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Dear Ginny,

Congratulations on your appointment as IBM's CEO. I'm looking forward to seeing how the company changes under your wise guidence.

I'm writing this letter because I've just read the transcript of your interview at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit held last year. I hope you don't think this too bold but I would like to make some suggestions on how you could make even better use of stories in your public presentations.

It was interesting to note that on the news of your appointment the Fortune interview was reported in Harvard Business Blogs and The New York Times and in both cases they led with the story of how you were offered a senior role and how you asked the recruiter if you could think about it. When you told your husband that night he listened and just said, "Do you think a man would have ever answered that question that way?" It got you thinking about the importance of self-confidence.

What was interesting for me was that this story was right at the end of the interview in the Q&A session, yet that was snippet most attractive to the journalists. Imagine the additional impact your talk could have had if you added other anecdotes through-out your talk.

Let me start by saying that you seem to have a natural style for sharing stories. You're relaxed, willing to have a laugh and poke some fun at yourself. This conversational style is appealing. It's easy to listen to. So with that as a great base where are the opportunities for stories?

When Jessi asked you what was different at IBM between when you joined and now there was an opportunity to tell two stories: first to recount a specific incident in the early years that, say, illustrated the idea of inclusion and then tell a contrasting anecdote from the present. People really like stories they can see in their mind's eye. So when you told your husband story we could all see your husband saying what he said. Our visual sense, even if only triggered in our mind, is our strongest sense and this is one of the reasons why stories, especially visual stories, are so memorable.

When you were talking about the simple things you do to engage your people, such as asking everyone's opinion when they don't speak up and then asking people what they think of that idea--which is a fabulous approach for a senior leader--there was an opportunity to tell a story which would start something like "you know, these small actions can have a big impact. I remember being in our board room with Lou and Sam ..." We also love stories about people in power and celebrities. Everyone would have been on the edge of their seat wanting to hear what happened next.

As a general rule whenever you share an opinion like "Go and make a new market" people are waiting to hear a story of how you helped IBM do that. Stories share information as experience unlike opinion that shares information as fact. We learn best from experience.

It's true that throughout the interview you shared many narrative snippets such as the reference to the tough times in the '80s. The difference between these high-level narratives and a cracking story is a matter of detail. Memorable stories are moments that we can relive with the storyteller.

Anyway, that is probably enough from me. All the best with your new job and I'm hoping to discover a year from now a transcript from another one of your presentations laden with great stories.

yours sincerely

Shawn

Richard Rummelt, in Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, opened my eyes to a simple test to help you see if you have effective strategic initiatives. But before I describe the test here's some context.

Crafting a strategy involves choosing a course of action to achieve desired outcomes over a set time period. An effective strategy makes real choices between competing approaches--as well as providing space for new possibilities to emerge. For example a company's might want to increase its market share. It might do this by increasing sales, buying competitors, expanding its geographic market or a myriad of other approaches. The strategic craft is to decide which approach to choose or combine and apply. There are always more than one way to achieve your desired outcomes and your strategy should describe the choices your company has made. A good choice is usually a well considered and often tough choice.

What you will often see, however, in most strategic plans, are initiatives that don't reflect a real choice. Here are a few examples:

We will provide great customer service--was there really a choice to provide poor customer service?

We will delight our clients--had we considered underwhelming them?

Empower our employees--not many companies succeed disempowering their employees no matter how many try

What are often portrayed as strategic initiatives are really the outcomes we are hoping to achieve. They don't reflect what we've decided to do and therefore don't provide an effective strategy.

So, the test is simply this: take a strategic initiative and consider the opposite. If the opposite is a nonsense then reconsider your strategic initiative and make a real choice. If, on the other hand, the opposite is a viable possibility then a real choice has been made, in which case employees will want to know why and that's where a strategic story is important.

I like to call this test of considering the opposite the Costanza gambit after the Seinfeld character who successfully employs the opposite as his new strategy for life. Check out this 3 minute clip of the show where George Costanza has his epiphany.

Recent research quoted in the fantastic Psyblog has shown the benefits of telling ourselves the whole, complete and detailed story, rather than just select bits from it.

