I'm revisiting this entry because I didn't do a good job of explaining Penguin's project. That's because I couldn't find a good explanation on the site. Here's one I found by a blogger named "Melissa" at Central Region AA|RF Planners:

Penguin challenged 6 authors to create new forms of story telling for a digital platform. The marketer worked with alternate reality fame company “Six To Start” and had authors reinterpret classic stories. The first is Charles Cummings 21 Steps inspired by John Buchan’s The 39 Steps. Readers can click through the story onscreen while Google Maps traces the characters movements through the streets of London. Readers can follow the next story, Slice, through Twitter and the characters’ blogs. The last story will post April 22.

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My original post:

Penguin UK launched its most ambitious digital writing project to date on March 18, We Tell Stories:

In collaboration with fêted alternate reality game designers Six to Start, Penguin has challenged some of its top authors to create new forms of story - designed specially for the internet.

Over six weeks writers including Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago.

But somewhere on the internet is a secret seventh story, a mysterious tale involving a vaguely familiar girl who has a habit of getting herself lost. Readers who follow this story will discover clues that will shape her journey and help her on her way. These clues will appear online and in the real world and will direct readers to the other six stories. The secret seventh story will also offer the chance to win some wonderful prizes in addition to the prizes on offer on We Tell Stories, including The Penguin Complete Classics Library, over £13,000 worth of the greatest books ever written.

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The April issue of Domino magazine has a feature enetitled "The Narrative Decorator." Maybe its my lack of visual sensability, but I couldn't discern a whole lot of storytelling in the design work of Fawn Galli, the featured decorator. Words/phrases like "dreams," "favorite memories," "fantasy," "storyscapes of fabric, furniture, and paint," "magical mystery tour," and "fairy tale" are used in the feature, and Galli is said to "see storytelling opportunities everywhere."

The storytelling comes across even less well in the web version of the feature.

But perhaps I should just delight in the idea that storytelling is cool enough to be associated with an up-and-coming designer.

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Although Alex Shalman is talking about questions for controlling communication (to make yourself stand out and your conversation partner feel important), the questions he suggests in his Lifehack.org article would work equally well to elicit stories:

• What do you do when you’re not doing this?
• What is important to you?
• How is it that you are so passionate about this topic?
• How could I accomplish what you have accomplished?
• Do you remember how you felt when that happened?
• Can you elaborate a little bit on this topic?
• Do you remember what was going on in your mind at that time?

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In response to yesterday's entry about elevator speeches/stories, Stephanie West Allen (what would I and this blog do without her?) turned me on to two relevant entries from her blog:

Lessons from Mayberry contains a section on the "Wow! How?" story that aligns with yesterday's entry. The idea is that if your "elevator speech" begins with an intriguing story-like introduction, your audience will respond with "Wow!" and then inquire about how you do the wonderful thing you do.

Stephanie also notes that her entry, "If Thats Your Elevator Speech, I'll Take the Stairs," is one of the most clicked-on entries on her blog.

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Medical student Clinton Pong, who blogs at Not My Second Opinion writes:

I love stories. One of the things I feel so lucky about as a student doctor is my opportunity to hear the stories of my patients! They give me with small snippets of their lives, bits and pieces that I scribble down onto their character sheets. Then I report to the attending physician and get my experience points in the form of teaching topics. My life may not have a Dungeon Master guiding me along on a quest to rescue a damsel in distress, but I do feel glad that I get the opportunity to play a hero sometimes :)

He reminds me of a nice academic journal piece (in the journal Explore) by Victor Sierpina, Mary Jo Krietzer, Elizabeth MacKenzie, and Michelle Sierpina. The piece, about narrative medicine, looks at "coconstruct[ing] with the patient the reality of the medical encounter and the tone and timbre of the healing relationship."

More lovely snippets from the article:
"... in medicine the quantitative is never the whole story. ... It is in narrative that we rediscover our humanity. ... narrative medicine uses reflective writing to evoke empathy."

The article talks about courses that teach "the use of personal illness narratives to ensure that the humanity of both provider and patient remains central in the clinical encounter." Writing medical narratives, the authors write, helps medical students ask themselves, "What did I learn from that? Why do I believe what I do? What do I think about this?"

