anecdote.com.au

More proof that emotion is a powerful force in making sense of information

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:34:47 +1100

In 2004 Drew Westen and his colleagues put together an experiment to see how people of a particular political persuasion (Democrat or Republican) make sense of new information. Drew is a neuroscientist and advises political candidates on how to garner voter support. In this experiment he scanned the brains of 15 committed Democrats and 15 committed Republicans while showing them slides of conflicting information. Here are two examples:

Democrat example

Initial statement (Slide 1): During the first Gulf War, John Kerry wrote to a constituent: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... I share your concerns. I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work."

Contradiction (Slide 2): Seven days later, Kerry wrote to a different constituent, "Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kawait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis."

Republican example

Initial statement (Slide 1): "Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is comforting for me and Laura. We are, should, and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put their life in harm's way for our country."—President Bush, 2003, visiting a Veterans Administration Hospital.

Contradiction (Slide 2): Mr Bush's visit came on the same day that the Administration announced its immediate cutoff of VA hospital access to approximately 164,000 veterans.

The committed Democrats and Republicans had no problem seeing the contradiction for the other party and rated the contradiction on average 4 out of 5 but this contradiction was nearly invisible for their own party where they rated it on average 2 out of 5. And the control group without an affinity saw all the contradictions.

Now that result might be obvious but Drew and his team were scanning these people's brains at the same time as they were assessing this new information and they found something that is fascinating. The brains did register the conflict as an unpleasant emotion but for the political partisans they were able to shutdown that distress quickly through faulty reasoning. But here's the thing. Once the negative emotions turned off, the positive emotions turned on. They weren't just feeling a little better, they were feeling good.

Some implications of this research.

Don't think you can provide nifty arguments to change people's minds. People will reason things away in whatever way they can and feel good in their answers regardless of how faulty the thinking.

Emotion has a large part to play in our decision making so we need to employ ways of connecting with people that are emotional, such as stories.

In a large change initiative you are just not going to get everyone accepting a new way of thinking or approaching things so it's important to work with those people who can take on the ideas and show the others it can be done.

Westen, D. 2007, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, PublicAffairs, New York.

Westen, D., Kilts, C., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., & Hamann, S. (2006). The neural basis of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints on political judgment during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947–1958.

ROI on building management capability

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:50:04 +1100

Today's Australian Financial Review (p7) reports on the release of a study funded by the federal government. The report, titled 'Management Matters in Australia: Just how productive are we?' demonstrates what we know intuitively..that if a company can lift management performance, it will be a key factor in improving company financial performance. The report found Australia is pretty much in the middle of the field compared internationally across a range of management performance indicators. The article includes the statement:

Investing in improved management practices is the single most cost effective way of improving a company's performance.

I am in the middle of running a management development program for one of our clients and the article was bought to my attention at lunchtime by one of the participants. He commented that this article was a good argument for why the company was investing in the program and that he could now clearly see what he can do to achieve the promised performance improvement. It's great to be able to make a difference.

How can we work out our corporate values and help everyone know what they really mean?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:44:29 +1100

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.

Blog action day

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:15:12 +1100

On Tuesday morning this week 27 members of the Creative Performance Exchange (CPX) met to work out what we could do to make a difference to climate change. Georges McKails and I facilitated the session and the group developed ideas for what we could do as individuals, what we could do in our role at work and what we can do as CPX members. Amir kindly volunteered to write up all the notes but I can tell you there was a passion among all of us to make a difference. Here are some photos of the morning. I'll post the results of our efforts as soon as we have them.

climate change

Celebrating Story

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:40:49 +1100

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.

How to tell a story

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:05:37 +1100

Some great advice from Scott Simon.

More than just a launch

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:36:35 +1100

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.

Dan Pink on Motivation - and his subtle use of stories

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:30:43 +1100

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.

Random thoughts on anecdotes

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:42:27 +1100

Here are some thoughts/experiences from last week regarding anecdotes, how to elicit them and story-telling

Last Wednesday I listened to Alana, an Aboriginal lady, tell a traditional teaching story and we chatted afterwards. In organisations we generally see stories morph over time, with details changing but much of the meaning being retained. Alana explained that this is not what happens with traditional aboriginal stories. She had been given permission to tell the story with the strict understanding that she would re-tell the story precisely as it had been told to her. By insisting on the exact reproduction of the story the meaning is much less likely to change over time and in this way knowledge can be passed faithfully from generation to generation.
Shawn and I have the general view that 'how' and 'why' questions will normally elicit opinions and generalisations rather than anecdotes. 'When' and 'where' questions are generally better at generating experiences. Also on Wednesday, I heard a 'how' question that is fantastic to get anecdotes: 'How did you meet Grandma?' The great thing about this question is that it takes you to a very specific event and it can't help but result in an anecdote (unless Grandpa is in a grumpy mood).
A lady told me how she had been nearly hit by a Sydney Buses bus as she was on a roundabout. Instead of indicating he had made a mistake, the driver made a gesture that she interpreted as "tough cookies". Furious, she took down the bus number and by 4.30 that afternoon had sent an email to Sydney Buses complaining. By 9.30am the next day she had a response confirming that they expected high standards of driving behavior and that the incident she descibed was unacceptable. They had identified the driver and organised to meet with him that day discuss the matter. She spoke very highly of Sydney Buses as a result, thought they were doing a good job. It goes to show, anger dissipates when people are listened to...