Ruby et al. (2011) (*1) found the benefits of this approach in regards to exercise. They asked a group of people to think about an upcoming exercise session. Each person tried to predict how much they would enjoy their workout. Then after the workout they rated their enjoyment again.

On average people's predictions were too pessimistic: they actually enjoyed their workouts more than they had guessed. This was true across men and women and across all age ranges. It was true for both moderate and challenging workouts and whether people exercised on their own, in a group or amongst others in the gym.

The reason the researchers put forward was that people focused heavily on the relatively unpleasant start of the exercise session rather than the more enjoyable middle section. They christened this effect 'forecasting myopia'.

As you can imagine, if people think they will dislike something then they are less likely to want to do it. It can hardly be a motivating factor to think something is far less enjoyable than it actually is.

So how do you overcome it? You tell yourself the whole story.

In a final study Ruby et al. asked people to think about their whole exercise routine, including the warm-up, the main workout and cool-down. It emerged that this method encouraged people to make more positive predictions of how much they would enjoy their exercise. This also had the effect of boosting people's intention to exercise in the future.

So it seems that telling ourselves the whole, complete and detailed story can both increase our view of how much we will enjoy exercise, and also boost our desire to want to do it. But does this view stack up in other fields? Could this approach help us in making good buying decisions?

Let's look at some examples outlined in a recent article on Psyblog. See if you can spot the pattern:

• A camping holiday seems like fun when you abstractly imagine escaping the rat-race and getting back to nature. It doesn't seem so much fun when you're stuck in a cold, wet field, desperate for a proper hot meal.


• A big, expensive DSLR seems like a good idea when you think about the amazing high-res photos you'll be able to take. But it turns out you can't be bothered to carry a big, heavy camera around all the time, so in reality it doesn't get used much.


• You imagine that buying a wreck of a house and doing it up means you can realise your perfect lifestyle vision. When you move in and start work, all you really want is to get rid of the dust and mess and have a normal life: your vision is forgotten.


• Unfortunately when we plan our purchases we tend to make the mistake of thinking in the abstract and forgetting about the day-to-day details. The further off in time and space they are, the more abstractly we think about them.

One of the problems of thinking abstractly about our purchases is that we tend to forget about the gritty details. And it's the details that have the ability to make us either happy or unhappy. We know this because research finds that our happiness is predicted better by the details of our everyday lives than it is by our overall life circumstances (see Kahneman et al. 2004 (*2) and Kanner et al., 1981 (*3)).

To make purchases that will give us the most happiness we need to think as concretely as possible. It might not sound as fun, but thinking about how we're going to use the item or service on a daily basis is more likely to guide us towards the choice that will make us the happiest. We can buy smart by telling ourselves the whole, complete and detailed story.

In their book Change Anything, Patterson et. al. carry on this theme by putting forward a change strategy they call 'Tell the whole vivid story'. It is very much along similar lines as the two examples I have given above.

As an example, they tell the story of Michael, an ex-alcoholic;

"When I'm watching TV, and an advertisement will come on showing a group of people enjoying a martini in a piano bar. To this day that commercial can put my thoughts heading in a dangerous direction. My natural inclination is to start thinking "I can do that". Sure I am a recovering alcoholic, but why not enjoy a social drink with friends? What harm can that be? "But it's not my story, nor is it the whole story. My story plays out differently. if I join the group at the piano bar, I'll drink the martini. Then I'll be back tomorrow. Then I'll shift to hard liquor. I'll soon be on a binge, and one day I'll wake up lying in my own vomit or maybe even in jail. And by the way, that's not merely what might happen to me. That's what will happen to me".

So there are many benefits in telling ourselves the whole, complete and detailed story, rather than just select bits from it. Think about how you could use this in your work or personal life. Are you telling yourself the whole story around doing your expenses, or just focusing on the most unpleasant aspects? Are you thinking about a new role in abstract terms, without really thinking of the day-to-day aspects of the job and whether they are what you want to do? Are you thinking about how a project might roll out, and not telling yourself the 'whole vivid story' of the challenges and difficulties you might face?

