the main idea. The researchers suggest that the laws of diminishing returns must set in at some point. The likelihood of nine examples being more effective than eight is slight.
So why don't we see many examples in the things we read, especially in business writing?
I suspect it takes more time to find an example and it's much easier to espouse an opinion.
For example, I'm writing a client report at the moment and I've asked my client to send me a couple of examples illustratinh how their information system has been used to have a bottom-line and positive impact on the business. I also asked for examples of when the system had been misused or failed the organisation. My client could immediately think of examples of the latter and is still looking for our positive examples.
So maybe it's harder to find the positive stories and business report writers have a tendency to want to show strength and a positive outlook, and this is more easily done, especially with time pressures, with opinions. The problem is, we are creating a false intellectual economy because without the examples your readers don't know what you really mean and instantly forget the main ideas.
Palmere, M., S. L. Benton, et al. (1983). "Elaboration and Recall of Main Ideas in Prose." Journal of Educational Psychology 75(6): 898-907.
I discovered this research reading John Medina's Brain Rules.Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 3/10/08 | | In storytelling manipulative? |
Here is my test for whether a skill is manipulative: “Would it lose its power if people knew exactly what you were doing and why?” If the answer is yes, if the technique loses its power in the light of day, then it’s manipulative and I don’t want any part of it. - David Maxfield
This definition works for me.
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| 27/09/08 | | Brand stories |
Marketing folk confuse me sometimes. For example, they talk about brand stories yet they forget the story bit.
For example, if you Google the phrase "brand story" the top hit is a blog post by Mark Thomson. Reading his post you'd be forgiven for thinking stories are superfluous to crafting a brand story because while he uses the word 'story,' often actually, he doesn't explain what he means by a story nor give any examples of brand stories. His advice is to be clear, consistent and give it a bit a flair. A nicely formatted set of dot points could meet his criteria for a brand story.
Let me show you a brand story and then I'll share with you why so many marketers, journalists, and political spin doctors talk about narrative but don't appear to really get it.
At a minimum stories are set in a time (at the turn of the century, three months ago, in 1996, when I visited Grandma, a long, long time ago—you get the idea) and events happen which are linked together inferring causes and effects. If you haven't got these two basic features—a time when things happened and things actually happening—you don't have a story. And these features are merely the pre-requisite. Having them certainly doesn't guarantee a compelling story.
I'm surprised how many people talk about stories yet can't actually determine whether stories are present or missing. I'd say about half of the people attending our storytelling courses are confused about what a story actually is and it's one of the things we spend a good amount of time to ensure everyone's got it. Without this understanding you can't work with stories.
Even our very best political journalists seem confused. Here's Michelle Gratton, political editor for The Age newspaper said recently:
Having a "narrative" — which is just a sexy and fashionable way of saying a government should present what it is up to in an overall framework — gives people the feeling their leaders know what they're doing, and that the ends of policy are both worthwhile and consistent with the means. (That is, of course, provided the narrative is convincing.)
And here's ANZ's chief economist, Saul Eslake, suggested narrative (according to Michelle) for the Rudd government.
"If I were advising the Government, I'd be trying to say that there are some downside risks as a result of global factors; that because of this inflation is likely to fade away; that the budget had got the balance right; that if things got worse, it has the funds to ease fiscal policy," Eslake says.
"It could also say that Australians are exposed to the international credit crunch not because banks are up to their gills in dodgy mortgages, as in the US and Europe, but because we have a huge current account deficit — and that we want to address that through better productivity, skills and other reforms including tax reform."
Saul's suggested narrative are merely a string of ideas. You could craft a story from Saul's ideas but in themselves are far from a narrative.
When someone asks me about Anecdote I tell versions of this story.
Ever since Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 people have viewed the world around them as measured, predictable and conforming to defined laws of physics. The world is a machine and we only need to understand how that machine works so we can optimise each part.
Fredrick Taylor introduced Newton’s mechanical perspective to business in the 1880s and 90s. Taylor strongly believed that well defined procedures executed with precision was the best way to run a business. His ideas took off and this mechanical view of the firm dominated business thinking for the last 120 years. It worked remarkably well.
Since the industrial revolution we have seen things speed up and the information revolution has seen the world become more connected with changes accelerating every day. The 21st century, however, marks a tipping point where the mechanical view begins to falter. We need new ways to conceive the way businesses work that reflect their complexity and their essential human nature.
In 2004 we started Anecdote in the belief there was a new way to conceive of work that was organic, human-centred and reflected the complexity every business experiences in the 21st century. So we set about developing techniques and tools based on stories, a uniquely human faculty, designed to facilitate change more effectively, foster learning and collaboration and advance the natural leadership capabilities that exists in every organisation.
We believe this human-centred approach marks the future of organisations. There is still a long way to go because the majority of businesses still work on the basis that they are a machine with levers to pull, wheels to turn and cogs to grease.
The thing is, it's not the only story we tell that helps people understand who we are and what we stand for. There isn't a single brand story rather organisations should have a repertoire of brand stories that everyone knows and can tell.
My guess is that marketers, advertising agents and political Hollowmen use the term 'story' and 'narrative' so often that there is a belief that everyone knows what it means but only a subset of the group actually get it and the rest are too frightened to admit their ignorance.
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| 22/09/08 | | What Business Leaders can learn from Politicians: Telling stories |
The world's been carefully watching Obama vs McCain. It's interesting to see how the media are comparing their stories: Obama's parents' American dream, McCain's journey in Vietnam, Sarah Palin's hockey mom experiences, and Joe Biddin's childhood struggles. Who tells the best stories? Whose stories make the most impact?
While politicians have mastered the art of storytelling, the world of business if far behind. Carmine Gallo points out two reasons why Business Leaders don't use narrative to present their ideas:
- Most presenters are afraid of opening themselves up in a business context.
- Many deliver presentations created by folks with whom they have had little personal interaction.
Most people accept that stories convey more meaning to the listener than any amount of data or analysis. Yet we don't see narrative complementing data as much as we'd like to.
Telling stories is not difficult. It's actually quite easy once you give it a little practice. The hard bit (in a business context) is opening up to the idea of tapping into our experiences and sharing them.
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| 9/09/08 | | Storytelling as a study technique |
A few posts ago I described one of the reasons why stories are memorable: they evoke emotion.
But stories are also memoriable because they create a framework for us to hang ideas, facts and concepts from.
Thanks to Daryl Cook and the magic of delicious I read this post on how to use storytelling to remember your what you have just learned in a lecture.
- After each class, tell a “story” about the material covered—a five minute summary of the concepts that drove the lecture.
- Don’t bother writing it down. Instead, just say it to yourself while walking to your next class. Treat it like you’re a literary agent or movie producer pitching the lecture at an important meeting.
- Cover the big picture flow of ideas, not the small details. Answer the question “why was this lecture important?”, not all the information it contained. Play up the flashy or unexpected.
Read the rest of Cal's post for good examples and the full reasoning.
This is also relevant for those of us in the workplace who attend conferences, seminars or just have to bone up on a new topic for, say, a new job.
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| 8/09/08 | | Finding stories |
Tell stories to hear stories
Listen to stories to remember your stories
Mark and I penned these observations while developing our course on storytelling. The first one, "tell stories to hear stories," reminds us that a good way to find stories is to tell some yourself. Here's an example. When I see my teenage daughter after school I would often ask how her day went, whether anything interesting happened at school, and the standard response is often monosyllabic: yep, nup. In fact the more questions I'd ask the shorter the answers. So I changed tack and rather than ask questions I simply recounted something that happened in my day. I would launch into something like, "I met a bearded lady today. This morning I drove down to Fitzroy to run an anecdote circle for ..." and immediately my daughter would respond with an encounter from her day. A conversation starts and it's delightful.
Our second reminder is the flip-side to the first. If you want to remember your own stories go listen to other people's stories and then don't forget to jot your anecdotes down. Many of our stories are ephemeral, flooding our memory banks when the conditions are right and evaporating just as quickly. Often a story will come to mind and you will have no idea why you would ever retell it but make a note anyway. Just being aware of our stories is an important first step in the effective application of business narrative.
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| 3/09/08 | | Storytelling for business leaders workshop in Melbourne—23 September |
This workshop has turned out to be one of our most popular offerings. In the last few months we have delivered it to sales people in IBM, engineers in Allinta and have just received word we have been selected to deliver it to NAB leaders throughout the bank.
The great news is that you can attend this workshop in Melbourne in a few weeks time. It's all about using storytelling techniques in a business context to improve communication and staff engagement.
We focus on three areas in the one day workshop:
- helping people find stories to retell. We call this prospecting for stories
- learning about different story patterns and when to use them. What is a vision story? What is a sparking action story? How to use a values in action story?
- practising retelling your experiences in an engaging and memorable way that suits the context
If you're interested, just email us and we will send you a registration form.
The cost is $495.
It will be held in Brunswick
Starts at 8.30 and finishes at 5.00pm
If you want to learn more check out the workshop blurb.
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| 3/09/08 | | Emotion, memory and stories |
Do you remember where you were when you first saw the those two jumbo jets plunge into the World Trade Center? How well do you remember what you were doing when you saw it? Can you remember the room you were in, the people in the room with you, what you said, what you thought?
When strong emotions surge through us our bodies respond by pumping adrenalin into our blood stream. In addition to preparing us to run or fight, adrenalin enhances our memories of what was happening when the emotion hit. This biological response was probably a very good feature of our species in times past because you want to remember exactly where that T-rex, that scared the bejesus out of you, hangs out.
Stories create emotions too and therefore there's no surprise that we remember the best stories, they ones that touch our hearts, make us laugh or even just create a feeling of puzzlement.
Last week I was teaching our storytelling for business leaders workshop to an energy company and I started the day with a Jumpstart Storytelling session. One of the most popular stories was this one which was originally told by a CEO many years ago but remembered clearly by the participant.
In prehistoric times there was this family that lived in a cave. They were very happy in their cave. They led a good life but one day they noticed across the valley another cave that looked pretty good. So after many weeks of discussion they made their mind up to move to the new cave. As they crossed the valley they noticed just how rich the soil was and thought it would be even better to settle there and till the soil. Which they did.
The CEO never explained the story nor mentioned it again, but the discussion it started about what it meant continued for years.
Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman say stories are facts wrapped up in context and delivered with emotion. The three factors are equally important: fact, context, emotion. But emotion is often set aside in a business context and we are only now seeing its inclusion as a legitimate factor to consider.
The relationship between emotion and memory was first brought to me attention in Maxwell and Dickman's book, The Elements of Persuasion
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| 23/08/08 | | Be careful who you despise |
My friend Jackie hated having Nancy as her manager. She thought her to be cold, insensitive and overbearing and had, in the past, tried twice to get transferred to another department, but to no avail. Nancy was apparently a favorite with her employers, and since Jackie was both new to the area and the job, she felt she had no strings to pull. This only served to irritate her more.
Then one evening while she was working late to finish up a quarterly report, Jackie felt suddenly sick to her stomach and was on her way to the restroom when she collapsed in the hall. The next thing she knew she was being placed on a gurney and wheeled out to a waiting ambulance. In the sea of faces hovering over her, the only one she recognized was Nancy's, and in the blur of activity, she could feel Nancy squeeze her hand and hear her say, "Don't worry, Jackie, I'm here. I won't leave you."
It was a promise Nancy kept. Over the next few days as Jackie, a newly divorced mother of two, lay in a hospital bed, coming to terms with the damage done by the stroke she had suffered. Nancy not only stopped by to see her two and three times a day, offering never-ending words of encouragement and bringing mail and get-well messages from co-workers, but also stepped in to see that Jackie's two daughters were cared for and that every aspect of Jackie's life was kept running as smoothly as possible in her absence.
