… and is our current Storyteller-in-Chief even telling stories?

Political and communications analysts have written recently about President Obama’s storytelling — or lack thereof — both in his State of the Union speech and in the first year of his presidency.

Some, like Jason Snyder, said that the State of the Union address was a case study in the art of communication for three reasons, one of which was that it included authentic stories (the others: consistency of message and proper positioning). Others, like Emily Bobrow, said of the speech, “We didn’t get a story …”

I don’t agree completely that we didn’t get a story. We may not have heard an overarching narrative, but we certainly heard a patchwork of small stories.

But the lack of that overarching narrative is what New Yorker writer Junot Diaz (whom Bobrow also cites) laments. Diaz wrote his piece not about the State of the Union but about the anniversary of Obama’s inauguration. Some excerpts:

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. … a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. … The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. … I’ve yet to hear anything that excites that part of my brain which loves, which craves the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale.

Diaz contrasts Obama’s unstoried first year, not only with tea-party and death-panel stories, but with newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s “story of an upstart outsider with energy and ideas, who was going to shake things up” and the story of himself and his background that Obama wove on the campaign trail.

So what would a presidential story that “excites that part of [our] brain[s] which love, which crave the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale” look like? Diaz doesn’t give an example, but the one that springs immediately to mind for me is the future story JFK told that began “We will go to the moon before the decade is out.” I’m not sure that the State of the Union is the best platform for an inspiring story like that one, but I still would have liked a more cohesive narrative to tie together the policy points in the speech.

I also believe Obama did deliver an overarching narrative of a president who has made mistakes in his first year in office and learned a great deal. In that sense, he told a highly authentic personal story in the State of the Union.

I’ve read repeatedly that authenticity is key to effective storytelling, most recently in a blog post by Jo Golden: “No matter how you decide to tell your story, the most important quality will be authenticity. Authenticity, honesty, and straightforward ways of being promote trust.”

I know we want honesty and straightforward ways of being from our Storyteller-in-Chief. But I wonder about authenticity. Presidents rarely admit to mistakes; certainly Obama’s predecessor didn’t. My husband worried that the FOX News-type pundits would rip into Obama for telling his authentic story of imperfection. (I don’t know if that happened because I cannot bear to watch FOX News, but they pretty much rip into the president for everything.)

I’d love to get Paul Costello’s take on how the president is doing with his storytelling.

And what do you think?

How much authenticity do we want from our president? Are se so accustomed to spin that authenticity from our president makes us nervous?

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

This is the first year I learned of England’s National Storytelling Week (this year, Jan. 30 to Feb. 6), although the event is now in its 10th year. The material about the week at the Society for Storytelling site suggests the week mostly focuses on oral storytelling to and for young people , but the site also says this:

Storytelling stretches from its simplest application in the nursery right through to personal stories and bereavement aids in hospitals, strengthening communication in the business sphere, and as an aid to learning in education. In its sharing between teller and listener it gives and receives time, it empowers, it creates and feeds the imagination from one generation to the next.

On her site storyteller Gemma Hanna explains why National Storytelling Week occurs at this time of year:

This week was chosen because it is not too close to Christmas and coincides with Candlemas, which falls on the 2nd of February. Part of the rituals for this old church festival includes a blessing on the throat, a prime tool in the store of nearly all storytellers of every belief and culture.

I know of several storytelling days that are celebrated in the US and worldwide, but maybe the world needs a whole week dedicated to storytelling.

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I’m not sure how I managed NOT to attend Terrence Gargiulo’s latest free webinar this week, but I missed it.

As usual, he is offering the recorded webinar, Facilitation Techniques with Stories, free to people like me who missed it (also embedded below).

He also offers a downloadable Facilitator Guide: Helping Others Make Sense of Stories and a paper, Nine Ground Rules of Working with Stories in Groups.

Terrence’s generosity is part of the culture of the storytelling community. We believe in sharing. Still, I constantly amazed at the incredible storytelling riches that are out there free for the asking.

Webinar: Facilitation Techniques with Stories from Terrence Gargiulo on Vimeo.

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Declaring that “we think resumes are where great experience and personality go to die,” the marketing agency Ink Foundry goes on to say: “In the 10 years that we’ve been in business, we’ve read hundreds of insanely boring resumes from some really talented marketing people.”

The agency’s stance on resumes inspired it to conduct a search for a social-media-marketing intern by asking candidates to create and upload a video (and then asking site visitors to vote on whom Ink Foundry should hire). [See the job posting.]

Naturally, my mind turns to storytelling as the centerpiece I’d advise would-be interns to integrate into their videos. I can’t think of a better way to express one’s personality than through stories.