(*1) Ruby, M; Dunn, E; Perrino, A; Gillis, R; and Viel, S: (2011) The invisible benefits of exercise in Health Psychology, Vol 30(1), Jan 2011, 67-74.

(*2) Kahneman, D; Krueger, A; Schkade, D; Schwarz, N and Stone, A:(2004) A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method in Science 3 December 2004: 306 (5702), 1776-1780.

(*3) Kanner, A., Coyne, J., Schaefer, C., and Lazarus, R. (1981): Comparison of two modes of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events in Journal of Behavioral Medicine. Volume: 4, Issue: 1

From a story perspective, Christmas is a prolific time of year. As we gather with friends and families we recall the memories of the past and create new stories as presents are unwrapped, as turkeys emerge from the oven (or the Weber BBQ in the Schenk household), as Dads relive past triumphs with a half-century in the backyard cricket and, for some, as family members rub each other up the wrong way :-)

Stories help us reconnect with old memories, relive special moments and learn more about our friends and families. They also help turn strangers into friends.

Here are some questions that might help create a fun and story-filled festive season:

• What was your funniest moment in 2011?
• What was the high point of the year for you? What happened?
• Same question, but the low point.
• What was your best Christmas present ever?
• What was your most memorable Christmas ever?
• The best thing you have done this year?
• Which family traditions from your childhood have you continued with your own children?
• When was the last time you mentally wanted to punch someone at Christmas time?
• When did you realise that Santa is a fake and reindeer can't really fly?

Its also important to remember one of our favourite mantras - little things make a big difference. Now, I'm the first to admit I am not very good at this but I did something on Friday...a friend had surgery and was coming home around lunchtime. I went to her place and put on the breadmaker so she came home to the smell of fresh-baked bread. She was really pleased and a few days later I overheard her telling her parents on the phone about it...

We'd like to thank all the people we have worked with this year and all our friends, all over the world, who have helped make 2011 a rewarding and successful year.

Best wishes for the festive season and for a happy, healthy and successful 2012 from all of us at Anecdote

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Check this out.

The young father stood in line at the layby counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.

He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.

"She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears."

At Kmart stores across the US, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layby accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Kmart may be the focus of layby generosity, because it is one of the few large discount stores that has offered layby year-round for about four decades.

These secret santas are also creating a knock on effect.

Lori Stearnes of Omaha also benefited from the generosity of a stranger who paid all but US$58 of her US$250 layby bill for toys for her four youngest grandchildren.

Stearnes said she and her husband live paycheque to paycheque, but she plans to use the money she was saving for the toys to help pay for someone else's layby.

Isn't it great to be reminded of what the Christmas spirit really means.

The full news article can be found here.

You can only act strategically, day in, day out, if you know your company's strategy. Here are five things that happen when you really do know it.

1. you know when to say 'no.'
2. you get better support from your colleagues--they are trying to achieve the same things
3. you can wing it with confidence--the strategy is your safety net
4. you can focus on doing the right things rather than just doing things right
5. you can act with more autonomy because you know where others are going, and autonomy is motivating

In using story-work to build a brand, engage employees, or for one of its many other purposes, organisations nearly always focus on storytelling. The meme is strong because the act of storytelling is so powerful. But to focus solely on this one aspect of story-work severely limits the benefits. The most valuable application of this technique combines storytelling with story-listening and story-triggering. Together, these processes create the conditions for enduring and healthy change.

Story-listening

Back in 2005, I introduced the readers of the Anecdote blog to the concept of story-listening (it might even have been the first time the term was used). Story-listening is the process of eliciting and collecting stories, helping groups to draw meaning from those stories, and then, most importantly from a business perspective, creating opportunities for the stories to inspire employees to take positive, transformational action.

Story-listening may sound passive, but it does not involve people merely sitting back and listening to their company's stories in the same way that they might enjoy their favourite podcasts. It is all about helping those who can most influence change understand what's really happening in their organisation, and then inspiring them to do something about it. All good business story-work is purposeful.

Continue reading "Making the most of story-work"

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