"Why is narrative an effective antidote to isolation, callousness, and numbness?" the authors ask. "Because it serves as a lifeline to experiencing our own humanity, as well as a bridge that connects us with others, breaking through barriers built by professional roles, judgments, biases, assumptions, stress, and time pressures."

Physicians, the authors assert, need "the ability to listen to the narratives of the patient, grasp and honor their meaning, and be moved to act on the patient's behalf. This is narrative competence, that is, the competence that human beings need to absorb, interpret, and respond to stories."

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I heartily agree with Chris King, who writes the following about storytelling and networking:

When we are meeting people at a Networking event, we are usually asked, “What do you do?” If we answer with a label (“I’m a consultant, lawyer, website designer, etc.) the reaction is blah. But, if we put our answer into a story form, “I help small business owners who are struggling to establish a professional presence on the Internet,” your questioner will be interested in hearing the story of how you do that.

I write about the same concept, which I call the Elevator Story, here.

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Today is my birthday, so I thought it appropriate to post my pecha kucha story about me. I mentioned it in an earlier entry but didn't post it as it didn't make much sense without narration.

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Add new grad Andrew Cafourek (above) to the contingent of those who have secured jobs through social media. I wrote about some others here.

In his blog, Andrew C., he details how it happened:

A few weeks ago, I was reading Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and saw a post on people who were “on the move” in the social media industry. I thought, well what is wrong with a little bit of self-promotion? So I left a comment, which you are free to go check out for yourself, basically saying “Hey, I haven’t been on the move…but I would like to be!” And as a result of this, Lisa Young from Outrider reached out to me with some information about the company and the industry as a whole..then I spent a day and a half pouring through Google and every other internet tool I could think of to absorb as much information as I could about the company. Well over the past few weeks, about 97.4 emails, and dozens of hours spent researching different aspects of the company and industry I decided that I really wanted to come on board with the firm and so…here I go!

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Limor of Limor's Storytelling Agora asserts that personal stories should start with folktales: "Starting with folktales is important just like starting with classical music or classical dance – it is both the basics and the top," she writes.

Limor offers a couple of interesting exercises for "cystallizing" personal stories as folktales and folktales into personal stories.

I'm not that much into folktales, but Limor is convincing as she describes participants' typical reaction to these exercises:

People noticed the ‘ancient’ story was more powerful. When it goes through the process of crystallization and detachment from a personal perspective, there is more space for others to enter with their own thoughts.

Another thing people noticed was the deficit in details that are ‘personal’ to the specific event in favor of deep symbols. The ‘ancient’ story had descriptions in it and they were important for creating visual images but the symbols stayed the same through the entire process.

I think another point that was evident was our natural feel for deep structures in stories. My way to elicit this natural feel during the above process is to create time limits. You can see them mentioned beside each step.

Above all they could see how folktales we usualy glance through in the hunt for a ‘great’ story are great stories. There is a strong tendancy to use personal stories as if they are more relevant, more engaging for the audience. After you practice the above excercise and it’s next step described underneath several times, any story becomes personal and you can use folktales easily as if you were telling something that happened to you yesterday.

A couple of other things I like about Limor's blog are the Proverb-generated Story exercise and her definition of storytelling.
Both can be found in the extend entry to this post.

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The banner of the blog Shortfolio describes its purpose as "very short stories," but compared to the 3-word and 6-word takes covered in my last entry, these "very short stories" of 500 words seem like War and Peace.

You can keep current with updates to Shortfolio through its widget on my sidebar.

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This being Easter, I thought I’d give a nod to a preacher named Steve who recently blogged about his enjoyment of including stories in his sermons.

I was reminded of “Padre,” the Rev. R. Craig Burlington, who was our rector at St. George’s Episcopal Church when we lived in Maplewood, NJ. He told a wonderful story in his Easter sermon one year. Here it is as best I can remember:

