The workshop includes our 6-month Deliberate Practice Program designed to help develop and embed your storytelling skills back in the workplace.

This opportunity doesn't present itself that often: this will be the only public workshop we run in Australia in 2013. We hope you can join us. Early-bird tickets are on sale until 31st October.

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Over the last couple of years John has hit on the idea that companies should have a corporate narrative, but in his version he makes it clear that a narrative is definitely not a story. His latest blog post describes his thinking. Personally, I feel he is making a false distinction and is jeopardising how companies might appreciate narrative-based techniques to strategy, change and leadership.

John's idea of helping companies develop a clear, open-ended narrative is a good one. A strong narrative inspires people within and outside your firm, helping them to understand what you're about and where you're heading. Like John, I use the term 'narrative' to refer to the big, ever-unfolding story.

What's wrong with his idea is that he is trying to re-craft the word 'narrative' such that its very power is taken away. He is attempting to turn a narrative into a mere description. He is adamant that a narrative is not a story.

But for a narrative to be a narrative, it simply must have a narrative structure.

As John himself notes, many people are talking about stories and narratives at the moment, but sadly some are doing so without actually telling any stories. Unfortunately, John is at risk of perpetuating this problem with his misunderstanding of narrative.

As a simple starting point, take a look at the Wikipedia description of 'narrative' and you'll see the end result of hundreds, if not thousands, of edits on the term - people care about this idea and think deeply about it. You'll also notice that a narrative has two basic features:

• it's an account of something that has happened, is happening or might happen; and
• it's a set of connected events.

It's no coincidence that these are the same elements that make up a story. That's because a narrative is a type of story. And for a narrative to work as a narrative, for it to work at all, it must have a story structure.

The International Society for the Study of Narrative at Washington's Georgetown University also defines a narrative as a story:

"Narrative is the telling of a story or communication of a chain of events, fictive or real. Aspects of narrative include how the story is told, the context in which it is presented, and the construction of the story."

Now, I understand it can be useful to redefine terms as a way to create new thinking. But in this case taking story out of corporate narrative will only make these narrative weak and ineffective. People respond to stories.

I wrote about the problems inherent in trying to define a narrative as something other than a story back in 2011, when John first floated this idea. Come to think of it, I made a comment on his post, but it seems to have gone missing.

Putting that aside, let's take a look at one of John's examples of corporate narrative. He translates Apple's 'Think different' slogan into the following:

"There's a new generation of technology that for the first time in history has the potential to free us from the constraints and pressures to fit into mass society and that makes it possible for us to express our unique individuality and achieve more of our potential. But this is not a given - it depends on one thing: you have to think different. Are you willing to do that?"

The first half of the opening sentence has the sense of an event, but the rest of the text is just an opinion, a directive, not a narrative.

Compare this with the following narrative often heard from China, told to me by my friend Shane Fairly who is doing a PhD on foreign policy narratives:

"Our civilisation has developed over thousands of years and over that time we've slowly and peacefully improved our society for the betterment of our people. And even when we come under pressure from Western forces to dismantle what we've got, we've resisted and taken the long view to maintain peace and be a good global citizen."

This has all the features John wants in a narrative: it's about the listener and the actions they take, and it's open-ended. But it also has a story structure, that of a series of connected events.

It's helpful to think of an organisation's narrative as a river system, its waters made up of a continuous flow of stories.

Now some of these narratives are like river deltas, with different, sometimes competing, channels flowing through different parts of the organisation. In these cases, it's unclear where the organisation is going and what it stand for. Everyone is working on shifting sands.

At the other extreme there are Grand Canyon-shaped narratives that have cut themselves deep into an organisation. This is great while the narrative works, but what happens when change is needed?

An effective narrative lies in-between these, a smoothly flowing river guided by firm banks that erode over time, allowing new directions to be taken, new narratives to take shape - constantly shaped by stories.