When it was necessary for Jackie to leave the hospital and be placed in a rehabilitation facility, Nancy again made all of the arrangements and visited daily, and when Jackie was finally allowed to go home, it was Nancy who made it possible for her to travel to and from physical therapy each day until she was, at last, fully recovered and able to return to work.
By the time I met the two women, over a decade had passed. They still worked for the same company, though Nancy was about to retire, and Jackie was now the manager of her own department, a promotion she had earned the year following her life-changing stroke. It was obvious to everyone that the two women were the best of friends. I was a new hire for the company and learned about their history together when they invited me to lunch.
At Nancy's retirement party a couple of weeks later, I was standing next to Jackie as her dear friend was receiving accolades from the rest of her co-workers. Jackie looked at her and then whispered to me, "Can you believe I used to hate that woman? And if it wasn't for her, I'd probably be dead. Goes to show we never know who among us is an angel, doesn't it?"
None of us really knows about the people we decide to hate. We label them wrong and ourselves right and in so doing never realize that we are building a wall of separation that only grows stronger with time. We truly do block the angels from our midst. It is not until circumstance throws us together, as it did Jackie and Nancy, that we realize how very much we need one another and how very alike we truly are.
As a young girl living with my grandmother, any time I criticized another person in her presence, she would ask to see whose shoes I was wearing, a blunt reminder that unless I'd walked in that person's shoes, I had no right to judge. It was also a signal that I should stop talking and start thinking differently.
Even today, I sometimes catch myself looking down at my feet when I feel tempted to criticize. "Who am I to judge?" I'll ask myself in the next breath, realizing as I do that I have no idea what the target of my critical focus is really going through.
Of course, that doesn't always stop me, and sometimes the judgment tumbles into my thoughts or words and takes up residence before I even notice. But through my own self-experimenting, I have noticed that when I succeed in suspending judgment and allowing myself to look at others from another perspective, my joy increases. Judging others, I have discovered, does not let joy in. Stepping away from judgment does.
In the long run, all judging others really does is bring pain and block us from our ability to offer love. We were born to give, to bless, and to be a blessing, but when we are sitting in judgment, we can't. As Mother Teresa pointed out, when we are judging others, we have no time to love them. It is only in suspending judgment that we open our hearts to unconditional love and empower ourselves and each other to be the best that we can be.
An Excerpt from "May You Be Blessed"" by Kate Nowak
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| 18/08/08 | | In defence of gossip |
Gossip is badly maligned in business, but that's because most of us only have a limited understanding of the concept. For example, gossip is merely anything we say about someone when they are not there to hear it. And it turns out we spend 65% of our talking time recounting who has done what to whom—gossiping. Business leaders will be pleased to hear that only a small percentage of this time (about 5%) is focussed on maligning our colleagues. So what are we doing in the other 95% and why should we care?
Robin Dunbar, the evolutionary biologist best known for Dunbar's number of 150, which is the maximum number of people we can get our minds around in a social network, argues that this substantial gossip time is akin to primates grooming each building their social bonds. Primates do it with their hands, humans groom each other with language. Does this sort of exchange sound familiar?
"Did ya hear about Marcus smashing his quota a month before quarter end? How does he do it?" said Amy.
"He's a freak. I hear he's big on lead generation and knows the marketing guys really well. Last week I saw him over there with chocolates. He's pretty friendly with Fiona. By the way are you going to Friday drinks?" said Pete.
Well, this is the type of thing we spend about 65% of our talking time saying. Interestingly Dunbar and his colleagues note that both men and woman spent the same timing gossiping and talked about similar things (experiences and relationships) with two exceptions:
- When men were with woman, men gossiped less (less about who did what with whom) yet spoke more. Men became more authoritative, factual and attempted to be more entertaining.
- Woman spend 2/3rds or the time talking about other people's social experiences whereas men spend 2/3rds of the time talking about their own experiences
Dunbar puts these differences down to our evolutionary needs for men to impress woman to find a mate and for woman to be good at building social networks to support the raising of children. Our evolutionary development, of course, is way behind our social situations in the 21st century, but it stills affects how we behave.
Finally we should be aware that most gossip is in the form of storytelling. It's people recounting events. It's not what I call big 'S' storytelling (well crafted plots, legends, fairy-tales) but the type of storytelling we are involved in much of our talking hours. This type of small, almost invisible storytelling has the greatest impact on who we are, how people view us (our reputation) and how we see this world.
Dunbar, R. (1996). Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
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| 12/08/08 | | Three new storytelling workshops for this year: Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney |
By popular demand, we've just added three more Storytelling for Leaders workshops. They'll be held in these Australian cities:
Melbourne, 23 September 2008
Sydney, 2 October 2008
Canberra, 20 October 2008
And we haven't forgotten Brisbane because our next Storytelling for Leaders workshop in that fine city is on the 27th August.
Here is the link to the full blurb and instructions on how to enrol.
One of the things I've learnt running this workshop is that many people think they know what a story is up till the point where they have to identify one. We use of a range of videos of people telling stories and use them to hone your skills in knowing what a story really is and what it is not. It's a kind of a curse really because after this workshop you can't help but notice the stories all around you. But without this knowledge it's impossible to find and tell effective stories.
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| 6/08/08 | | Imbuing your workplace with stories |
A company that values customer service should be teeming with customer service stories. But what do you do if this is not the case? The Ritz-Carlton has developed a narrative-based approach for ensuring customer service is in the minds of all their people. It was described in this Business Week article but I first discovered it reading Maxwell and Dickman's The Elements of Persuasion. This is what the Ritz-Carlton has done.
Everyone in the company is encouraged to submit stories of RC people going above and beyond. Each week a story is selected and sent out to all the RC hotels around the world and this story is read out at the Line Up meetings, the gathering of staff before starting a shift. Here's an example of one of these stories as told by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, which RC call their WOW stories.
Like a lot of good stories, it starts on a dark and windy night. In this case, a blustery February when the downstairs bar that Fran tends was largely deserted. "The only one in the room was an older gentlemen, the sort of executive that has been drinking the same scotch for the last fifty years." A young, good-looking couple--we'll call them Dick and Jane-- came in dressed in laua shirts despite the weather and ordered mai tais. They seemed a little morose, but Fran is the sort of bartender who can get anyone to open up, and soon they told their story. Dick and Jane had just been married. They had always planned to honeymoon at the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, Hawaii. In fact, they had a reservation already booked for six months in the future, but Dick had just been diagnosed with cancer--a particularly nasty form of Hodgkin's lymphoma--so they pushed the date forward and were in L.A. for chemotherapy. This might be as close to Hawaii as they ever got, so they were bravely trying to make the most of it. When Fran tells the story, at this point her eyes take on that slightly stunned look that comes to cancer patients as they struggle to find the right balance between hope and denial. Obviously, the couple's story touched her deeply.
Fran got someone to cover the bar and sprang into action. She found Don Quimby, the manager on duty and together they went to the banquet hall prop room and collected anything that reminded them of Hawaii--a fishing net, a collection of starfish and seashells, a poster of Hawaiian hula dancers at a luau--and quickly gave the couple's room a make over. They even filled a cooler with sand and stuck in a sign that read "Dick and Jane's Private Beach." Then Don found an electronic key from the Ritz at Kapalua that a previous guest had left behind by mistake and reprogrammed it so it worked on Dick and Jane's room door. Don put on a Hawaiian shirt and went out to deliver this new key to them. He led them to their "new Hawaiian Honeymoon Suite," where a complimentary bottle of champaign was waiting. And for the next three days staff of the hotel did everything it could think of to make the couple feel like they were on a Hawaiian honeymoon of a lifetime.
Three times a week staff recount WOW stories in the Line Ups, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each time a WOW story is told it triggers a conversation about what everyone sees as significant in the story and often prompts the retelling of other stories of things that have happened in their own hotel. So rather than receive a corporate directive on how to behave staff vicariously experience behaviour that everyone recognises as exemplary.
You receive a $100 if your story is selected and at the end of the year there is a competition to select the top 10 stories.
This approach has many of the features of Most Significant Change except that the conversation around the stories happens at the coal face rather than among the decision makers. Mind you, someone in HQ is selecting the stories and this process could be expanded to include a MSC style selection process with the decision makers.
If done well your organisation would definitely be teeming with values in action stories.
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| 4/08/08 | | Don't lecture, tell a story |
Rather than give a lecture to his fellow comedian, Jerry Seinfeld tells a story to convey his message. This clip is from Jerry's documentary, Comedian, about his time on the road doing stand-up after Seinfeld. I've just ordered it.
Hat tip to Garr Reynolds
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| 1/08/08 | | Scientific America takes note of storytelling |
I was excited to see the current issue of Scientific America has an article on storytelling called The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn. Perhaps a whole new audience for story work will emerge among the world's scientists.
But it got me thinking. When people first encounter storytelling they often are directed to storytelling with a capital 'S'. You know, the storytelling of epics, sagas, legends, myths and storybooks. They are told stories are everywhere and due to their theatrical introduction they believe its these big stories that constitute our omnipresent narratives. Sadly, they are mistaken. The vast majority of stories we tell and hear are small 's' stories: the anecdotes, recounts, gossip, story fragments, war stories and one about the fish that got away.
If the Scientific America article is your introduction to storytelling you could be forgiven for thinking that storytelling is important and you should start reading more literature, going to more plays and watching more epic movies. I would have preferred readers to conclude from the article that they should be more mindful of all the stories being told around them and to wonder about how the stories they tell impact others.
The article is a hotchpotch of tangentially related research that jumped around leaving the reader feeling dizzy and disoriented. It's interesting, however, that one of the quotes is this:
"Indeed, to this day people spend most of their conversations telling personal stories and gossiping. A 1997 study by anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, then at the University of Liverpool in England, found that social topics accounted for 65 percent of speaking time among people in public places, regardless of age or gender."
Yet these conversational narratives only receive a sentence or two in the four page article.
I'm in two minds about this article. One the one hand a new audience might be left with the residual thought that storytelling is important. That's a good thing for our discipline. But it also might give storytelling a bad name among scientists and leave them with the wrong impression of where story is really having the greatest impact: among the billions of tiny story moments happening everywhere, all the time.
Thanks to Stephanie West Allen for the pointer to this article.
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| 27/07/08 | | Blind Men and the Elephant |
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk
Cried, "Ho! what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope.
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
by American poet, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-97)
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| 27/07/08 | | The stonecutters and the cathedral builder |
Here is one of the stories I heard at KM Australia as told by John Girard.
On a foggy autumn day nearly 800 years ago a traveller happened upon a large group of workers adjacent to the River Avon. Despite being tardy for an important rendezvous curiosity convinced the traveller that he should inquire about their work. With a slight detour he moved toward the first of the three tradesmen and said “my dear fellow what is it that you are doing?” The man continued his work and grumbled, “I am cutting stones.” Realising that the mason did not wish to engage in a conversation the traveller moved toward the second of the three and repeated the question. To the traveller’s delight this time the man stopped his work, ever so briefly, and stated that he was a stonecutter. He then added “I came to Salisbury from the north to work but as soon as I earn ten quid I will return home.” The traveller thanked the second mason, wished him a safe journey home and began to head to the third of the trio.
When he reached the third worker he once again asked the original question. This time the worker paused, glanced at the traveller until they made eye contact and then looked skyward drawing the traveller’s eyes upward. The third mason replied, “I am a mason and I am building a cathedral.” He continued, “I have journeyed many miles to be part of the team that is constructing this magnificent cathedral. I have spent many months away from my family and I miss them dearly. However, I know how important Salisbury Cathedral will be one day and I know how many people will find sanctuary and solace here. I know this because the Bishop once told me his vision for this great place. He described how people would come from all parts to worship here. He also told that the Cathedral would not be completed in our days but that the future depends on our hard work.” He paused and then said, “So I am prepared to be away from my family because I know it is the right thing to do. I hope that one day my son will continue in my footsteps and perhaps even his son if need be.”