Successful leadership

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:46:28 +1100

This article gives an overview of a new book by Jason Jennings, 'Hit the Ground Running' about the secrets of winning CEOs. He didn't find the most successful CEOs any smarter; they were 'smart enough'. This similar to Gladwell's view in his latest book 'Outliers'. Jennings describes these successful leaders:

what differentiates them from their peers is their authenticity, humility, their determination to never make a decision without contemplating it’s long term consequences and their genuine affection for their workers, customers, vendors and suppliers and shareholders...these leaders are incredible listeners who never tire of asking questions.

The author rails against conventional business wisdom, the Gerry Maguire style "show me the money" approach that brought us the GFC and many corporate and leadership disasters. The book has 10 'rules' for successful leaders, a few of which are listed:

Practice the golden rule in everything you do - you will reap exactly what you sow
Gain the belief of everyone around you instead of demanding of expecting respect.
Ask everyone around for help; don’t pretend to have all the answers or the plan. Remember what happened to Carly Fiorina at HP. On her first day she announced to the company that she had the plan and strategy for HP. Everyone felt left out, came to hate her and her regal ways and during her reign she halved the companies value.
Work ruthlessly to simplify everything instead of making it more complicated.
Make sure that everyone in the company knows the strategy and their role in its achievement.
Cultivate a fierce sense of urgency in everyone because either things aren’t going well and you need to fix them fast or things are going well but the world (and your circumstances) are going to change and you need to be ready.

Why do so many leaders and organisations behave counter to these concepts? They all seem pretty logical. For me, its a good example of the 'knowing-doing' gap: we know this stuff is important but we just don't do it.

It sounds like organisations that apply the rules above would be pretty good places to work. Shawn and I are fortunate in that our narrative insight approaches are about bringing the 'rules' above to life in organisations. As a result we get to work in some pretty good organisations on projects that make a difference. Pretty cool huh?

Digital Habitats—book review

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:04:40 +1100

Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith

I’m often the technology steward for communities of practice (CoP). I create the Ning spaces and configure ‘em, I setup the email lists, I work out whether we should have a wiki or a blog or a discussion forum or some other combination of communication technologies. As you can see I’m quite a geek: I really do love it.

And whenever I get stuck I’ll contact my friends at CPSquare: Etienne, Nancy and John. And while I know they all have a deep understanding of CoPs I tend to ask Etienne the theory questions, Nancy the technology questions and John the group dynamics questions. Together they are a formidable team. Sadly I think their new book, Digital Habitats, will give them strong cause to suggest I should RTFM: Read The Flipping Manual.

Digital Habitats (DH) has a single goal: to help the reader understand the role of technology steward in cultivating a community of practice: what is it, why you would do it, are you are cut out for it, how to do it and where to find help. But it is not a shoppers guide nor a roadmap for technology selection.

There is a lovely photo of Etienne, Nancy and John in the preface and I feel that reading DH is like have a friendly conversation with them on a sunny balcony. They provide the context, a little theory, then lots of practical tips supported by real life stories to ground it and make it memorable.

For me there are three ideas in this book I have already put into practice with great effect.

Experience shows us that all know that communities of practice are different, and sometimes poles apart. DH introduces the idea of community orientations to help us understand where the emphasis might lie and therefore what technologies make most sense.

There are 9 orientations: meetings, open-ended conversations, projects, content, access to expertise, relationships, individual participation, community participation, serving a context. With my engineering communities, for example, I’ve asked the members where they see their current orientation and then ask them to identify where they would like to be. A community might start off very content focussed but realise that the real benefits will come from providing access to expertise. By understanding this orientation gap the technology steward can start introducing tools to facilitate the future orientation needs.

The second idea I find useful is how my friends (I was going to say ‘the authors’ but it didn’t feel right) describe the range of activities a community might be engaged in. The axis range from informal to formal and learning from to learning with. This diagram helps me ensure I’m thinking about the full range of possibilities when helping communities members design their CoP.

DH envisages three types of readers: deep divers, attentive practitioners and just do it-ers. The just do it-ers are directed to chapter 10 which contains an action notebook. It is a series of checklists to help you think about the role of the technology steward. What I love about chapter 10 is that I can jump in and start learning about the role by doing things and then come back to the descriptions contained in the rest of the book when it is more meaningful for me. DH makes the job of finding the relevant descriptions in the other chapters easy through a multitude of cross-links from chapter 10 to the relevant book section.

There are very few practical community of practice books available (I can think of 3 others) and Etienne has already had a hand in writing one of them. So Digital Habitats is a valuable addition to this exclusive club. It’s highly readable and practical and will definitely help make a difference to the quality of your technology support for your community of practice.

Telling success stories

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:37:53 +1100

Moments

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:46:11 +1100

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

Contrary to popular belief, business stories are mostly short

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:01:41 +1100

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

Value of Storytelling - when terminology gets in the way

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:19:45 +1100