It's hard to change someone's mind, but my hope is that John and the people who are greatly influenced by him come to realise that taking the story out of narrative does everyone a disservice. The idea that corporate narratives are important makes sense. The idea that the narrative should invite, perhaps propel, us into a future is what inspiration is all about. But divorcing story from narrative extinguishes the spark that brings narratives to life.

When leaders first learn about business storytelling quite often their first instinct is to write their stories down, in full with all the flourish they hope to convey in the retelling.

This is a mistake.

You see, each time you tell an oral story it's done in a specific context and, in business storytelling, for a specific purpose. The story is created each time you tell it with context influencing what you say.

As you tell your story there is a swirl of questions you intuitively answer: Do the people your sharing the story with already know you? Were they there when it originally happened? Is it a topic they understand? What sort of things are they interested in? How much time do they have? What are the physical surroundings? What point are you making? The list goes on.

One version of the story is never enough while at the same time you don't want to work out all the versions you might ever need. You just don't have the time and quite frankly, it would kill your storytelling.

Instead, write down enough to remember the important details such as people's names, dates and place names. These are the bits humans are naturally hopeless at remembering but help bring a story to life.

Personally I jot down a few points for each story using Evernote or Zahmoo. Then tag the story on what it means or illustrates such as persistence, inspiration, innovation, "storytelling at work" or "business value of storytelling".

The process of tagging your stories is invaluable, even if you never write the tags down. When I find what I think is a good story I'll ring my business partner Mark, tell him the story and ask him what the story means for him? He'll say something like, "this story is about doing good things in tough times, or small things make a difference." I then share what I think it means and through that conversation it's like I'm locking in the meaning for myself.

Next time when someone says, "yes, well we know how small things can make a difference." I'll immediately think of that story I told Mark and, if it makes sense to, I could tell it.

After I've told the story a few times I rarely need to refer back to my list of stories. But every now and then I forget some of the specifics, but a quick search of Evernote or Zahmoo fixes that problem.

1. Never mention the 's' word, as in 'I have a story I would like to share ...' Instead, just launch into the story, starting with a sentence that helps people understand why they should listen. For example, "Business storytelling helps leaders inspire change. A few backs ..."

2. Keep your stories short. It's not a performance. You can tell a story in 30 seconds. Good business stories are 1-3 minutes long.

3. Practise telling your stories, noticing what works and what doesn't. Start with small audiences, where the stakes are low.

4. Know the business point you're making. And know why this story is important to you. When you do, all the unnecessary elements of the story will fall away.

5. Don't write a story out in full when you collect it. Just jot down enough to remember it, especially important specifics like names and dates.

6. Don't get stuck on a particular story and tell it to death. Your colleagues will hate it. Refresh you repertoire every day.

7. Tell your own stories before telling other people's stories.
And banish the storytelling voice.

One of the MCM programs is called Gateway Reconnect. It runs out of King Street in the CBD and the relatively young volunteers in their 20s work on the street and meet young people who are vulnerable to homelessness.

This is more or less how Ric told me the story. He reenacted how the man showed each photo in the album. It was moving.

Then Ric said, on the day this happened the volunteers came up to the office and said, "We had a guy in a suit show us his brag album today. He went through the program 20 years ago and has done well."

As you can see the first telling was a little anaemic.

But Ric knew it was a good story and asked questions and worked out the bigger story.

Now, if a story is something that happened.

A good story is when you can see what happened.

And a great story is when you can feel what happened.

Ric was able to help me see and feel what happened.

The ability to see the potential in a partly told story is one of the skills leaders must develop to enhance their narrative intelligence.

Yesterday my sister called and said, "I have an idea for a book you should write. Why don't you collect a bunch of stories that illustrate different leadership challenges and publish them for leaders to retell."

Good idea sis. We all need a repertoire of stories to tell and they are never easy to find just when you need them. You have to find them before you need them. You need to be a story collector.

There are three buckets to dip into to find stories.

1. Your stories

Everyday things happen that can be remembered and told as a story. I told a very small story about my sister to start this post. When something remarkable happens you need to capture the essence of it in a notebook or something like Evernote. As these stories are going to be retold orally it's important not to write them down fully. Just jot down enough to remember the story and any details, such as names and dates you might forget. And then use the tagging features in Evernote so you can find the right story when you need it.