Girard J.P. and Lambert S (2007) “The Story of Knowledge: Writing Stories that Guide Organisations into the Future” The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 5 Issue 2, pp 161-172.
In the topic of writing future stories my personal preference is to help people find real stories that reflect where they would like to be in the future. I find that when people write fictitious future stories there is excitement and engagement while they write them, which is a good thing, but when the stories are revisited weeks later people look at each other askance and wonder what drugs people were on.
This type of story is in another category. It's one that might help to break a mindset and get a group thinking more aspirationally.
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| 26/07/08 | | What an artist and computer scientist can do with stories |
Jonathan Harris loves playing around with stories and in this 20 minute presentation at the 2007 TED he gives three examples of his work. He seems facinated with how you can collect stories and them represent then using computer graphics.
The project I found most interesting, and it was reminiscent of Cognitive Edge's ground-breaking work in graphically representing stories (check out their Sensemaker software), is his Whale Hunt project. Jonathan describes the Whale Hunt 5:50 min from the start of this video. On a 9-day visit to the Arctic he takes a photo every 5 minutes, day and night, and then displays these photos in a variety of ways (http://thewhalehunt.org/).
I'm certain you will enjoy this video. I also loved the third project exploring happiness in Bhutan.
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| 21/07/08 | | A bunch of Robert McKee resources |
I think one of the first books I read on storytelling was Story by Robert McKee. It's written from the perspective of a screenwriter and conveys a tremendous understanding of story structure. Today I noticed Presentation Zen blogged a long post reviewing a Harvard Business Review article by McKee, some video interviews and a myriad of other resources you might find interesting.
While Garr is mainly focussed on storytelling in this quote, we have found a similar phenomenon in our story-listening work.
The most common way to persuade people, says McKee, is with conventional rhetoric and an intellectual process that in the business world "...usually consists of a PowerPoint presentation" in which leaders build their case with statistics and quotes, etc. McKee says rhetoric is problematic because while we are making our case others are arguing with us in their heads using their own statistics and sources. Even if you do persuade through argument, says McKee, this is not good enough because "...people are not inspired to act on reason alone." The key, then, is to aim to unite an idea with an emotion, which is best done through story. "In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener's emotion and energy." (emphasis added)
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| 18/07/08 | | Unfinished business enhances mindfulness |
The story goes that Bluma Zeigarnik was sitting in a cafe in Vienna (as all good psychologists do) and noticed that the waiters were able to remember long and complicated orders up to the point where the orders were delivered to the table and placed in front of the correct patron. After this point the order was completely forgotten. This simple observation triggered a series of experiments where Bluma found that if something is left incomplete it creates a psychic tension which makes a person more mindful and open to learning. It's now called the Zeigarnik Effect. Or perhaps more simply, suspense.
I heard a story-based example of the Zeigarnik effect this week. A presenter started their talk with a story and stopped just as it was getting interesting, creating psychic tension and probably some considerable annoyance. He then proceeded with the rest of his talk and completed the story at the end of the presentation. People were on the edge of their seats throughout I'm told. I've gotta give this a go.
This effect reminds me that you can use this desire for completion in other ways:
If you want to come up with a list of ideas write, "There are five things to consider:" and jot down 5 dots points (just the dots) and you will be surprised how easy it is to come up with the 5 ideas.
Thanks to Jay Cross for introducing me to this phenomenon.
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| 2/07/08 | | Matt Moore facilitates a discussion on story work with Madelyn Blair and me |
This morning Madelyn and I met Matt Moore on Skype to chat about story work. Matt's a fast worker and has already posted the podcast. Here are the show notes:
00:00 - Introductions: Madelyn & Shawn's first introduction to storywork.
04:00 - Stories that stick in your mind: Madelyn's story of the Swedish ambassador, the mosque & the stone.
06:00 - Shawn distinguishes between storylistening & storytelling.
08:30 - "Storytelling" as a bit overwhelming vs things that you do everyday.
11:15 - The use of objects in storytelling - Madelyn applies this to mission statements.
13:00 - The importance of context & duckus duckus.
16:00 - Getting different groups to talk.
18:10 - Scientific papers as mystery stories.
And if you are interested in how to use mystery story format to write scientific papers (or any persuasive communication) then check out this post.
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| 30/06/08 | | Employee engagement interest in storytelling |
A few weeks back, Alex Manchester from Melcrum interviewed me on various issues around storytelling. He approached me following the large amount of interest in storytelling shown at the Employee Engagement conference in late May. The interview is available as a podcast if you are interested.
The use of narrative for exploring issues around employee engagement has been expanding of late, with several organisations approaching us to help get a deeper understanding of what the results of their employee engagement surveys really mean and what they can do to positively influence engagement. I will post a longer piece on this in the coming days.
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| 16/06/08 | | Storytelling and leadership |
It's obvious to most people that good leaders are good storytellers. Stories help inspire action because they transport the listener to experience the events recounted in the story in a way that conveys emotion, context and a picture of what happened, and why is happened. We remember these stories. They help change our minds and in doing so, change our behaviours. Storytelling is an important skill for leaders.
But it's not the only way to use stories to help leaders improve their capabilities.
18 months ago we started a narrative-based leadership development program for a global pharmaceutical company. We collected 150 stories of good and bad management behaviour from the staff and then use these stories in a two day program. Twelve managers attend every month and one of the activities we do with them is to facilitate a conversation around the question, which stories are most significant?
One of the stories often selected as significant is a seemingly simple account of a woman whose manager stops whatever he was doing whenever she visited his office, moves to a table in the middle of the room and invites her to sit down and then totally focusses on her. She felt that she was being listened to and her ideas were important. It was remarkable for this woman because other managers didn't do that. The leaders in the program often choose this story as significant because they feel that if only they could get more managers doing this it would create a groundswell of change.
A few weeks ago we refreshed the stories for this company in preparation for a new phase of leadership development, and lo and behold, staff told stories of how their manager, whenever they knock on their office door, he or she stops what they’re doing, comes out from behind their desk and… you guessed it… focuses totally on them and their issues.
Imagine if we conducted the leadership development program by listing the behaviours a good leader displays and then tried to persuade them with logic and reasoning. Change is unlikely. But in this case the leaders worked things out for themselves and inspired themselves to change.
Both approaches to using stories to enhance leadership capabilities are important.
If you want to help your leaders be better storytellers, then get them along to our Storytelling for Business Leaders workshop or we can bring it to your organisation.
If you want to learn how to collect and make sense of stories as a way to change behaviours them come along to our Business Narrative workshop.
We run these workshops in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, or anywhere else in Australia or the world for that matter :-)
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| 30/05/08 | | Building your analogy repertoire |
Collaborative conversations are characterised by people building on each other's ideas, one idea sparking another. I saw a good example last week while helping a group design some small interventions they could experiment with in their organisation to improve communications. The conversation went something like this:
"We could do a 10 minute spot at the Friday afternoon drinks."
"Yeh, good idea. Could we do that in Melbourne and Hobart?"
"They don't really do drinks like the Sydney guys."
"Perhaps we could video the presentation."
"And then we could put that on our intranet. Everyone could see it then."
"In fact there are lots of things we could video. What about the CEO's blurb at the induction."
So what started out as a presentation at Friday night drinks ended up being an initiative to collect useful things for people to watch on video on the intranet. And this idea is destined to evolve as they try it out and adapt. This is the essence of making progress in complexity.
But collaborative conversations can run into a brick wall. When ideas dry up we need a new way of thinking about the topic at hand. This is where analogies (and metaphors) come in handy.
First a quick reminder of what we mean by an analogy. An analogy is when we say something is like something else. For example, this organisation is like a summer holiday, everyone is relaxed and has fun (I have to admit to never having the opportunity to use this analogy). A metaphor is when you infer a comparison by describing something else. This organisation is a summer holiday is a basic example. Saying a conversation hit a brick wall is another example of a metaphor.
In collaborative conversations an analogy provides a new frame for thinking about a problem. Take our mini conversation about videoing things to put on the intranet. Someone might say the idea is a bit like a short film festival (an analogy) which in turn might get the group thinking about showings in multiple venues, judging panels, film genres, producers and directors. All these features of a short film festival can provide new ideas for the intervention.
So to be a good collaborator we need to have a repertoire of analogies at our disposal. So how do we do it?
The first thing is to increase the variety of experiences you have. A short film festival analogy will lack richness or might not even occur to you if you've never been to one. But simply doing heaps of new things is not enough because you can't do everything. So the second best way to is to hear, read, experience stories. History is full of great analogous source material. Business models and ways of doing things in other industries is another tremendous source. I guess the simple advice is to be interesting. Russell Davies has some good ideas.
But you can't stop there. Experience without some form of mindfulness is unlikely to stick with you in a way that you might remember when grasping for an apt analogy. If you want to remember something, tell yourself a story about it that you can picture in your mind, smell, taste and hear.
This idea of an analogy repertoire is a new thought for me and I'm still working out how one might expand this capability. Any suggestions out there?
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| 26/05/08 | | I know what you are thinking stories |
Many business audiences like to hear stories that are directly relevant. So if you are a civil engineer, for example, it's likely you're not that interested in stories about electrical engineers. But sometimes (actually quite often in the case of innovation) there are great lessons to be learned from another discipline. In these cases it might find be useful to tell a “I know what you are thinking" story to prepare the audience to hear what you have to say.
For example, with our engineers you might like to tell them a story of how a concrete swimming pool was incorrectly installed putting the installers in harm’s way. These engineers are unlikely to see the relevance of a swimming pool story in the first instance so get them ready to hear it by telling a “I know what you are thinking" story. The first step is to find an instance where one discipline was inspired by the practices of another (check out the Medici Effect for examples). It might be something like a group of engineers who heard about the practices of a plastic surgeon and at first you couldn’t imagine there was any relevance, but the surgeon story gave them the idea that totally revolutionised a key aspect of their work. Once this story is told you can start on the story you wanted to tell at the outset, which might on the surface seemed irrelevant to the audience.
The idea of a "I know what you are thinking" story is from Annette Simmons' new book, Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins. Annette describes six storytelling patterns.
Thanks to Seb Fajzullin for asking me the question on how you might tackle this situation with stories.
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| 24/05/08 | | Women's memories are more speech-filled than men's |
Contrary to popular belief, new research is showing that woman don't talk more than men (see here and here). They do, however, recall more of what was said than blokes when asked to recount their experiences. We must have plenty of examples or these verbatim recollections in the stories we've collected over the years.
Richard Ely and Elizabeth Ryan have just published their findings and have also surmised,
" ... women may recall more speech than men because of differences in the way boys and girls are spoken to by their parents. "Parents are more elaborative and more emotional when conversing with daughters than with sons."
Christian Jarrett reports this news at the Research Digest blog and also notes that the researchers also discovered that emotional events were more likely to be remembered with what was actually said.
Take this example, in which a participant recounted the time he accidentally injured a team-mate in baseball, and went to see if he was okay: "The coach just turns to me and says 'Get out of here you little bastard, you have done enough.' I didn't play baseball for five years after that."
This reminds me of the story Miriam Margolyes tells on Andrew Denton's show when the Queen tells her to "be quiet." It's a terrific story told by a consummate storyteller.
Ely, R., Ryan, E. (2008). Remembering talk: Individual and gender differences in reported speech. Memory, 16(4), 395-409. DOI: 10.1080/09658210801949869
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| 11/05/08 | | The one-arm boy |
There was a boy who was born without a right arm. On his ninth birthday he asked his parents if he could join a karate club. They were delighted by the idea and the boy quickly became a regular at the local dojo. The boy wanted to compete in a tournament and asked his master if this was possible. The master said he could but only if he listened carefully to his master and trusted him.
The master taught the boy one move and one move only. The boy practised it diligently but after a while he was worried that the other boys were learning a range of moves and he only had one. He asked the master to teach him other moves but the master said no. The master just urged the boy to keep practising that one move.
