1: What are the two most important words in the brief story below?
“In 2019 in Paris, the head partner of a law firm noticed that the staff of the IT department became markedly more productive when they arranged the work in self-organizing teams that worked in short cycles and delivered value to their clients at the end of each cycle.
“He then introduced the approach to the paralegal staff … continue reading
1: The year was 1984.
“Guy Laliberté, a former accordion player, acrobat and fire-eater in Montreal, looked at the existing circus industry and saw a losing proposition,” writes Stephen Denning in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.
Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey dominated the struggling circus industry, whose shows primarily attracted children. Expenses were high due to the cost of transporting and caring for the many animals. … continue reading
1: “Seven hundred happy passengers reached New York after the Titanic’s maiden voyage.”
This week we are looking at the key elements of what author Stephen Denning calls a “springboard story.” This specific type of narrative “performs the most useful thing a leader can do: communicate a complex new idea and inspire action to implement it,” he writes in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.
A springboard story is authentically … continue reading
1: Imagine… We are giving a speech or a talk. For each person we can see in the audience, there are actually two listeners: the person we see, and a second listener, also known as the “little voice in the head.”
“I’ve got all these problems back in my office,” says the little voice in the head. “My inbox is filling up, I’ve got email to answer. If only I … continue reading
1: Imagine we are leading an organization. We have a challenge. We must ignite action to implement a radical new idea.
How should we proceed?
“The conventional management approach to this challenge is to give people reasons,” writes Stephen Denning in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative.
The only problem with this approach? It doesn’t work. “Asking people to stop doing the … continue reading
1: World Bank executive Stephen Denning had just spent the morning teaching a master class on storytelling to seventy executives from private and public sector organizations.
He had shared his story about how a health worker in a remote town in Zambia found the answer to her question about the treatment of malaria on a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. This simple story inspired the World Bank to embrace … continue reading