During Holy Week, the Burlingtons’ beloved family cocker spaniel (Teddy I think his name was) had gone missing. The children were bereft. On Easter, Padre heard the kids shouting ecstatically, “He’s alive, he’s alive!” Padre’s immediate thought was how deeply his offspring felt the message of Christ’s resurrection. Of course, the real reason the children were so gleeful was that the prodigal Teddy had returned home.

~~~

Meanwhile, blogger The Laughing Pastor writes stories about people in his church. “These stories tap into the joy and the awe of God’s presence.”

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Not long ago, I wrote about Smith magazine's collection of 6-word stories.

I thought the Facebook application Just Three Words had halved the Smith story length but realized that stories in this game simply start out as three words, but then friends add to the story in three-word increments (I think). More than 2,300 folks were participating in this collaborative story-writing exercise at this writing.

Here's what the developers say about the application:

Just Three Words is a truly entertaining game - create stories with your friends and with anyone from across the world on Facebook. Three words at a time! Having created a new story, the basic concept of the game is to build the story as a group. The only twist is that each of you can only add three words at a time. With a little wit and some creative thinking, you can generate some amazing and hilarious stories... To get started, install the "Just Three Words" application and either add words to one of your friends stories or to one of the many public (and worldwide!) stories, or create your own story to share. Creating a story takes just few seconds, requiring you to provide nothing more than a Title and the first three words to get the ball rolling. Invite some friends ... and you off and running.

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I do a storytelling exercise with my students in which they are asked to name the 7 values of the university. Unless they have been trained as resident assistants or orientation leaders or are in student government, they usually have no clue what the values are. Message: Perhaps the university is not doing a good job of communicating its values. I then ask them to choose the value (of the 7) that most resonates with them, that they most identify with.

They form a group with other students who share the same value, and they are then asked to develop stories to illustrate that value -- perhaps a person they know (even themselves) or organization that lives and embodies that value.

As Steve Denning says:

If managers can transmit their own parables which embody the values of the corporation then that can be a powerful way to communicate values in the organisation. At the same time there can also be an underground river of storytelling that goes on in an organisation – the informal storytelling at water coolers and cafeterias. These stories also transmit the values of the organisation. And if the actions of the management are in any way inconsistent with the espoused values of the organisation then the informal storytelling will transmit those inconsistencies even more powerfully and rapidly than the narratives put out by the management.

As they develop their stories, I ask them to look for these inconsistencies – do the university's informal stories run counter to the stated values? How easy is it to come up with stories that show that the university lives its values, and they are not merely espoused values?

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I continue to be fascinated by the idea of various forms of narrative therapy and using narrative to change our lives. In an unattributed article (which may or may not be intended as a review of or excerpt from the book Narrative Therapy by Freedman and Combs) here, narrative therapy is described this way:

The Narrative Therapy is an approach to counselling that centres people as the experts in their own lives. This therapy intends to view problems as separate entities to people, assuming that the individual’s set of skills, experience and mindset will assist him/her reduce the influence of problems throughout life. This therapeutic approach intends to place the individual in both the protagonist and author roles: switching the view from a narrow perspective to a systemic and more flexible stance.

Noting that the most important aspect of narrative therapy is to empower the client, the article goes on to explain how changing the story (constructing the alternate narrative) can change one's life:

The focus of Narrative Therapy is to explore the strengths and positive aspects of an individual through his or her narrative. Therefore, the main objective of this therapeutic approach is to improve the person’s perspective internally (reflective) and externally (towards the world and others). Alternative narratives are a simple way to relate to this concept. This technique works in combination with unique outcomes. How? The individual will reconstruct a personal story using unique outcomes, therefore, focusing on the positive aspects of a previous story in order to achieve a desired outcome. This process is based on the premise that any person can continually and actively re-author their own life.

A quote from Jean Houston (not from the article) vividly captures this process:

If you keep telling the same sad small story, you will keep living the same sad small life.

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I'd like to think I keep up with the world of storytelling, but this one sneaked up on me. Apparently, the vernal equinox each year (here in the northern hemisphere) is also World Storytelling Day. Who knew?

Here's what Wikipedia says about the day:

World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts. The significance in the event lies in the fact that it is the first global celebration of storytelling of its kind, and has been important in forging links between storytellers often working far apart from each other. It has also been significant in drawing public and media attention to storytelling as an art form.