The boy won the first round of the tournament and then the next round and the one after that until he found himself winning the entire tournament. The boy was baffled. How did he do it? He asked the master how a boy with only one arm and only one move could win a karate tournament against these other boys. The master smiled and told the boy that there is only one defence against the move the boy learned and that defence involves grabbing the attacker by the right arm.
I believe this is a Zen teaching story. It was told to me by Pavan Choudary. I spent two days with Pavan and a terrific group of creative people at Conversations that Create. Pavan has recently launched his book, When you are sinking, become a submarine. Pavan is an inspirational and fascinating fellow and if his book is anything like the wonderful conversations we had, it will be well worth getting a copy.
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| 3/05/08 | | Storytelling event in Washington |
My friend Madelyn Blair is busily preparing for two great storytelling events in Washington that start on the 9 May. I believe there are 30 seats left now so you still register to attend
For Goldenfleece Day08 go to http://www.goldenfleececon.orgFor Smithsonian Event, May 9 go to http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=87387
I wish I could make it because I know there will be terrific conversations about storytelling in business context and I would get to meet many of the people I Skype such as Victoria Ward, Madelyn, and Steve Denning.
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| 23/04/08 | | Communicate with impact |
Imagine presenting without PowerPoint. No slides, no bullet points - just a persuasive message that changes opinion and makes an impact.
The PowerPoint alternative is simple - stories. Whenever you present or communicate, your stories will help you communicate your ideas more meaningfully. That's why global brands such as AXA, Harley Davidson and Nike are utilising their power.
Never submit another audience to death by PowerPoint. Join our Storytelling for Business Leaders Workshop and develop your innate storytelling skills to convey ideas clearly and effectively. Most importantly, you'll learn to build a rapport that stimulates trust and a sense of connection with your colleagues and clients alike.
"Shawn's presentation to our technical sales forum was right on the money. The story telling tactics and skills passed on have been immediately adopted, and are producing higher quality presentations by our team to our clients. We look forward to continuing to develop our skills in this area, which will support the business objectives of our organisation and our customers." — IBM
The workshop will teach you how to find your own stories, understand story patterns and how to share your stories with maximum impact. We'll talk about the six different types of stories and much more ...
Download the Registration Form
We look forward to seeing you there!.
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| 20/04/08 | | Revealing character |
Recently we've been helping people find stories from their life that help give others an insight into the type of person they are. Annette Simmons calls these stories, 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?' stories. They are most useful when you meet people for the first time because the two questions they're likely yo have in their mind are, 'Who are you?' and 'Why are you here?' Without answering these two questions it's unlikely they will take in much else of what you say.
The 'Who am I?' story reveals character whereas 'Why am I here?' reveals motivation. I was flicking through Robert McKee's book, Story, and noticed a section on the difference between character and characterisation and I wanted to share this scenario McKee paints for us that graphically depicts how character is revealed.
Consider this scene: Two cars motor down a high way. One is a rusted-out station wagon with buckets, mops, and brooms in the back. Driving it is an illegal alien—a quiet, shy woman working as a domestic for under-the-table cash, sole support of her family. Alongside her is a glistening new Porsche driven by a brilliant and wealthy neurosurgeon. Two people who have utterly different backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, languages—in every way imaginable their characterizations are the opposite of each other.
Suddenly, in front of them, a school bus full of children flips out of control, smashes against an underpass, bursting into flames, trapping the children inside. Now, under this terrible pressure, we'll find out who these people really are.
Who chooses to stop? Who chooses to drive by? Each has rationalizations for driving by. The domestic worries that if she gets caught up in this, the police might question her, find out she's an illegal, throw her back across the border, and her family will starve. The surgeon fears that if he's injured and his hands burned, hands that perform miraculous microsurgeries, the lives of thousands of future patients will be lost. But let's say they both hit the brakes and stop.
This choice gives us a clue to character, but who is stopping to help, and who's become too hysterical to drive any farther? Let's say they both choose to help. This tells us more. But who chooses to help by calling for an ambulance and waiting? Who chooses to help by dashing into the burning bus? Let's say they both rush for the bus—a choice that reveals character in even greater depth.
Now doctor and housekeeper smash windows, crawl inside the blazing bus, grab screaming children, and push them to safety. But their choices aren't over. Soon the flames surge into a blistering inferno, skin peels from their faces. They can't take another breath without searing their lungs. In the midst of this horror each realizes there's only a second left to rescue one of the many children still inside. How does the doctor react? In a sudden reflex does he reach for a white kid or the black child closer to him? Which way do the housekeeper's instincts take her? Does she save the little boy? Or the little girl cowering at her feet? How does she make Sophie's choice?
I would never wish this level of drama upon anyone in real life—remember, McKee is advising screenwriters— but it demonstrates that character is revealed under pressure. It's probably one of the reasons we intuitively watch our leaders when a crises occurs to see what they do because their actions reflect under pressure their character.
When looking for 'Who am I?' stories you will need to seek out those times when you were under the pump, or it didn't go the way you expected. What did you do? Alternatively find stories of when others were under pressure and you admired how they acted.
I'm in the process of writing a new anecdote for the back of my business card. I want it to be a 'Who am I?' story. It's far less dramatic than the burning bus scenario but I would like you opinion. What do you think? What character/s are revealed in this story?
In 1996 I helped the Australian Geological Survey Organisation document their scientific datasets. We put a heap of effort into designing the database and then went to the scientists and asked them to describe their datasets. They scoffed at the suggestion, reminding us that they had a mountain of data and little motivation to do anything with it apart from publishing papers. We were stumped until we cottoned on to the fact that their culture was defined by the imperative to publish or perish. We revisited our project design and created the idea of a published dataset. It was linked to their performance management systems but most importantly each published dataset could be officially cited in their personal bibliographies. We went back to the scientists and asked whether they would like to publish their datasets and there was an instant line up.
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| 14/04/08 | | 2020 Summit—storytelling advice to summiteers |
The Australia 2020 Summit promises to bring together the nation’s best and brightest brains in a bid to discover new ideas to take the country forward. For those attending it will be an opportunity to make their mark. The Summit is a big event, full of big IQs and bigger egos – it’s tough to stand out from the crowd. My advice for summiteers: make an impact by reaching people’s emotions. Statistics don’t do that – but stories do.
For example, the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is someone who understands the power of a story. One of his first television commercials as Prime Ministerial aspirant used his personal story as the basis for his plan to reform education: http://www.alp.org.au/labortv/6FiTQAgNy6
Stories work because they get people’s attention and people develop a resolve to act when their emotions are triggered. My tips for our 1000 brightest minds if they want to stand out from the other 999 Summiteers:
1. Grab your audience’s attention with a story of how’s things are failing and tell it with detail, empathy and authenticity. Humans are psychologically attuned to take notice of tales of woe because we have evolved to notice and avoid danger.
2. Paint a picture of what it could be like with a story of hope illustrating that good things are already happening. As celebrated sci-fi writer William Gibson noted, “the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.” Hopeful stories generate resolve to take action.
3. Find real stories and never embellish, fabricate or tell half the story for effect. One untruthful story will erode all your good work.
Forget the dreaded PowerPoint presentation and, instead, use stories to leave a longer lasting impression. As conference veterans know too well, the chances of meaningful discourse are slim at best when bombarded with one slide after the next jam packed with enough bullets to deplete Cadbury’s licorice supplies.
If the aim is to generate conversations so leaders are not only exposed to new thinking but also remember and adopt new ideas then a combination of stories and reasoned argument is essential. And always lead with the stories because trying to change someone’s mind with hard, cold facts only results in people with convictions to dig their heels in even further.
Anecdote’s “business narrative” techniques are becoming more and more mainstream as people realize the limitations that come with statistics and surveys to tackle and solve problems and implement change. Stories often get to the heart of the matter because they represent the natural way people share what they know.
Here my interview with Richard Aedy from the Life Matters program on ABC Radio National. Here's the audio (approx. 8 minutes).
Or check out our latest storytelling for leaders workshop.
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| 13/04/08 | | 2020 Summit |
Andrew Leigh went to the 2020 summit warm up yesterday in Canberra. It was the ACT 2020 summit and the lesson he will be taking to the big event on the 19-20th this month is, "... any idea with less than 90% support on Day 1 is going to get killed." I can just imagine it, 300 people clamouring for their big ideas to be heard by 299 others and only 16 ideas making it to the end of the day. This is idea decimation in the original Roman sense of the word.
How did the successful ideas emerge? Were these successful ideas merely part of the community zeitgeist and would have survived regardless of what the participants did? How many were presented as a list of facts, a presentation of the evidence? I would be willing to bet many of the successful ideas were presented as a story illustrating the idea in a way that helped it stick in the minds of the participants. Once the idea took hold, it grew.
I worry about the upcoming 2020 summit. I want it to be a tremendous success but I can see 10 groups of 100 egos clashing and the largest voices smothering the quieter best and brightest. The success will depend on two factors: how the event is facilitated; and whether participants can tell stories to engage their fellow summiteers.
Facilitation, techniques and physical space
From what I can tell the summit organisers plan to run small group sessions and large plenary presentations. The warning bells should sound if we see rooms arrange in seminar seating styles, the favoured arrangement for one-way information transmission. I'm hopeful that the organisers know about techniques like open space, world cafe, or even something like jump-start storytelling to help the group be more collaborative. But maybe my hope is misplaced. These techniques foster real dialogue when in fact these two days will be a gladiatorial contest of whose ideas win. Physical space and technique are important but both are trumped by the skill and attitude of the facilitators. At one end of the spectrum is the facilitator who already has in their mind a picture of what good looks like and regardless of what's been said this person hears their version and heads the group in that direction. At the other end of the spectrum is the facilitator who is totally focussed on process and helps people be heard. I'm hoping the 2020 team of facilitators fits in this last category.
Storytelling
Each participant will have very little time to engage the group in their idea. Cognitive science show that if someone has a strong opinion on a topic and you provide an alternative opinion, it only serves to reinforce the person's original strong opinion. It's called a cognitive bias.1 However if we tell a negative story to grab attention then a positive story to illustrate what's possible, we have a much greater chance of changing someone's mind and engaging people.2,3 It's only after hearing the stories are people open to hearing the reasoning and evidence.
There are three reasons why these stories work:
- stories are memorable and can be retold. This is powerful if your story embodies your big idea and is the told and retold at the Summit.
- stories convey emotion and, regardless of what all the hard-headed rationalists would have you think, we make decisions based on the emotions we feel
- stories provide context and therefore are more meaningful than disembodied facts and figures. Of course some of the best stories are laden with facts and figures.
Summiteers need to find their negative and positive stories this week and resist the urge to start with facts followed by examples and flip their sequence starting with the stories followed by reasoning. The people who can will increase their chances to be heard and understood. And perhaps more importantly telling stories will help relationships form among this elite group and hopefully is followed by collaborations that will make a difference to Australia.
Kevin Rudd understands the value of story. We have seen it in his election campaign and on Sorry Day. And on reading some of the background papers for the Summit I found this warning:
"These background materials aim to tell an evidence-based story about how Australia is faring. They are not intended to be definitive or comprehensive, but were put together to stimulate discussion on the main challenges and opportunities facing the country and the choices to be made in addressing them. They do not representgovernment policy."
The summit organisers understand the power of stories. Now it's time for the participants to embrace this big idea.
Why not join one of our storytelling for leaders workshops.
1. D. Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007).
2. S. Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (San Francisco: John Wiley & Son, 2007).
3. H. Gardner, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
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| 11/04/08 | | 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 he 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.
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| 7/04/08 | | Storytelling for Business Leaders Workshop in Sydney |
We can all tell stories about our childhood quite easily.
What about our work, our workplace, our business? That seems far from easy. People tend to use PowerPoint over PowerPoint to convey their ideas.