2. Stories other people tell you

Again, jot them down when you hear them. Most importantly, NEVER retell someone else's story as if it happened to you. I've seen this happen and it's not pretty. It's fine to tell other people's stories if you know they in the public domain, just say, "The other day Peter shared with me what happened at their organisation …" and then tell Peter's story. 

The art here is to ask questions that get your stories rather than opinions. The short version is, ask when and where questions rather than what, how and why questions. Have a look at our anecdote circle guide if you want to learn about how to do this in organisations.

3. Stories from other sources

Now, this is the treasure trove of stories. For business people all popular business books are written with stories. To learn how to tell these stories simple read them and picture it happening. Use all your senses to watch, taste, feel, hear the story unfold. This will help you remember it. Then sit back and think about what's most important about this story? What's the business porint it makes for you? With these questions answered you will emphasis the right parts of the story in the retelling. Here is a story for you to practice on:

Rob McEwen, the CEO of Goldcorp Inc., knew that his geologists were sceptical, if not downright worried, about what he was proposing. And he couldn’t blame them. He was asking them to go against a sacred tenet of mining and share 50 years worth of the Canadian company’s precious geological data with the world, to allow pretty much anyone to trawl through the information for clues as to the whereabouts of as-yet-undiscovered gold deposits.

There was also the fact that despite McEwen’s well-known doggedness, not all of his initiatives worked out. Several years earlier, when Goldcorp had first started struggling with debt, a contracting gold market and a keystone mine in Ontario that appeared to have run dry, McEwen had taken the bold – some thought suicidal – step of ramping up exploration instead of winding it down. The gamble seemed to pay off. A lode of gold was detected in the depths of the Ontario mine that was thought to dwarf the existing deposits. But subsequent efforts failed to pin down the location and value of the gold, and it was back to square one.

It was in the wake of this setback, however, that McEwen had an epiphany. He attended a conference where someone told a story about how the operating system Linux owed its success to the decision by its creator, Linus Torvalds, to freely distribute his code, allowing smart programmers around the world to refine it. The Goldcorp CEO realised he could do the same thing with his geological data. Instead of relying only on his own geologists to find the Ontario gold, he could dare other great minds to do it. It went against every mining convention, it was enormously risky, but true to form, McEwen was determined to do it.

And so, in 2000, overriding the protests of his employees, the CEO launched the Goldcorp Challenge, which dangled prize money of half a million dollars in front of the participants. McEwen was floored by the results. Over 1000 people from 50 countries – not just geologists but also programmers, mathematicians, consultants and others – used their expertise to identify 50 new sites in the grounds of the Ontario mine. Amazingly, over three-quarters of them yielded significant gold deposits. Within 7 years, 8 million ounces of the precious metal was mined by Goldcorp at those sites, and several years worth of exploration time had been saved.

Following in the footsteps of Linus Torvalds, McEwen had dispensed with the old, slow, secretive way of doing things and embraced open collaboration, harnessing the intelligence and enthusiasm of new colleagues.

Sourced from Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (2006), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio, New York.

There are also books that already do what my sister wanted. One of the very first in this category is Managing by Storying Around by David Armstrong (please suggest other titles in the comments). While these books provide a good start, they are a distant second place to your own stories.

And then there are story banks such as our quirky Story Finder which highlights the stories we've used in our blog, or Zahmoo which is designed for organisations to manage their story collections.

Happy story collecting.

This was part of a process Gary was taking to help develop his new book which is all about insight, which was published this month. Highly recommended.

As I was cleaning out some files this morning I found the graphic recording (beautifully done by Wendy Wong) for the workshop and thought you might like to take a look.

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It seems that everyone is giving advice about stories and storytelling these days. And it irks me every time I hear a story 'expert' say that a story must have conflict and resolution. Really? 