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The consulting firm Thirsty Fish offers a Brand Story Audit with 13 criteria to assess "how an organization's story 'measures up' as a cohesive brand narrative."

Do the same criteria apply to the personal branding story, discussed in this chapter of my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers?

I suspect some, but not all these criteria apply to the personal branding story. Check out some of the sample brand stories in the chapter and see what you think.

They are:

1. Mood


2. Structure


3. Characters


4. Destination


5. Truth


6. Time


7. Aesthetic


8. Wonder


9. Mythic


10. Believable


11. Authentic


12. Participate


13. Celebrate

Thirsty-Fish also offers other writings and presentations.

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... when you tend to tell stories about it.

So contends Don Cohen on BabsonKnowledge.org in writing about NASA's use of storytelling for knowledge management at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the story overseer there, Theresa Bailey.

Writes Cohen:

... the benefits of telling a story can be profound. Shaping stories helps people make sense of experiences they’ve had. Telling them to a receptive audience not only provides heartening evidence that colleagues find your work interesting and valuable, it remind the tellers how much they care about what they do. Describing her scientist and engineer storytellers, Bailey says, “They don’t even know how passionate they are about their work until they start talking about it.”

Let's apply this idea to your career. Do you tell stories about it? If you don't, could it men you are not passionate about it and long to do something different?

Victor Sierpina, Mary Jo Kreitzer, Elizabeth MacKenzie, and Michelle Sierpina write in their article "Regaining Our Humanity Through Story," (Explore, Nov/Dec 2007) about understanding stories told by patients in the medical field and how doing so enables caregivers to "understand our own stories and what has drawn us to the health profession." The authors note that "without understanding our own stories, we cannot truly know ourselves." They quote George, Sims, McLean and Mayer, who assert that "your life story provides the context for your experiences, and through it, you can make an impact on the world."

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I've been wanting to blog about the site/magazine Smith for a while now because it's just such a cool collection of story stuff. Can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon it, but I know it was quite by accident.Oh yes, I believe I saw a widget for it on Widgetbox (there's now a Smith widget on this blog).

Smith says its "mission has been to be a place for storytelling, with a focus on personal narrative. ... SMITH magazine celebrates the joy of storytelling... and is a home for storytelling of all forms and kinds... We believe everyone has a story, and everyone should have a place to tell it."

There's just so much great story stuff on this site.

Smith refers to the various parts of its site as story projects, including six-word memoirs*, "minuscule yet insightful life stories" on diverse themes; Brushes with Fame, personal stories about unexpected encounters with celebrities; My Life So Far, memoirs in progress; My Ex, pretty much self-explanatory; and The PopuList (100-word or fewer responses to various ripped-from-the headlines topics, such as an Oscars-inspired request for the title and 100-word trailer for the movie of your life or a Valentine's themed craziest thing you ever did for love).

The site also has other sections and a comics/graphic novels area.

You could easily lose yourself in Smith and spend days and days here.

* Just as a side note to the 6-word story theme, flickr has a section in which folks (in this 2,000+ member group) write 6-word captions for photos.

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In his Build a Better Box blog, Steve Lovelace makes a point about marketing/advertising/promotion that easily applies to job-seekers:

When a company says, "We provide an excellent product at a reasonable price with expert-level service", they are talking about things that should almost go without saying. Would we buy from anyone who didn't offer these things? And who among those companies would ever claim otherwise? "At ABC Company, we make the worst products on the market. Our service blows, and our prices will kill your bottom line." How long would these companies stay in business? Promoting things that should be a given - such as good service and products - is a waste of breath.

Similarly, resume writers (and I know because I was one) frequently write phrases like "exceptional communication skills" and "superlative work ethic." But just as with products and services, why would the customer (employer) choose a candidate without these qualities?

Lovelace goes on:

As you market yourself to the world, consider telling your story and promoting your brand essence. In a world where everyone competes with the same menu of "stuff", it is your story and brand that will set you apart from the competition, and ultimately give you stability and longevity in the marketplace. As the laundry listing, commodity-based competition comes and goes, awash in a sea of relative obscurity and anonymity, your company will be known for who you are - not merely what you are.

Substitute "you" for "your company" in the above and tell stories that illustrate the marketable skills you possess that employers want.

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Recent discussion on the Working Stories discussion group (Stephanie West Allen points out in her comment that all Working Stories postings can be read in its archives) has focused on how to elicit stories from people who are not accustomed to telling their stories.