At Anecdote, we're always finding ways to help people bring back stories to the workplace. Here's some areas of storytelling that we'll be discussing on April 16.
▪ How does one tell a story?
▪ How can you find stories to tell at work?
▪ What stories should one tell when one wants to communicate values?
▪ What stories can help you introduce yourself to an audience?
▪ How can you build trust by telling stories?
▪ How can you help people see 'the big picture' through stories?
▪ How can you use stories to make a difference?
Join us in Sydney for a workshop on Storytelling for Business Leaders. Download registration form
It'll be fun and you'll discover stories you can share about yourself and your work!
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| 1/04/08 | | Jumpstart storytelling - creating the conditions for collaboration |
When we start on a major change project we will often run a number of workshops with the leadership team to really get them to own and define the project. A big part of this activity is getting this group to collaborate and work as a team. In the past we have run sociometry exercises, anecdote circles and future backwards activities to get this group to gel. But I have a much better way now thanks to Seth Kahan's jumpstart storytelling technique.
How to run a jumpstart storytelling session
- Divide the participants into groups of 6
- Ask everyone to provide a concrete and specific example in response to a story eliciting question that is related to the objective of the workshop or project. Most recently I ask a workshop participants to recall when they have been proudest of the work they or their colleagues have done?
- Each person gets 90 seconds to tell their story.
- When everyone in the group has told one story ask the participants to remember the story that was most powerful for them; what resonated the most. And ask them to remember who told that story.
- Get everyone to switch groups to there is as many new faces as possible in their new group.
- Ask everyone to retell their story they have just told. Because this will feel a little weird I suggested they observe how their story changes and improves in the retelling. Again 90 seconds per story. At the end of everyone retelling their story reassess which story you think is most powerful and remember the storyteller.
- Depending on the size of the group you can switch groups again.
- Now the fun begins. Ask everyone to remember the person who told the most powerful, relevant, engaging story and go over to them and place your hand on their shoulder and keep it there. After a while a network of people forms and clusters appear revealing the high impact stories. Invite the people the group chose to retell their story to the whole group. Lead the applause at the end of each telling.
The energy goes through the roof with this technique and people get to hear stories they have never heard before. Most importantly the group gets to know each other at a deeper level. There is one more advantage as well if your project is narrative based: the leaders experience the power of narrative in the first 5 minutes of the project.
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| 27/03/08 | | Stories make the best rides |
Yesterday my family and I spent the day at Movie World. At the end of the day we went to an Irish pub for dinner and talked about our favourite rides. The Superman and Batman rides were our favourites and we all agreed that the back story was an important factor. The Superman ride (rollercoaster style) starts with us being train commuters and as we wind our way through the tube an earthquake hits and the tunnel is about to collapse. Superman arrives on the scene and saves us by whisking the train into the air propelling us from 0 to 100 kph in 2 seconds and to safety.
The power of story is appearing everywhere.
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| 2/03/08 | | Metaphors—Dangerous Undertaking |
My friend, Alison Spencer, suggested I get a copy of James Harlow Brown's book, Dangerous Undertaken, and I have to say it's been one of my best Amazon purchases in some time. It's a book about personal and organisational transformation written as a dialogue between a hot shot executive and a wise mentor he happened to meet on a flight to Sydney. Full of stories within stories. It's a wonderful example of how leaders might tell stories to help people (and themselves) to change.
I contacted James (Jm to his friends) and we talked a little about metaphors—his book is full of them. Here is paragraph from one of his emails that he said I could blog.
Metaphors are the way that human beings see and create language for things that we cannot otherwise describe, either because we haven't seen such things before or they are, in effect, beyond description. Storytelling uses metaphors in two primary ways. First, as a major "sticky" element or tag to make the story memorable. A good example is the Holy Grail, which not only represents a precious cup but also the altar cup (to Christians) that holds the holy sacrament. Because of this metaphor, the myth of the Holy Grail points to something that transcends ordinary experience when we unpack this metaphor. Second, stories themselves are metaphors, which lead us to explore deeper meaning. The story of the search for the Holy Grail becomes every person's search for transformation as they seek that which is most precious in life. Because of this dual use of metaphor, stories like the Holy Grail myth stay in human consciousness for extremely long times, far beyond their telling. The question is can professional storytellers construct stories as memorable as the Holy Grail myth through the skillful use of metaphor -- or is there something else at work in enduring myths like the Holy Grail beyond the skillful use of metaphor?
| 29/02/08 | | 4 Stories themes that can help engage staff |
The January '08 cover of CIO magazine provokes an interesting thought about managing people: There's so much to be done to bring and retain people in an organization.
Hidden within these 23 points is a learning curve that the employee is expected to leap across. So what is the best way to 'hang on to them'?
To make the work experience interesting and engaging for staff, managers could dig out stories from their workplace.
These stories are simply examples of things that worked well. Here's four examples to seek out:
1. How a training opportunity made a difference
2. When a manager was a good listener
3. How a bunch of helpful colleagues made life easier
4. When good work was recognized
These stories are a great resource for staff induction. What other stories themes can you think of?
PS: If you're keen to find such stories in your workplace, come along for our Narrative Techniques for Business Workshop to learn how to elicit stories.
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| 28/02/08 | | An anecdote's point of view |
Ford Harding has just posted two versions of the same anecdote. The first paints the consultant as the hero while the second focusses on the effort of the client. Ford wants us to consider which version would we tell and why.
Version #1
Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning. Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract. The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation.
Multiple experts offered the defendant ways to calculate the rate. We spent many hours educating the general counsel on the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a discount rate and persuaded him of the intellectual superiority of our approach. When the arbitrators compared our estimation of the discount rate with the one provided by the plaintiff’s expert, they found ours more credible. The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.Version #2
Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning. Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract. The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation.
The attorney representing the company asked several experts to calculate the rate. He spent many hours with the power company’s general counsel evaluating the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a rate, and selected our experts’ approach. When he took the case before arbitrators, they found his arguments both intellectually superior and more compellingly presented than those provided by the plaintiff’s attorney. The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.
There are a couple of other interesting features these stories display that are worth talking about. Each one is prefaced by a statement summarising the moral of the story. It's an effective approach which I've noted in the work of Victor Frankl. It's conversational and creates a mystery of sorts because we want to understand what is meant by the statement.
Both stories are without real people's names. It's the sort of story written up in case studies that gently washes an element of truth from what's been said. It's harder to check these stories out. Did it really happen? People love details and the best stories have the names of the characters. I understand what this type of business story lacks names in its written form: people are uncomfortable talking about what happens inside organisations. But when told orally names are important.
| 28/02/08 | | Meeting to talk about storytelling, narrative and complexity |
I run a meetup group in Melbourne call Emergence and we get together for drinks and dinner each month. Our next meeting is on the 13th March at 6pm. For full details and to RSVP go to here. It very informal and just a good way to catch up with new people and talk about things that interest us. Everyone is welcome.
| 27/02/08 | | Anecdote's will be checked and re-checked |
Expect any anecdote you tell to be tested and retested, especially if you are a politician. Barrack Obama is a storyteller par excellence and so when he recounts a story you can bet there is an army of doubters checking out its validity. Here is the anecdote in question reported in the New Republic.
"You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The same is true for organisational leaders. Don't get lazy. Don't think you can slip one past without employees noticing that you are garnishing the facts. Good stories are retold and good stories are checked out. Authenticity is the key.
| 18/02/08 | | Looking for the single, correct answer can be dumb |
Thanks to ken (one of our favourite Anecdote blog commentors) for this link of Malcolm Gladwell doing what he does best: telling a story which helps us understand something new—this time it's spaghetti sauce. The story is about Howard Moskowitz and how he transformed our views of retail choice and explains why we have so many varieties of mustard, soft drinks and practically anything else you can buy from the supermarket. But more importantly we learn that looking for the single correct answer might not be the best solution.
I won't spoil the story but watch out for how Gladwell introduces his character and how story comes before reason or interpretation. And see how he creates mystery from the outset and gradually reveals the culprit.
Gladwell's essay covering the same topic is here.
| 22/01/08 | | Adding storytelling to the employee engagement agenda |
I was pleased to read the findings of a recent survey on employee engagement.
▪ 81% of organizations surveyed worldwide have an employee
engagement practice
▪ 49% use storytelling techniques to engage their employees
Although only a few organizations have employee engagement formally defined on their agenda, the survey suggests an increasing trend in the number of programs introduced over the past three years. It's great to see organizations sharpening the people focus to their business and using the power of narratives to assess their health. We have noticed that trend in our work too, with more organizations wanting to use stories to encourage the right leadership and knowledge–sharing behaviors. It’s strategic and becoming imperative.
If you’re thinking of ways to engage your employees using stories, here are two simple ways to get started:
1. Story wall – create spaces for employees to put up pictures of major team events or just their time at work. It helps to reinforce what’s good about the workplace and works as a great trigger for an interesting story.
2. Story booklet – run an anecdote circle with staff to collect stories about their most enjoyable time at work or things (events) that improved the way they work. You can then compile these stories into a storytelling booklet that you can share with new employees.
The most important thing is to start somewhere.
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| 17/01/08 | | An exciting storytelling event in Copenhagen - the movie |
Late last year I teamed up with Madelyn Blair, Terrence Gargiulo, Michael Margolis, Limor Shiponi, and Karen Dietz to start a new community of practice called Worldwide Story Work. We created a Ning workspace to conduct our online conversations and I see we now have 88 members. If you care about story work in organisations please come and join us. It's still the early days and there are many unanswered questions, but if you are willing to be helpful and supportive this group is a welcoming one.
I also wanted to show you this video (6 minutes) which documents a story event in Copenhagan run by GoldenFleece. It features my good friend Mary Alice Arthur who helped facilitate the event. You will also see short interviews with Madelyn Blair and Steve Denning. I'm not sure if you need to become a member of Worldwide Story Work to see the video, but give it a try.
| 17/01/08 | | Storytelling, Business Narrative and Community of Practice Workshops |
2008 marks a busy year for Anecdote and this graphic gives you an idea of our workshop schedule. Storytelling is represented with bears, business narrative with fish and communities of practice with balloons. As you can see we are running workshops in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. Here is the full, printable version of the schedule you can download and put on your wall. Alternatively, pop over to our workshops page and register your interest in attending via the web.
By the way, we can also run these workshops internally within your organisation.
| 27/11/07 | | Maxine McKew tells three anecdotes |
People vote for politicians based on the emotions they generate not the intellectual merits of their policies.1 And emotion is generated by the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves. We watch the candidates and observe what they do and tell ourselves a story about the type of person they are and what they stand for. The Rudd campaign understood this fact.
Kevin Rudd's campaign was effective in telling three types of stories which helped to create positive emotions towards him and the ALP. These three types of stories are: Who am I? Why am I here? and My vision story.2Kevin Rudd's first television commercials contained his 'Who am I?' story. We learned how Kevin grew up in outback Queensland, how his parents didn't even get a high school education and how he enjoyed going back to his home town and talking with the residents about what they wanted for the future. For many people in the electorate Kevin was just like us.
Kevin's 'Why am I here?' stories revolved around his focus areas of an education revolution, being a economic conservative, getting rid of work choices, ratifying the Kyoto protocol, and providing new leadership. And in talking about these focus areas Rudd set out his vision for the future--his vision story.
Rudd's campaign mastered the master narratives required to create the right emotions in the electorate. Interesting, however, both Rudd and Howard avoided recounting anecdotes of specific events and encounters as a way to illustrate what the candidates really value. I have been told by one political insider that both Rudd and Howard are worried the media will crucify them for using anecdotes as a mere trick to spin a particular message.But we saw on election night how storytelling can be done with authenticity and impact when Maxine McKew gave a short speech on the news that she look like winning the seat of Bennelong. Maxine started by saying some general statements about the contest for Bennelong being on a knife edge, and how the seat will never be taken for granted again. Then she moved into storytelling mode, first remembering how she was at this town hall only a few months before and then recalling the many interviews she had done over the years and that some of the very special people she has ever met were actually in Bennelong, and this is where the mood changed as Maxine told three anecdotes.