Take this morning's offering from Copyblogger.com, which lists 5 reasons to use stories. Number 2 says,

Stories have conflict and resolution. This structure creates suspense and holds readers’ attention.

Whenever I hear something like this I immediately think of the exception, which for me is the coincidence story. I've talked about this before but at the risk of repeating myself too much a coincidence story is just when something happens that's remarkable; it's unlikely. People love coincidence stories. This American Life dedicated a whole show to them with the title, No Coincidence, No Story.

And it's worth knowing that a coincidence story doesn't have a hero. Hmmm, I thought stories must have a hero, facing a challenge. We are way too influenced by Hollywood. When you listen to stories told in organisations you get a whole new perspective.

Now, here's the bare minimum you need to know to spot an oral story. I say oral story because that's what we mainly work with at Anecdote. This is a fundamental skill for any narrative work.

Time marker, place marker or character: stories start in one of these three ways but orally they mostly start with time markers. So if you hear someone say, "On Tuesday ..." or "A while back ..." or "In 1991 ..." there is a good chance you will hear a story.

Events: stories are about something happening; this event followed this event, which followed that event. Good stories help you see and feel what's happening.

People: if you hear people's names, and in particular if you hear dialogue, then you know you are in a story.

Unanticipated: A story is a promise to the listener that they will learn something new. It has to have something that is at least a little unexpected.

Now, to make it a business story is has to have a business point. You might even preface the story with the point, such as "To succeed in sales you really have to care." Then you tell your story that illustrates what you mean.

What do your organisational values actually mean? Do you have a list of 4, 5, 6 one-word, abstract concepts such as integrity, responsive and agile that represent your values? You might even have a few paragraphs describing each value.

Most organisations I've worked with have something similar and it hasn't helped them that much. These espoused values sound good but just like having a glorious view from your office, after a while they become invisible. So, how do you keep them alive so people really know what they mean and care about them.

Earlier this year one of the banks asked us to collect stories to help their managers understand their values. They had connected their values to their performance management system and wanted to rate employees on how well they were living them. Both employees and managers didn't really know what to say in the performance review about the values because they were unsure what they actually looked like in action.

Enter stories.

One of the anecdotes from the bank was about a young lawyer. He'd just started with the bank and was asked to provide a series of legal documents to the folk over in retail. After he'd finished the work and sent it over to his client he realised he'd made a mistake. It wasn't a huge mistake and chances were nobody would noticed it. At first he thought he'd let is slide but then he pull himself up and thought "is this the way I want to start my career as a lawyer?" and promptly called his client and told them what had happened. His client praised him for his honesty. He fixed the mistake and felt good about fessing up.

For the bank this is what integrity can look like. It also says something about what should happen when a mistake is found. It is one small example that illustrates integrity at the bank.

But one example is not enough. Managers and employees need a richer picture of their values and this comes from hearing a range of different stories that show a value in action.

In fact you need to create a systematic way to not only share the stories across the company but help people talk about what the story actually means to them. It's only in this discussion that they make sense of the value.

Imagine if your your entire organisation is discussing the same story at the same time, say every month. Imagine the gradual but robust understanding everyone would have about what the values mean. And by telling their own stories (because hearing a story invariable prompts other stories to be told) they will, over time, begin to really own these values. They are no longer a set of abstract ideas handed down by the head office.

We have developed an approach to making this happen that makes use of our story bank software (Zahmoo.com) backed by a systematic and structured process. And once it is in place you can use it for any number of other story-led conversations, such as examples of your strategy in action.

This is a common occurrence and it becomes starkly apparent when we are helping a company translate their strategy to a story everyone can tell. And if you're aware that this is likely to happen, the story process can really help your executives, in their gut, understand what the strategy really means.

Here's what I think is happening. The strategy gets developed as an analytical and rational process (and quite rightly so) and the end result is a document. The document gets passed around the executive team for comments. It's duly read and commented on and at that point those running the strategy process believe everyone understands and is on board with the strategy.