Group members have made these suggestions:

Seth Kahan suggests the JumpStart storytelling process he developed.

Alex Linkser of Organizational Democracy says: "My favorite way to get people to express themselves in an interesting way is to ask them, 'What actions are you great at, and also excite you?'"

Victoria Ward suggests asking people to "imagine a photograph of a moment when and describe the photograph." She added: "I've always liked objects, too. People can tell a story through an object (prop, image, symbol, piece of autobiography, Linus blanket) with more ease and confidence often."

Carol Mon notes that it's helpful to give people "a very definite time frame in which to answer ... "You must show them that you are timing them. If they respond in 2 minutes or under it gives you as the listener and opportunity to follow up with questions to extract more information and the feelings. This puts people a bit more at ease because it then becomes a conversation not a monologue."

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Speaking of Working Stories, here's the annual event of Golden Fleece, the group behind Working Stories. I've attended twice, and it is just the best.

The Story Moment: Where Narrative Leads to Innovation

7th Golden Fleece International Organizational Storytelling Conference

National 4-H Youth Conference Center, Washington DC, May 10 2008,

Registration 8:30 to Closing at 5:30.

Are you looking for new innovation practices and tools to release the creativity in you or your organization?

Attend the 7th Golden Fleece International Organizational Storytelling Conference which will connect the power of story to organizational or personal innovation. This year’s program offers a variety of sessions, such as The Hero’s Journey to Innovation, Stories in Motion, Innovation Driven by Enquiry and more… Join others who are passionate about story and its possibilities -- in Story Spaces. The sponsoring community, Golden Fleece, has nurtured the use of narrative in organizations since 2000.

Registration and agenda information here.

Madelyn Blair, Program Chair (mblair@pelerei.com)

Presenters pictured below:

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"If you had only 37 days to live would you feel happy with the story you have lived so far? How would you express that story, learn fro it, leave it for others?"

Patti Digh raises those questions in her blog, 37days and uses it as the premise for 37days retreats (there's one coming up in September 2008).

Digh's work explores such questions as:

• How do we make meaning of our lives through story?


• What are the stories we tell ourselves about others? About ourselves? How do those stories reduce us?


• What learning and significances are right in front of us, in the stories of our days?

These questions and this premise remind me of the importance of pursuing our passions. As Austin Hill of Billions with Zero Knowledge writes: "Passion is something you can’t pay for, it has to be something that is shared - and stories are the ways we have shared our passions since we grunted our way out of our painted caves." Is our story one of following our passion, doing the things we love? If not, change the story and change your life. As Digh's work reminds us, life is far too short not to love the story we're creating.

This post answers the question, why 37 days? Why not some other number?

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I've talked in this entry and this one about how employers are increasingly telling the story of what it's like to work in their organizations. Video is frequently the medium deployed.

Recruiting guru Dr. John Sullivan recently talked about The Power of Stories for Employment Branding and Referrals, asserting that:

No recruiting ad, brochure, website, or recruiter pitch can have the same power and effectiveness as current employees telling powerful stories about what it's like to work at their firms.

Observing that "employees need access to powerful stories about the firm in order to use them in attracting potential referral candidates," but that "most companies have no book or central depository that contains a list of all the firm's stories about their people and management practices," Sullivan recommends making stories available "through a corporate or business unit 'story inventory.'" He suggests a formalized process for gathering and distributing stories. Without that, he says, "you are limiting your ability to recruit and brand by letting 75 percent of your stories remain in limited distribution."

Many of his 17 Steps to Make Your Branding Stories As Powerful as Possible (see extended entry) could also be flipped around and applied as personal branding stories for job-seekers.

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The Horizon Project is the International Storytelling Center's five-year capital campaign to build a better life, a better world, through the power of storytelling.

Many folks in the current organizational storytelling movement will tell you they first got turned on to the power of storytelling at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.

For more than 30 years, the International Storytelling Center has staged the National Storytelling Festival as the world's premier storytelling event, led the world's storytelling renaissance, and brought new opportunities to Jonesborough and the Tri-Cities Region.

Now, ISC is launching The Horizon Project—a five-year, $3 million campaign to build a better life, a better world, through the power of storytelling, both at home and across the globe.

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In a similar vein to CareerTours, which offers videos depicting the story of what it's like to work for various companies, CareerHero hopes to inspire young adults to dream big by recruiting leading companies and executives to share insights about various careers through interviews, interactive chat, and Day in the Life videos.