I'm thinking of the 90-year old Sister Louise who's at St Catherines who I met just a couple of weeks ago. She's blind. But the day I talked to her she said, "Nobody is blind in heaven."
And I'm thinking of 6 year old Emily at Denniston East. She told me that she told her parents to vote for Kevin Rudd because Kevin Rudd would be a great Prime Minister for children. And you know, ... we need a great Prime Minister for children.
And I'm thinking as well of a boy called Ali who only recently completed his HSC exams, who—maybe Ali you are here tonight—who a few years ago was in a Pakistani refugee camp waiting for passage out, and Ali has found a safe home, and a welcome here in Australia ...
I'm sure many people felt goosebumps at the end of this speech--emotions were created.
We help leaders tell these types of stories, first by helping leaders learn how to find their stories (of course Maxine is an expert at this but we all can do it), then help them learn how to tell these stories and ensure at all times there is authenticity in what you say.
1. Westen, Drew. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007.
2. Simmons, Annette. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling. Revised edition ed. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
| 26/11/07 | | Storytelling a key factor in Rudd's win |
Here's a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald making the case for storytelling as a key factor in Kevin Rudd's success.
Kevin Rudd's campaign was successful in crafting such a narrative. First, he got the audience's attention because he was new. This allowed him to play the future card and frame the Coalition as backward-looking. He went on the front foot and used climate change and broadband to champion his future credentials.
Thanks to Seth Kahan for the pointer.
| 20/11/07 | | Keynote speaking - organisational storytelling |
Mark and I love speaking to audiences of all shapes and sizes and we have had the privilege over the years to give seminars and workshops to large and small groups. Our clients seem to enjoy our talks (sometimes they are more like workshops) and report significant impacts as a result of our presentations and follow up coaching. Recently I have been enjoying presenting on how we are helping leaders to be more memorable and persausive using organisatonal storytelling techniques.
So we've set up a page on our website describing some of the speaking topics we are delivering to our clients.
Here are a couple of quotes from our clients from recent speaking engagements.
The Churchill Club promotes entrepreneurial conversations without the hype and Shawn delivered that in spades at our recent session on business storytelling. He's tremendously engaging, has deep knowledge and passion for business narrative and can connect the dots between an esoteric subject and tangible business outcomes. Brendan Lewis, Executive Director, The Churchill Club.
Shawn’s presentation to our technical sales forum was right on the money. The story telling tactics and skills passed on have been immediately adopted, and are producing higher quality presentations by our team to our clients. We look forward to continuing to develop our skills in this area, which will support the business objectives of our organisation and our customers. Senior Manager, IBM Australia.
| 13/11/07 | | Three stories and an argument |
Larry Lessig has a presentation style named after him. You guessed it, the Lessig Method. Professor Lessig is a copyright expert and champion of creative commons. And in this presentation he demonstrates the power of presenting stories before presenting his argument. Steve Denning makes the point in his latest book, The Secret Language of Leadership, that if someone has a strong opinion and you present them with an argument to change their mind, it only serves to reinforce their strong opinion, regardless of how good your argument is. However if we are presented with a story illustrating the failures of the current situation followed by an aspirational story, then the person is more likely to take notice of a following new point of view. Enjoy this 18 minute video.
| 12/11/07 | | Last week's conversation at the Churchill Club |
Last week the Churchill Club hosted a conversation titled, What's Your Story? Leon Gettler (journalist at The Age), Andrea Lemon (scriptwriter, author, theatre director and circus ethnographer) and I formed the panel. Brendan Lewis, the club's executive director, recorded the session and here it is. Download the mp3 to your iPod and listen when you next walk your dog.
| 7/11/07 | | Stories make brands stronger |
Brandweek reports that the Advertising Research Foundation has just completed a three year study on the effectiveness of TV advertisements in the USA and found that storytelling was the top factor for a successful commercial.
The report contends that in many ways, advertising is stuck in the past. The 20th century was dominated by a one-way transactional focus where ads were pushed at consumers. Today, consumers interact with ads to "co-create" meaning that is powered by emotion and rich narrative. "Advertising has been standing on the sidelines, stuck on the language of positioning," said Randall Ringer, managing director and co-founder, Verse Group, New York. "Telling a story about the brand is more engaging, memorable and compelling than telling a bunch of facts. What worked 30 years ago with a 30-second spot doesn't work today."
[thanks to Dan Heath for the link]
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| 4/11/07 | | Hardly a story to be heard in the Australian political campaign |
I have been listening carefully to the politcians on both sides of the Australian political fence in the run up to our election day on the 24th of November. And surprisingly I can't remember a single anecdote or story from either of the leaders or or that matter from their team members. Mind you I have only heard them on TV or the radio and maybe they keep all their stories for the campaign trail. This is surprising because books like The Political Brain and Steve Denning's latest, The Secret Language of Leadership, make it clear that voters make their decision on who they vote for based on the emotion they feel for a candidate, not the policies or promises they make. And we all know that emotion is best communicated with a story or anecdote.
Barack Obama knows how to create emotion with a simple anecdote. Here's how the UK Telegraph reports the way he finished a recent speech.
Mr Obama finished with an anecdote about visiting a town for a political meeting where he sat bemused as one woman kept chanting: "Fire it up! Are you ready to go?"
"I didn't know what to make of it," he said. "But here's the thing: after a minute or two, I'm feeling pretty fired up. It goes to show, one voice can change a room.
"Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?" he asked the crowd. Not one voice was silent as they loudly shouted their affirmation.
| 15/10/07 | | 50 Web2.0 ways to tell a story |
The guys at Cogdogroo have documented 50 web2.0 applications you can use to tell a story.
http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools
It's a wiki so you can help them improve their resource.
Technorati Tags: web 2.0
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| 1/10/07 | | Power of storytelling |
We have blogged previously about 50 Lessons, a site featuring over 500 short videos of business leaders describing some of their key learnings. There are two videos here that describe why stories are powerful. Well worth a look.
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| 1/10/07 | | Writing it down |
Given my publicly confessed reluctance to begin blogging you might be surprised to find me a strong supporter of the written word. The pleasure for me in creating elaborate photo albums for my family lies in the extensive journalling that accompanies the pictures on the page. My frustration with the pile of black and white photos I inherited from my mother was a direct result of finding no clue as to who is in the photo or where it was taken. Worse still was finding a tiny scrap of information in the cryptic words "Our Alf, 1944" or " John's baptism, 1951". So I've overcompensated by making sure that I have told as many of our family stories as possible. Just not in public.
But it might not be privacy issues that keep you from writing. Kerry Patterson, one of the authors of "Crucial conversations: tools for talking when stakes are high", addresses the Power of the Pen in his August newsletter. You can also download it as an MP3 or podcast.
Maybe we're reluctant to express ourselves in writing because our first attempts to capture our thoughts and dreams typically fell under the chilling gaze of the grammarians who accused us of dangling our modifiers and splitting our infinitives when all we really wanted to do was tell our story and have someone read it.
He contends that writing is simply not our medium of choice any more and that's a pity because it is still a powerful tool for influence. His article is worth reading for the powerful story he tells of how quickly and well the Maya people, an indigenous people of Central America, understood the value of the written word once it became available to them.
| 22/09/07 | | Storytelling in organisations (and organizations) |
The Anecdote website is all about storytelling in organisations. You can get an idea of how we use business narrative by checking out how we help organisations use business narrative. But to get you started with some ideas, here are a few links to posts other people have found useful (based in del.icio.us).
- Questions to elicit stories
- Finding success stories
- 10 reflections on storytelling
- The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles
- How I used a story spine
- Hierarchy of explaination or why narrative is becoming more important
- Squidoo Lens on Business Narrative
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| 14/09/07 | | Storytelling and social media |
Jennifer Jones mentions that she has been working with Intel on the social media activities and how storytelling plays an important role in Intel's success in this area.
Jennifer makes the following observation:
However, I am struck when I watch vblogs and listen to podcasts how many people today are not storytelling with social media. They don't have a beginning, middle and end to their pieces, but instead often just list facts and thoughts, and don't connect the information so that the viewer/listener etc. gets the point of the podcast, video blog, etc
Me too. I'm surprised at how many people talk about stories but don't know what one looks or sounds like. A story is a recounting of what happened or what might happen. It's not an opinion, or what someone thinks, or a description of how things work, or don't. To get the most from storytelling we will need to know what a story looks like.
A while back I suggested the following approach to identifying a story.
For every power however there is an associated curse. When you are aware of stories you see them everywhere and sometimes you will be sitting there admiring the speaker's use of stories instead of being immersed in their telling.
And if you want to see more examples of anecdote just check out our 'anecdotes' category.
Thanks to Nancy White for pointing Jennifer's post out to me.
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| 11/09/07 | | Rugby team uses narrative to develop winning culture |
On a recent flight to Sydney, I was flicking through the Virgin Blue in-flight magazine 'Voyeur' and came across an interesting article about the ABC-TV series South Side Story, a documentary on the turnaround of the South Sydney Rabbitohs - an organisation that has seen its fair share of turmoil in recent years. Here's a quote that particularly stood out ...
"The major challenge was how do we get people to think only about what they can achieve in the future, as opposed to what they have witnessed in the past? ... That's why we've been getting players to share their stories and to build an ethos between them."
This is an interesting real-world example of how an organisation is using narrative to transform their flagging team into a high-performance organisation. It'll be interesting to watch their progress and see if it translates into both on-field and off-field success.
| 9/09/07 | | How to make your workplace more storyable |
Story techniques are becoming popular but I do worry that people will become overly focussed on capturing stories with the hope that someone will search the story database in search of how to get things done. The other, and complimentary, approach is to create workplaces where it's natural to tell (and listen to) stories and therefore create spaces for constant knowledge flow.
Here are some ideas on how you might make your workplace more storyable.
- Do remarkable things. Stories are told when there is something worth telling a story about. And if there is very little to remark on that helps guide the organisation, then people will delve into the minutiae, the trivial, the professional pulp fiction
- Know how to ask story eliciting questions. Don't just ask for the facts. Ask “What happened?” “Tell me about a time when ...” “When was the last time ...”
- Eat together. We seem so busy these days. In many workplaces people don't even stop for lunch. Big mistake. The best stories, the most important stories are told over a meal.
- Tell stories. Someone has to start modelling the behaviour so why not start the trend yourself. But don't make it a big thing by saying things like, “I've got this great story to tell you ...” Just slide into examples and recount your experiences.
How storyable is your workplace?
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| 21/08/07 | | Naturally incorporating stories in your conversations |
Annette Simmons, in her excellent book The Story Factor, warns us from adopting 'the story voice.' You know the one. The narrator starts by saying something like “I've got this great story” and then proceeds to adopt a kind of sing-song voice as they tell their story. You can tell it's a performance.
But it doesn't need to be this way. You can incorporate your anecdotes in your conversation in a natural way that doesn't draw attention to the fact that you are relating a story. Quite frankly your listener couldn't care less whether you are telling a story or not. They care whether what your saying is meaningful. And it was while I was thinking about this issue that I happened to pick up Victor Frankl's essay/book, Man's Search for Meaning. I couldn't put it down. Frankl relates his experiences as a prisoner in concentration camps during WWII. It's a harrowing account yet throughout Frankl leaves the reader with hope.
One of the reasons why Man's Search for Meaning is so readable is that it is jammed packed with stories. But you don't really notice them because of the natural way they are introduced. Here are some examples.
Rewards were given in camp not only for entertainment, but also for applause. I, for example, could have found protection (how lucky I was never in need of it!) from the camp's most dreaded Capo, who for more than one good reason was known as “The Murderous Capo.” This is how it happened. One evening ...