But something quite interesting happens when they have to tell the story of the strategy. Firstly, by telling the story of the strategy they feel what the strategy sounds like. And you can literally see executives squirm with aspects of the strategy as they say it. University of Michigan Professor, Karl Weick, says that we really don't know what we know until we hear ourselves say it. He calls this sensemaking. Our executives are making sense of their strategy.

Also by telling the story the ownership of the strategy shifts from the strategy group or the CEO  to the executive telling the story. It's now their story and all of a sudden they want to make sure it aligns to what they truly believe.

Now, as they go through this process a crucial conversation happens, one which we are ready for and help facilitate, where they voice their concerns and more often than not the strategy evolves slightly. The outcome is a strategy everyone believes in, one that's consistent across the executive team, one they can share in their own words and one they are enthusiastic to tell.

A few weeks ago I caught up with their CEO, Tim Costello, and I was struck by his warmth and charm and immediately recognised his superb storytelling skills. I'm often asked, "Who are the storytelling CEOs?" And I would definitely add Tim to that list.

Tim was adept at a type of story I don't hear that often, the analogy story. Here are a couple of examples Tim shared with me which should give you a pretty good idea of what I mean.

Tim often gets the question, "So, what percentage of the money donated goes to running World Vision?" I can hear the exasperation in Tim's voice as a tells me this.

Here's the story he told (in my words) to help me understand his frustration.

"Imagine you've just been diagnosed with cancer and your only hope rests with undergoing a complicated and risky surgery. You research each surgeon on your short-list and you ask each one, "So, what percentage of your income goes to running your business?"

"Of course this is ridiculous. You would ask about their success rate, how often they've done the surgery and what other complications might happen. But we rarely get asked how successful our programs are by the general public. And they are extremely successful."

The other analogy story Tim told me was this.

"Ten years ago, or more," he said, "the only way you could get to the countries and communities who needed help was through organisations like ours. But these days people can just jump on a plane and land on the doorstep of any stricken community wanting to help."

"It's a bit like someone in Ethiopia reading online about Australia's problems reforming our education system, then hopping on a plane, catching a cab out to a local Primary School and fronting up to the principal offering to help.

The principal might ask, "Do you understand how our education system works in Australia?"

"No, I don't. But I'm here to help," replies our Good Samaritan.

"How's your English then?" asks the principal.

"Not very good. But I'm here to help," says the Good Samaritan."

Look our for analogies from everyday life, something that everyone can relate to, and think about how that situation relates to what you are trying to achieve at work, to the obstacles and misconceptions. Then jot them down and look for places to tell 'em.

In 1984, Philip Tetlock commenced a study to examine the accuracy of expert predictions. He found these experts fell into two main groups that he called foxes, who know many things, and hedgehogs who know one big thing. Foxes draw on many ideas and sources of information and are quite tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity. Hedgehogs tend to interpret the world using their favourite theory or dogma and are very confident in the 'rightness' of their view of the world.[Tschoegl et. al. 2007]

Tetlock, a psychologist, is Professor of Leadership at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. His research found that, in the main, experts were no more accurate in their predictions than 'a monkey throwing darts'. But he clearly showed that foxes produce much more accurate forecasts than hedgehogs. He also found that when faced with their erroneous forecasts, foxes tended to acknowledge their error and adjust their thinking. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, rationalise their errors away on the basis that they were 'nearly right' or 'unpredictable events interfered in the outcome' or by pointing to the few occasions when they had got it right.

The implications of this research are many, but one that that reinforces my own experience is to be wary of highly confident people proclaiming a view and running down those with alternative perspectives.

It's my view that Tetlock's findings are also relevant in our organisations. We love to treated complex (wicked) problems as if they are technical problems that can be predicted and solved. The experts who stridently proclaim their opinions as being facts are often wrong. The people who stride the corridors and make the most noise are not necessarily the stars. The leaders who are most confident they are excellent at leading people are often the worst leaders.

In media and in organisations, the hedgehogs get the airtime. But the foxes are the ones to listen to.