The site is a little messy, and I couldn't see a way to search for a particular occupation, but it's a worthy idea.

There are few better ways to determine what a career is like than to listen to people in that career, an idea I have long touted in my writings about informational interviews.

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As I noted in Quintessential Careers' 2008 Job-hunting on the Internet Annual Report, the millennials’ thirst for media is fueling efforts among employers to, for example, put up on their Web sites video of what it’s like to work at their organizations. Companies like Goldman Sachs offer videos of what various aspects of working for the organization are like. Presenting videos about companies, jobs, and careers in a big way is CareerTours, offering more than 600,000 videos.

CareerTours site states that it's an Internet based recruiting resource that allows career seekers to experience companies through video clips. "Our solution was developed with the single purpose of eliminating friction in the hiring process and revolutionizing the way companies recruit top talent," the site says.

I'm not sure what this friction is that CareerTours refers to, but it seems to be a big deal, as they go on to say the site's mission is:

To remove all friction from the hiring process by providing a platform in which candidates can experience their next careers and employers can showcase their organizations and cultures.

In other words, employers can show prospective employees the story of what it's like to work in their organizations.

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Does your career story – or current job story – include a dread of Mondays?

Monster.com has depicted this sad but common theme in a commercial that itself tells a story:

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"Scrubs" star Sarah Chalke is starring in a new ad campaign for Hanes about conquering the dreaded wedgie with No Ride Up Panties. The campaign was inspired by Chalke's wedgie mishap on the red carpet at her first Emmys.

Visitors to the Wedgie Free web site are invited to read wedgie stories and submit their own. Go to the site and click on Wedgie Stories.

By the way, I tried to find a wedgie illustration for this entry, but those available were, ahem, just not very tasteful.

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Craig Wortmann is the author of What's Your Story?, which describes the "powerful impact stories have on the three most common performance challenges—leadership, strategic selling, and motivation."

Wortmann writes:

While the technique of telling stories is the oldest form of communication, it's also the one form that rises above the din of our information-saturated environment and delivers messages in a way that connects with people, bringing ideas to life and making them actionable and memorable.

A piece of the book that especially interests me is the Story Matrix, which I recommend in my book Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers as a tool for planning stories to depict in career portfolios.

Below is how Wortmann explains the Story Matrix (edited; see more on his site). Instead of "leader's stories," I like to think of the broader term "accomplishments" – or instead of stories that depict leadership, choose any skill you want to highlight in your career search:

The Story Matrix is a simple spreadsheet that places a leader's stories into different categories.... In retrospect, information and events that looked like only data points at the time they were happening become key puzzle pieces of a larger story.

... To serve as a tool to organize your stories, the Story Matrix is structured as a grid with two axes. The vertical axis is where the nature of stories and the different types of impact they have on performance comes into play. Although not set in stone, the vertical axis is meant to be more rigid.

The categories of success, failure, fun, and legends are the broadest four categories that still have key distinctions between them. ... To ignite performance, leaders need to be telling all four types of stories, because each type of story has a different impact.

Unlike the vertical axis, the horizontal axis is designed to be more flexible. Each category on the horizontal axis is designed to capture one of your main areas of influence. If you are a professional salesperson, you will likely be using your stories to influence "clients," "support," "process," "execution," "follow-up," etc. If you are a senior executive, your areas of influence will be more broad. Your Story Matrix would likely include "operations," "sales," "financial," "governance," etc. An entrepreneur might have areas of influence like "partnering," "business development," "teamwork," etc. You get the picture! Another way to figure out what truly belongs across the top of your Story Matrix is to ask yourself this question: "What are the five most common functional or performance areas that I have to influence?"

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Jessica Hagy creates these cool graphic representations of various aspects of life in her blog Indexed.

Download A Career Path in Pictures.

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"Cousin" Jon Hansen recently wrote to me to tell me that he frequently tells stories when he speaks about procurement.

Stories also appear in his Procurement Insights blog, such as these entries:

• The Bands of Public Sector Supplier Engagement


• Cluster Development and the CAC (PWGSC): Facilitator or Competitor?


• NPM's guiding principles for creating a "Slim" State: What Marshall, Tipple and Rotor should have known?









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If you want to stretch your storytelling muscles, a great technique is to find interesting visuals and construct your own story about what's going on in the visual. I had a blast with this type of exercise at a seminar during my PhD program in which we made up stories about images on New Yorker covers, as seen here.