Generally speaking, of course, any pursuit of art in camp was somewhat grotesque. I would say that the real impression made by anything connected with art arose only from the ghostlike contrast between the performance and the background of desolate camp life. I shall never forget how I awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion ...
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz ...
Frankl often starts a paragraph with a point or an observation then moves seamlessly to a story. It reminded me of the improvisation technique I was taught in Toastmasters many years ago to respond quickly and coherently in a one minute speech. Make a Point, give a Reason for the point, provide an Example, then restate the Point (PREP). But the art of Frankl's writing is how he moves from his point to the example.
This is how it happened ...
I shall never forget how ...
Take as an example ...
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| 18/08/07 | | When quantitative analysis just wont cut it |
I read Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer's book, Hard Facts: Dangerous Half-thruths & Total Nonsense, and I was concerned managers would think that you could only make decisions based on data and analysis.
So I was delighted to see this post from Bob Sutton setting out three times when data and analysis wont help.
- When you don’t know what to count
- When you can count it, but it doesn’t stick
- When What You Can Count Doesn’t Count
I recommend you read Bob's post. He elaborates on each point and mentions the importance of ethnographic approaches, storytelling, images, and tells some good stories too.
Technorati Tags: bob sutton, decision-making
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| 2/08/07 | | Good conversations lead to good stories |
Watching Andrew Denton interview Michael Parkinson on More Than Enough Rope on ABC television recently was a lesson in good interviewing techniques. Denton even admitted he only needed to turn up, say something to get started and then sit back and let Michael just tell his stories.
Parkinson was relating how difficult it was way back when he was trying get his interview show up and running and he credited the late Orson Welles with its successful beginning. Because Parkinson was not as yet an established name it was difficult to get people to come on the show. The producer went all out to get a big name, one that would smooth the way for others and flew to Spain where Welles was making the eventually uncompleted Don Quixote. The successful deal negotiated meant persuading British Airways to knock out the front two rows of seats on the aircraft out so that Welles could sleep on a mattress on the floor.
“And he walked on the aeroplane and he looked at the mattress on the floor and smiled and went and sat in the seat. It jumped the hurdle. And then he came to my room and I’d been working on this interview for, like, all my life, and I opened the door and he was dressed entirely in black, black sombrero, black tie, black shirt, black cloak and he swept into the room. Incredibly dramatic.
“My name’s Orson Welles”, he said “And you would be?”
And I said, “Er Parkinson.”
“Yes”, he said.
And he looked around and he saw this scrap of paper on my desk and he said, “That?”
I said, “My questions.”
“Do you mind if I look?”
I said, “No.”
And he picked them up and he turned to me and he said, “How many of these shows have you done?”
I said, “Two.”
“I’ve done many more”, he said. “Will you take my advice?”
I said, “Certainly”.
And he ripped up the questions and he said, “Let’s talk”. And walked away.
And he sat down and he did two one hours that night, that were majestic.”
Tearing up the questions might run counter to our instincts of wanting to be well prepared for what comes next. Sometimes the best stories arise from our letting go of the process and just having a conversation.
| 29/07/07 | | Quicklinks |
Just cleaning up my Bloglines and thought I would share some of the posts I was saving.
- Brad Hinton reflects on oral history and storytelling and points to some useful resources.
- Stephen Dubner (of Freakonomics) sharing Mark Twain's view of work and play.
- If you have read Made to Stick, you might also like these columns from the Heath brothers in Fast Company.
- Psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes some excellent essays. Here is one on our biases.
- This is a neuroscience blog and here they talk about the difference in thinking with exploration or direct reward
- Why It's Hard to Get Rid of Old Ideas - this will be the subject of an upcoming post I think
- Supporting Community of Practice Facilitators by Stephen Dale (well worth signing up to Stephen's RSS)
- Here I reveal (again) my stationary fetish. Grid and ruled paper.
- Victoria Ward on silence.
Enjoy!
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| 15/07/07 | | Blogging has a role in culture change |
Arjun Thomas has blogged a summary of a recent McKinsey Global Survey on 'How Businesses are using Web 2.0". The survey continues a theme that businesses are still shy about the use of blogs within the firewall, identifying a preference for tools supporting automation and networking.
In contrast, a report entitled 'The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0' describes how blogs are being used by members of Congress, governors, mayors and police and fire departments. It describes how the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has established a 'secure, real time blog' to connect generals and warfighters' which recognises that:
“the military has a wonderful axiom called the chain of command ... but the chain of information is not the chain of command.... When al Qaeda can outmaneuver you using Yahoo, we’ve got something wrong here”.
The use of blogs within STRATCOM to combat the strangling of information flows caused by traditional hierarchies is described as 'proving to be nothing less than an enormous cultural change'. And, of course, it is not just the military that are strongly bureaucratised and hierarchical.
Many organisations recognise the need for 'cultural change' to become more agile and resilient in the 21st Century. At the same time, some (many?) organisations continue to see blogging as a risk (as the McKinsey report indicates), perhaps because of the loss of control of information flows that blogging implies. The STRATCOM experience reinforces one of my strongly held beliefs; you can only change culture by changing your behaviour. This creates new stories that are told and re-told in the organisation. if organisations want better information flows and to be more agile and resilient, embracing blogging within the firewall provides a powerful demonstration of changed communication behaviour that can contribute to the desired culture change.
Thanks to Nerida Hart via actKM for the link to the second report.
Technorati Tags: CultureChange
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| 11/07/07 | | How I used a story spine |
Viv McWaters has just posted an example of a story spine which reminded me of how we are using story spines in our sensemaking workshops. I was inspired to used this technique after observing how my dad made sense of something (a trivial example) after he had the opportunity to tell a story. Here's what happened as I told it back in January this year.
Last week I spent a week with my parents at their home at Jervis Bay. My father was telling me how he had some problems with a tank of petrol recently. He had to drain his little Datsun truck of all its fuel. When I asked where he got the bad gas he said it was one of two places. “One of the service stations was being refuelled by a tanker and was probably churning up all the rubbish in the underground tanks and I happened to fill up when all that muck was floating around,” he said. “I will never fill up again if I see a tanker parked at the service station.”
When Dad told this story I was immediately struck with how he quickly moved from his story to a heuristic without analysis or considering the options. But of course, this is just how we often make decisions, so I thought I could replicate this process in our workshops.
My first opportunity was at a workshop in Tasmania where we were helping natural resource managers develop a knowledge strategy for their region. We had reached the point in the workshop where we had identified a set of issues that were either working well or needed some attention so I asked the groups to grab an issue and tell a story explaining what happened. People busily jumped into the activity but I noticed they were just writing dot points detailing their opinions about what had happened. No one wrote a story.
It seems that they didn't know what to do to write a story. I had just assumed that everyone else thinks about stories like I do and has a sense what one looks like. Big mistake!
My next opportunity was at another knowledge strategy workshop but this time with a government department in Canberra. I had remembered Andrew introducing us to story spines so I dug out the blog post. Here is the simple story spine (Viv's example is more elaborate).
Once upon a time...
Everyday...
But one day...
Because of that... (repeat three times or as often as necessary) Until finally...
Ever since then...
And the moral of the story is...(optional)
Rather than use “Once upon a time” I instructed people to start their stories with “Way back when”. I find the fairy tale beginning too foreign for business people.
Well, the groups took to the tasks with gusto and in a very short time (30 min) we had eight stories that described various aspects of what was happening. Each group recited their story to great applause.
This is an effective way to get people primed for intervention design and we found that the groups were more aware of the subtleties and multiple viewpoints by going through a set of sensemaking tasks, this being just one.
Technorati Tags: knowledge strategy
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| 6/07/07 | | Storytelling with comics |
Last night I met Cris Pearson, CEO of plasq, a small group of passionalte software developers. We quickly discovered a shared interest in storytelling, albeit from different perspectives.
Plasq develop an award-winning software program called Comic Life, which is a program designed to create comic strips or arrange photos into a scrapbook. Mac users may be familiar with the product, which due to its success, it's now bundled with new Intel Macs.
Cris told me a story about teachers using Comic Life in schools to teach kids storytelling techniques. I wonder if similar techniques could be used by employees to create comic storyboards that communicate product ideas and concepts effectively to stakeholders? Such an experiment with digital storytelling would be a great way of heightening an aptitude for Story (and just as important, having some fun along the way!).
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| 20/06/07 | | The art of editing a story for emotional impact |
I wont say much at all here except go read this post by Les Posen (and definitely watch the YouTube video). It features a Welshman and I think you'll be blown away.
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| 19/06/07 | | The difficulty in being the expert interpreting a story |
Scientific American.com has an amusing piece by Steve Mirsky that highlights one of the reasons why experts shouldn't attempt to interpret stories—there are many truths in a story (in fact plausibility is more important than truth) and you will tell the one that suits your purpose.
For this reason we often work with many stories and help our clients to see the (sometime contradictory) patterns within them. Most importantly the stories act as a trigger for new conversations, sensemaking and agreement among a group of decision makers on the way forward. It's this common purpose that's powerful when there are no clear rights or wrongs.
Here is Mirsky's example of two ways to tell the story of how a Jack Russell saved the day.
Consider this story, reported by the Associated Press in early May, carrying the headline “Tiny Terrier Saved Kids from Pit Bulls.” The story, filed from Wellington, New Zealand, includes these details:
“A plucky Jack Russell terrier named George saved five children from two marauding pit bulls.... George was playing with the group of children as they returned home from buying sweets.” So far we have an anthropomorphized terrier—plucky, and he was playing with them, mind you—and the Little Rascals returning from the candy store, when:
“Two pit bulls appeared and lunged toward them.” Next comes a quote from one of the kids, an 11-year-old animal behaviorist: “‘George tried to protect us by barking and rushing at them, but they started to bite him.’” Note that she goes beyond description to narrative herself—George’s primary interest was her safety. Now comes the resolution of the situation, according to the 11-year-old: “‘We ran off crying, and some people saw what was happening and rescued George.’”
The headline and the article thus conspire to portray a brave little dog that tried to rescue human children. And that may indeed be what happened. Based solely on the facts reported in this piece, however, we may construct a somewhat different narrative. The pit bulls appeared and moved in on the group; the terrier rushed at them; the pit bulls focused their attention on the terrier; the kids ran away. In other words, the same reported facts could have led to a story that carried the headline “Five Frightened Kids Flee as Tiny Dog Is Attacked.”
Thanks to Les Posen for the link to the Scientific American article.
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| 23/05/07 | | Stories of the past reflect what's happening today |
Les Posen sent me this article (“This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)” by Benedict Carey) from the New York Times (might require a login) about how we construct our life stories. One of the question I often get asked is “by collecting stories aren't you just finding out what happened in the past? How does that relate to what's happening now?” This paragraph from the article helps us understand that whatever story we tell about the past is a reflection of what's happening now.
In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people's current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.
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| 10/05/07 | | Redundancy in storytelling |
I found a new blog this morning and while it's a newie I'm hoping it will have some more good posts like this one about Walter Ong and the issue of redundancy in storytelling. The blog authors are Jim Stahl and Nemola Kalo.
I found this quote Jim posted from Walter Ong very interesting:
“Since redundancy characterizes oral thought and speech, it is in a profound sense more natural to thought and speech than is sparse linearity. Sparse linear or analytic thought and speech are artificial creations, structured by the technology of writing.... With writing, the mind is forced into a slowed-down pattern that affords it the opportunity to interfere with and recognize its more normal, redundant processes.”
A while back I wrote a piece about the difference between storytelling and story writing and while I didn't recognize the issue of redundancy there I was quite aware of the reduced speed and second guessing that was introduced when a story is written.