The agency doesn’t specifically ask for stories, but most of the elements the agency asks for in its posting could be expressed in stories in the required 3-minutes-or-less video describing “how this is the perfect internship for you:”

• Your name
• Your experience with social media
• Any work experience
• Education
• Your three best skills
• Why you want to work at Ink Foundry
• Three social media thought leaders or bloggers who you admire
• Demonstrate your creativity, sense of humor, fun spirit
• Describe your perfect work day

Candidates could also develop stories to illustrate the skills required for the job (knowledge about social media and its use for marketing; savvy research skills; excellent writing skills; creativity, artistic skills as well as detail skills; passionate about learning social-media marketing; enormous pride in your work, and in the shared accomplishment of the team; strong organization skills, attention to detail, and a strong work ethic; confident, communicative, responsible.)

Since the agency is making submitted videos available for voting, I will be interested to see if any candidates use storied approaches. After all, storytelling goes hand in hand not only with expressing one’s personality but also with social-media marketing. (I will also be interested in knowing how many submissions Ink Foundry gets; even at 3 minutes or under, these videos will require much more time to review than resumes would. As much as I applaud a hiring approach tailor-made for storytelling, I worry that Ink Foundry is setting itself up for a very labor-intensive hiring process.)

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Joining the growing chorus of career practitioners who are encouraging job-seekers to tell stories in their job-search communications, my colleague Billie Sucher has just written a blog post inspired by the recent edition of “60 Minutes” dedicated to its creator Don Hewitt.

Storytelling was Hewitt’s trademark, and he wanted his reporters to “Tell me a story.” Sucher suggests that job-seekers imagine they are being interviewed for a “60 Minutes” profile, and she offers a STORY acronym to help candidates remember how to apply storytelling in, for example, an interview situation:

S  haring your skills and successes, supported by specific examples of how you shape and strategize solutions, set standards and solve problems in a simple, straightforward style.

T  argeting the text that you teach and tell your audience about your target goals, areas of interest, and why you are the top talent to do the task.

O  ffering information and opening up about your originality, opportunities and options.

R  ecalling and remembering the reasons you rock and freely reciting your results, rewards, and realities without repeated reminders.

Y ielding a yes for You and your viewing audience!

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Came across two good slideshows recently that illustrate two applications for storytelling.

Organizational storytelling: I don’t know how Tell Us Your Story: Cultivating an Organizational Storytelling Culture by Teresa Bailey ended up on my desktop, but there it was after I researched storytelling at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for this entry. Although the presentation doesn’t quite stand on its own without narration, the viewer can glean solid information about how storytelling developed at JPL and how it works.

Online Storytelling in Nonprofits: I’ve written previously about Roger Burks and his campaign against what he calls “poverty porn” in favor of “humanitarian storytelling. Burks, senior writer at Mercy Corps, gives a nice presentation that illustrates how humanitarian storytelling is executed at Mercy Corps (which has more than 2,000 stories on its site), how it engages its audience, and how the approach developed after the late-2004 tsunami. It’s called Online Storytelling at Mercy Corps, and it’s embedded below. This show is easier to follow than the JPL one because it has an audio track. Burks talks about why storytelling is effective, how to choose stories, how Mercy Corps integrates storytelling into its Web site (and makes the action step — donating — more prominent), how the storytelling approach has resulted in much greater donations than similar organizations elicit, and how its latest strategy involves authentic but not necessarily polished entries on it blog, especially useful for real-time disaster coverage, as Mercy Corps is currently providing about Haiti.

Online Storytelling at Mercy Corps, Roger Burks / Forum One Communications Web Executive Seminar

View more presentations from Forum One Communications.

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Can you tell a story with just a visual — without words? Of course. I’ve written about visual storytelling in art frequently in this space. I’m not sure, though, if I’ve written about visual storytelling on video that attempts to tell a story without narration or dialogue.

Two bloggers have recently explored that question. In an entry on 10,000 Words, How to create video storytelling that actually tells a story, Mark S. Luckie presents three videos that, he says, “prove that you don’t have to have clip after clip of an interviewee of telling the story for you — sometimes the story just tells itself.”

Escape From Tomorrow (A Day In the Life With Nigel Sylvester) from 13thWitness™ on Vimeo.

Well, I’m sure it’s true that video stories can be told without narration or dialog, but I’m not sure Luckie’s examples truly reach the level of storytelling. The first two, Another night in Beijing and Escape from tomorrow, are more like slices of life than stories. Both have excellent background music, with the music in Escape from tomorrow especially well-synched to the action in the film. (Embedded above because it’s my favorite of the videos I looked at here.) The third, PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God, is more of a person-on-the-street interview series in which subjects are asked to share their secrets. It’s tied to a site I’ve written about, PostSecret, “an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.”