An exhibition at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles until March 22 provides superb visuals for crafting stories. The story you craft may be nothing like what the artist, Achim Lippoth, had in mind, but no matter.

The exhibition, Achim Lippoth Storytelling, features a selection of color photographs from his latest publication, Pictures. This dramatic exploration of children’s behavior in a highly orchestrated and designed setting highlights the complex relationship between young minds and the adult expectations to which they both rebel and conform.

See 36 striking images here.

Children are the actors here, while adults are at most the decoration...The pictorial spaces are like stage sets, whether outdoors or in the studio. The photographer never leaves the choreography of his characters or the orchestration of light and colour up to the coincidence of capturing the right moment...After all, Lippoth’s world is a stage, and he is the sole director.

– Thomas Wiegand, Achim Lippoth: Pictures, Kehrer 2007

In the extended entry, see a press release about the exhibition.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In an earlier entry, I noted the International Day for Sharing Life Stories (May 16). One of the major sponsors of that day is the Museum of the Person, which has branches in the US (Indiana), Canada, Brazil, and Portugal. The US site notes that it is dedicated to "strengthening community through storysharing." The site goes on to say:

This site commemorates and celebrates the lives of people from all walks of life – those who give heft to the fabric of our community through their daily work, play, traditions and dreams.

This is a place to share your story with family and community. We welcome you and invite you to share with us.

The museum offers individual stories and a form for submitting one's own story. Hmmmm.... the form asks for one's connection with Indiana. What if one doesn't have a connection?

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Similar to OurStory, which I wrote about yesterday, is Dandelife, which describes itself as a social biography network, a "social network built around the telling of your life's stories." The Dandelife folks coined the term "lifecasting," which is apparently what you do at Dandelife.

I am fascinating by this concept of socially constructing our identities in the virtual world. How do we portray our identities, our stories, ourselves online differently from the way we do in other venues? No need to ask which one is real; they are all real. I believe there is no objective reality; reality is socially constructed through language, stories, conversations, etc.

Both Our Story and Dandelife veer toward constructing reality visually – with lots of photos and video. As a words gal, I'm not quite on board with this approach, although I recognize its value.

For a very fleshed-out example of a social biography on the Dandelife network, see this one by founder http://www.dandelife.com/kga245 Kelly Abbott.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I've written before about Lori Silverman's excellent book, Wake Me When the Data Is Over, one of the few books on organizational storytelling to provide copious examples of storytelling in use in organizations.

Just wanted to also point out that her Web site of the same name is an excellent resource, with a very nice collection of articles available for free download.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The International Association of Business Communicators conducted one of the most comprehensive studies ever on storytelling in organizations in 2006, and Terrence Gargiulo and Angela Ioffredo have recently reported on the results.

The researchers found that organizations were using stories in six broad categories:

• Stories about the organization, including its creation story.


• Stories about products and services.


• Stories about business performance at both macro and micro levels.


• Stories about an organization's people.


• Stories about its culture.


• Personal narratives, including stories about an individual's department or role.

As for the media in which stories are being used, respondents cited these venues and functional areas:

• Town meetings


• Sales and marketing


• Training


• Reinforcing values


• Change management

Nearly half of respondents (48.7 percent) felt their CEOs were effective storytellers. More than two-thirds believed stories could play an important role in their communication strategies, but just under a third were convinced that their top leadership was making the most effective use of stories.

Respondents cited a number of obstacles to deploying storytelling:

• Time needed to collect and package stories


• Frustration, especially in large organizations, over collecting stories and finding ways to use them


• Legal issues in obtaining clearance to use stories


• Lack of a storytelling culture in the organization and a bias toward quantitative information


• Senior leaders who don't understand how to use stories

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I kid you not; my love of storytelling began with the Reader's Digest, which I read as a child. I loved the stories and short anecdotes within its pages. Some stories that I read i RD, I have never forgotten, such as "Ordeal in the Desert," about a family whose car breaks down in the desert, and they have to eat crayons, paste, and cactus to survive. And the story of a dressmaker in love with a woman for whom he sews a wedding dress. He stitches a love note into the lining, and years later, as she's doing something with the dress, she finds it. I think her first husband had died, so she and the dressmaker found each other again.

While many think of RD as hokey, corny, old-fashioned, and conservative, the magazine's stories remain compelling. I don't have much time for the print version these days, but it's comforting to know the Reader's Digest Web site still offers a Stories section.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.