Perhaps more importantly, redundancy is an important feature in a complex environment where contexts are continuously changing. Mark and I are in the middle of a knowledge strategy assignment and we are conducting some interviews to help the organisation choose the knowledge objectives they would like to focus on for the next 12 months. During those interviews I have been telling the same story about how we propose the conduct the 3rd journey (the continuous improvement process). On the forth telling of the story I get this confused look on Mark's face. It turns out that up until that point I was not conveying what I meant so this disconnect triggered a good conversation and we got our story straight. There was something different in the forth context and telling that triggered something for Mark. Redundancy is important.
Technorati Tags: knowledge strategy
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| 29/04/07 | | Making sense of stories |
A couple of weeks ago I was helping to run a management development program. It was based on the collection and interpretation of stories of good and bad management behaviour. Everytime we run this program (which happens every month for this organisation) I’m always impressed with the conversations people have and the level of understanding that develops. Stories have many possible interpretations and the story-listerners hear different things depending on their own history and interests. I think partcipants of these story-based processes gain four benefits:
- They recognise their own behaviour in the stories and become more self aware. Self wareness is the pre-condition for change. I had one manager say to me, “this story is just like me and I’m not proud of it.”
- They develop an appreciation of how their colleagues view the world and just how different that view can be to their own.
- They learn stories that they can retell. The stories that really resonate will be retold and will affect the organisation’s culture.
- It helps adjust what people believe is possible. One participant said he was unaware of how the company dealt with a particular personal tragedy until he heard the story and he now felt he had a understanding of how he might respond to a similar incident if it happens
Using stories to trigger conversations and intepretations of behaviours is powerful. David Maister gives us a good example in a recent podcast. In this case David recounts how he received advice from a manager when he was a young professor at Harvard. What’s interesting about this story is the conversation David facilitates after its telling. Even without being there I was thinking of my own interpretations of the story which helps me remember what happened and some of the lessons. Managers everwhere should adopt this strategy of presenting a story and then getting the team to talk and make sense of it.
You might be thinking, “yeh, but isn’t that the same as case studies? We’ve been doing that for years.” The problem with case studies is they typically suck the life out of whatever they are describing by removing specifics which we all love to hear in a story (I’ve talked about case studies before here). On Friday I was in at the National Australia Bank getting a coffee at the staff kitchen and on the wall were eight one page case studies of how the bank helped a range of unnamed customers. I read the first one and immediately felt my skeptometer rising. I’m sure they are all true but all the details were missing (real people’s names, names of organisations, dates) that would help me ascertain their plausibility (a key element of a story). I supect they are rarely referred to.
Are managers in your organisation recounting stories and asking people for their interpretation?
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| 8/04/07 | | Lessons learning: using stories to share understanding |
This morning (Happy Easter!) I started writing a paper on a narrative approach to lessons learning. I’m at the point of gathering my thoughts and had the idea of sharing some of them as they occur to me. I hope it’s not too ill-informed but if that’s the case I’m hoping you’ll help me correct my wayward thinking.
The paper I’m writing argues against merely capturing stories as a way to share lessons. I thought I would start the paper by reflecting on the nature of narrative in order to build a case against the database-only approach (notice how I qualify these statements about capturing and databases because I do believe they play a role).
Stories are told in context
Stories are told in context to illustrate a point. No one wants to tell a story to have the listeners cock they heads and say , “huh?” The story makes sense in relation to what came before and what is likely to follow. It also makes sense in terms of who is in the conversation and the collective identity of the group. A story in isolation is likely to require active interpretation—what did she mean here? A story in context is hardly noticed and usually makes sense immediately. Perhaps the real danger of an isolated story is that its original intention can be misunderstood. Perhaps even reversed. For example, people often quote Robert Frost’s Mending Wall advocating for barriers, saying “Good fences make good neighbors”, yet when you read the entire poem (in context) you realise Frost is questioning the need for fences.
Here is an anecdote I told last week—without context.
When we started ActKM each person on the organising committee had a title: president, secretary, treasurer, etc. After a while we heard that members felt obliged to seek our permission to kick off any new initiative and there was also some suspicion about what this group was doing. The members felt it was a closed shop. Once we realised what was happening we discarded the formal titles and called everyone in the organising group a coordinator and the group became known as the coordinator’s group.
Take a moment to reflect on what this story means for you and see how close that meaning matches my intent when I told it.
So here’s the context. Last week I was at a meeting with John Smith, Etienne Wenger and the members of a new group of people invited to work with John and Etienne to re-energise CP2. We were talking about what this new group should be called. Before the meeting the group was called the oversight committee but intuitively John and Etienne felt that the name didn’t reflect the intent of the group. At the end of the meeting we agreed to call the group the coordination group.
Did you have a different meaning for the original story?
Now you might be thinking “gee, Shawn is really getting hung up with the meaning of the story. Surely stories are powerful because they have multiple meanings?” I agree, the multiple meanings are an important feature of narratives. Please bear with me while I take you though the next point.
There are many versions of the story I told John and the gang last week. For example if we were talking about how not to setup a community of practice I might have told a version that emphasised how we ended up with the formal titles in the first place and how our dalliances with KMCI were misguided. A different meaning.
There is more to the story than in its telling. The story listeners recreate the story as it unfolds and imbue it with their own meaning which is dependent on the way it’s told, the context of its telling and the history of the listener. The story becomes a catalyst for a group of people to make sense of a situation and choose their next steps (action).
Last week I had the pleasure of meeting David Boje. In our meeting, which was attended by 15 or so people, I made the statement that “the magic is not in the story, it’s in the interaction among people who are prompted to relate by hearing the story.” David was uncomfortable with this statement because he felt there is magic in stories. In reflection I think my wording was inaccurate. What I should have said was that “the answer is not in the story but is contained in the sensemaking that’s prompted by stories.” Storytelling is a social phenomena and we need to seek opportunities to tell one another stories, perhaps prompted by stories the have already been collected.
So hopefully I will have more for you on this topic over the coming weeks. Love to hear your thoughts.
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| 5/04/07 | | Use stories to avoid cognitive overload |
Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you something that’s quite interesting while also showing you something that’s quite interesting and you didn’t know where to focus? Should you look at the picture and understand it, or should you listen? Les Posen points to some new research that says this is a big problem with presentation software like PowerPoint and Keynote. Actually, Les doesn’t mention Keynote as a culprit because he loves Keynote, but I’m guessing you can make the same errors using any presentation software.
I understood the research to say that if we present two or more sources of information simultaneously we overload our audience’s minds and they get confused. I’m sure this is mainly the case when the speaker says one thing and the slide also has plenty of text to consume (probably saying the same thing). But I’m sure the problem exists is the information presented is rich and dense. It’s much less an issue, of course, if the slide just has a simple picture that didn’t require interpretation while the presenter spoke, but is there to evoke a feeling.
I witnessed a good example of how we can easily confuse our audience by overloading the audiences senses. Last weekend I attended the Narrative and Complexity workshop convened by David Boje and his colleagues in Las Vegas. As part of our time together we were invited to attend a presentation by one of David’s students. The PhD student presented a graph using PowerPoint that was complicated and took some time to understand. Unfortunately the graph was poorly labelled and while the student continued to present his ideas no one could concentrate on what he was saying. We were all stuck on the graph we didn’t understand. Eventually the audience became aggressive and attacked his presentation. Poor guy. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
I can understand why people provide lots of text on their slides. They believe they have some really important things to convey and they don’t want the audience to miss the key points (or should I say, the key notes and powerful points). It looks like our logical, rational minds fails us here because in an attempt to ensure we convey our points, our audiences get confused and miss the point. Perhaps there is a narrative alternative.
Would you put text on slides if we were telling a story? For me it doesn’t make much sense. What would you write? You wouldn’t attempt to summarise the story because it would ruin it for everyone. Including stories helps you break the habit of having too much text on your slides. You could use a combination (in any order) of these presentation patterns to effectively communicate your ideas:
- tell a story while showing a picture that evokes a feeling that supports the story
- show a graph while telling them what the graph means
- tell them ideas, concepts, opinions while showing simple graphics (like a single image covering the whole screen) that help them connect the ideas to a picture
- hand out the detailed information at the end of the presentation so people can read the facts etc.
You can see an example of one of my presentations that uses this approach.
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| 4/04/07 | | Anecdote: making positive choices |
I am in a plane to Brisbane reflecting on the second delivery of a 2.5 day leadership program we have helped develop for the Australian arm of an international company. A large part of the program used anecdotes collected from within the organisation on leadership behaviours and their impact. The feedback from the participants was great and so were they.
One of the participants reflected on an occasion when she was frustrated that the majority of her team were consistently late for meetings. Faced with many possible ways to handle the problem, what she chose to do was to send an email to the one person who was consistently on time and thanked them for always being punctual and told them how much she valued this.
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| 12/03/07 | | Future stories |
A simple way to help people develop stories of how their organisation might operate in the future is to ask them to consider specific triggering events then explain what happened. It’s important the triggering event is specific yet representative.
For example, a triggering event might be Ron Wilson suddenly resigning from the investments section to join a competitor. The group might decide to tell the story of what happened from the point of resignation or sometime before that.
Another approach is to find examples of how you would like your organisation to operate from within your organisation or in other similar organisations. As William Gibson says, “The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.”
So why are we interested in future stories? They help an organisation paint a memorable vision of what they would like to achieve and rooting it in specific examples that everyone can understand, recollect and retell. The provide a strategic intent for the organisation without being prescriptive.
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| 8/03/07 | | Using video to capture stories |
There are two examples on the web you should check out. 50 Lessons is a subscription video library of senior executives recounting their experiences. It’s called 50 Lessons because the original set of 50 companies they interviewed were ones that in the early ‘70s helped propel the stock market into a long bull run.
These clips are professionally produced and look great. The videos are categorised into business issues (such as change, innovation, managing people) so you can find stories that convey particular lessons. A good way to use these stories is to get a group of people together to discuss the ideas they trigger (sensemaking) and how the lesson is relevant to the circumstances of the discussion group.
There’s one shortcoming of 50 Lessons. There is no online ability to create a discussion around a particular video clip. Online discussion helps keep the content alive in an organisation. For that reason I love what they’ve done at Channel 9.
Channel 9 is a site for Microsoft technologists. It consists of video clips (which you can stream or download) taken of Microsoft engineers explaining what they are working on. It’s done with a hand held video, it’s roughly shot and edited. What’s great about this site is that anyone can view the video and make comments. You can also see how many people have viewed each clip.
Both sites provide organisations with examples of what can be done with video to share experiences. Both sites have recognised that capturing experiences as stories makes the content more engaging, and ultimately determines whether the content is ever watched again.
If you are interested in developing this capability within your organisation, give me a call.
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| 2/03/07 | | Three dimensions of story |
Several weeks ago, while preparing a presentation on the use of story in organisations. I came up with quite a long list of ways story is used, but it needed a framework. The following came to me in shower (where good ideas occasionally occur and where bad singing is commonplace). The three main dimensions of story in organisations I came up with were:
- We tell stories to make ourselves understood. Stories are powerful persuaders. Good teachers will always try to illustrate a learning point with an example or a story. We communicate strategy using story; stories help place facts in context and give them emotional impact.
- We listen to stories to understand others and to learn. Stories are an important way we remember and learn things and they often are the vehicle by which our various identities and memberships are illustrated. Much of an organisation's knowledge is contained in its stories. Story, in the form of anecdotes, are an essential part of finding out what is really going on.
- Our behavior creates and changes stories. This one came to me as an afterthought, but the more I think about it the more it seems appropraite at this level. As an example, the CEO can read out the organisation's (lengthy, important and well-written) sustainability strategy statement without any noticeable effect other than eyes glazing over. But a story gets created when he puts his hand on his heart and says "I don't want to be part of an organization that doesn't act sustainably, and I don't think you do either”. People will tell the story of the behaviour long after the words of the sustainability statement are forgotten.
There are many ways we could cut such a framework and I found this one useful for the presentation I gave. There are many other ways of looking at it and I would love to hear other views