1. Tetlock, P. (2005): Expert Political Judgement: How good is it? How Can We Know?, Princeton University Press.
2. Gardner, D. (2011): Future babble: Why Expert Predictions are Next to Worthless, and You can do better, Dutton, London.
3. Tschoegl, A.E and Armstrong, S., Review of Philip E. Tetlock: (2007): "Expert political judgment: How good is it? How can we know?" in International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 23, Issue 2, 2007, pages 339-342

There's definitely a better way. A few months ago I was teaching 150 leaders from a pharmaceutical company how to tell their strategic story. After everyone quickly learned the story and then told it to a colleague I asked the whole group if there was anything in the story they didn't like. There was clearly a heated conversation happening in the middle of the room as a woman shot her hand up and pointed to her colleague. He was given the microphone, stood to address the crowd, and then paragraph by paragraph pointed out the things that niggled him. When he finished I just said, "no problems, just tell it how you would like."

Strategic stories should be like an original music score and every leader should be able to create and deliver their own arrangement. If you're a jazz guy you do the jazz arrangement. If country and western is your thing then you go with that. You add your own anecdotes to bring it to life and as long as it is recognisable as the original score, then it's an effective strategic story.

When you see a screenplay you know it's a screenplay.

Most people, however, have never seen an oral story written down. Probably because it's an oxymoron. Yet there are times when it's useful to write an oral story down. For example, when you're helping a company create the story of their strategy.

Let’s look at the difference between oral and written stories and then I'll describe a significant problem that can happen when you write down an oral story for a company.

First and foremost we talk quite differently to how we write and read. For example, when we speak we say things in short bursts.

When we speak /
We say things in short bursts. //

Yet we can write a sentence that is much longer and more elaborate than we would normally speak. Punctuation helps a reader but doesn't go far enough for a speaker (more on this below).

When we talk it’s quite reasonable to repeat ourselves. We can say the same thing a few times and no one will give it a second thought. It gives us time to gather our ideas and emphasise our point. In fact repetition helps our audience hear what we are saying.

Repetition is spurned in prose unless it’s a literary effort of Joycean proportions. But in business writing it’s a no no.

And “it's a no no” would never pass for business writing but we could easily and acceptably say it. We can speak colloquially but brows wrinkle when we write it.

Most of the time we are speaking we use short, simple words. When we're chatting with colleagues and recounting what happened in the meeting we all just went to (editor, please replace 'went to' with 'attended'), we use short, concrete phrases.

“Did you see Bob’s face when Bronwyn said we’ll need to create a new job role? I can see this being a problem.”

People don't speak corporateez. Most people, that is.

We don't typically say transformation, core competency, retrospective coherence (yep, I've heard that), strategic leverage, commercial sustainability, I could go on.

Now let me explain the problem that often happens when you try and write down an oral story such as the oral story of the corporate strategy.

When it’s written down it looks a lot like any other business document in that there are words in paragraphs but the writing seems overly informal and even naive. Things might be repeated and there are informal phrases all over the place. So the business language wordsmiths appear and begin to make it sound like a piece of business writing. I've even had footnotes added!

YOU MUST RESIST THIS URGE.

Here's what I suggest you do.

First write the story in a format that doesn’t look like normal business prose.

Much like a poem, break up the story based on the short bursts we speak in. At the end of each line either insert a “/” to indicate a minor pause and the sentence just flows on to the next phase or a “//” when there's a bigger pause. This is how experts in discourse analysis write conversations down.

The great advantage to this approach is that it looks different. Internal comms immediately thinks, "Whoa, what in the hell is this?" And you can share with them the difference between oral and written stories.

Let me know if you have ever had this challenge and how you dealt with it.

So, naturally I downloaded it and am halfway through it. It's riveting. Jobs answers nearly every question with a story. When the interviewer talks about developing the first Macintosh, he asks "what is the secret of building a great product?", Steve tells him that the secret of a great product is understanding that having a great idea is only 10% of the battle. The other 90% is getting a great team together who focus on content rather than process and understand that it never turns out the way you planned: it constantly changes and evolves and you need to make tremendous trade-offs. He tells this story: