More more storytelling

Self-promotion alert! Stop reading now if you don't want to be sold to.

Okay, now that I have your attention, the two storytelling posts I did in December (here and here) were among the most read of the year.

I also was intrigued by the application of storytelling to business. Via those posts, I connected with Shawn Callahan of Anecdote, a narrative-focused consultancy in Australia. Shawn and his team have taken the narrative approach and created a very pragmatic use for it within business.

In a nutshell, Shawn teaches managers and executives to find the stories in their organizations, make sense out of them, and make changes as a result of what they learned. Anecdote's methods build upon techniques and models originally developed for use at IBM.

Stories, as opposed to metrics or surveys, are the only way you can really learn how complex changes are affecting your employees, so you can make adjustments and improve the outcomes. Complex changes include mergers or acquisitions, reorganizations, deployment of new enterprise technology, process reengineering, outsourcing/offshoring, etc.

Think of the failure rate of those types of projects--wouldn't you want an effective tool to improve your chances of success?

I've been working with Shawn to arrange Anecdote's first workshops in the USA. We will be holding one-day workshops in Seattle on Monday, March 26 and in Boston on Thursday, March 29. The workshops are a great opportunity to get your hands dirty and learn how to extract the key stories from your organization.

If I've whet your appetite at all, please read here for a more detailed overview of the workshop and instructions on how to sign up. And please by all means pass this note along to anyone who might find value in this type of learning.

End of advertisement. Thanks for listening.

innovation, narrative, business, management, change management