Story fares a bit better in the videos examined by Tom Kennedy on Kennedy | Multimedia. Kennedy notes that “visual storytelling can offer a complete narrative with music and images alone” and gives as examples four TV commercials, one of which has been removed from YouTube for terms-of-use violations. The first of these, an ad for a Volkswagen, and the last, an ad for Mini Cooper, decently tell stories. The third, an ad for Mexican beer, isn’t much of a story, in my opinion.

The line of inquiry is fascinating, though, and it makes me wonder what elements are required to create a video that offers a complete narrative with music and images alone, and what are some good examples of these?

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By way of an online discussion group, my friend Stephanie West Allen alerted me to an unusual press release written as a story.

It’s the story of an attorney who is taking down her shingle to become a life and executive coach. There’s more to it; as the press release notes, it’s “a story that involves fleeing from another country, working for the CIA, and being involved in a shooting, not to mention short appearances by the then President of the United States, several Foreign Consulates, and a stuffed animal named Batts Maroo.”

I once made quite a practice of analyzing press releases when I was an editor who reviewed dozens of these documents daily. I developed a nice set of guidelines for how not to write a press release based on the mistakes I typically saw. I put on my editor’s hat to determine whether this press release would intrigue me and inspire me to run the story the release represents (while some publications print releases verbatim, most publications would either edit the release or report their own story using the release as a springboard). Here are my thoughts:

• The story aspect of the release is definitely intriguing. The release uses the word “story” numerous times. Most press releases announcing a new business give a dry, resume-like recitation of the entrepreneur’s background and qualifications.
• The release is long — 4 pages (!) when printed as a PDF. Many editors would be daunted by its length and wouldn’t have time to read the whole thing. But they might be intrigued enough by the story aspect to at least put it aside for future consideration.
• The subject, whose name is Sonia Gallagher, makes some revelations that are unusually personal for a press release — that she grew up in a abusive household, that she experienced “demons” and depression, her engagement and wedding, and being sued by one of her law clients. Would an editor be turned off by these intimate details — or intrigued enough to want to learn more? Depends on the editor.

At the very least, this press release is attention-getting, which cannot be a bad thing when you seek publicity. Storied press releases may have great potential.

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When reader Raf Stevens challenged me last fall to clarify what makes a good story and to present examples of good storytelling, I began a mental journey to explore these questions and find answers.

The challenge began with a discussion of winners of a slide-presentation contest — which were not particularly storied. I think Stevens especially wanted to see examples of slide presentations that do typify great storytelling. I see discovering those examples as kind of the last stop on this journey.

In the meantime, I’ve looked at well-done examples of:

• Digital/video storytelling
• Live storytelling performance, captured on video
• Live storytelling performance, captured on audio

I also wanted to locate stories — preferably nonfiction — that are told purely with words in print (as opposed to spoken words); in other words, a story that must be read. Of course, there’s no shortage of stories like this, as exemplified by the winners of Narrative magazine’s Narrative 30 Below Story Contest, a competition for writers under age 30 in which entrants could submit fiction or nonfiction. (Free registration on the site is required to read the full stories.) I wish Narrative labeled the stories as fiction or nonfiction. If I had to guess, I’d say all three of the top-prize winners are nonfiction, but I can’t be sure. Makes me wonder if stories in writing competitions are judged differently based on whether the intent is fiction or nonfiction. Looking at the guidelines for the magazine’s Winter Story Contest, I see that entrants are required to indicate which genre their work fits into, thus identifying fiction vs. nonfiction. (on a related note, check out Cynthia Kurtz’s provocative blog post about naturally occurring stories vs. packaged stories.)

Another good written story came to my attention through my Facebook friend Liz Massey, who called Jonathan Odell’s Coming Home: A Gay Christian Speaks to Fundamentalists amazingly well written.

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The world’s eyes have been opened over the last two weeks, not only to a tragedy of unspeakable proportions, but to a nation that has been suffering long before this natural disaster befell it. Tonight, eyes will continue to focus on helping the Haitian people as major television networks broadcast a “Hope for Haiti” telethon.

During this period of opening the world’s eyes to Haiti’s past and present plight, the site Spoken Stories offered a video of Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, speaking after another natural disaster and reading from her work.

(Following a long introduction, Danticat starts speaking about 9 minutes into the video; the entire presentation is about an hour.)

This is also a good opportunity to call attention to the site that presented the Danticat video. SpokenStories.Org says it has “one short-term goal, one mid-term plan and one lifelong mission: to help Maximize Human Capabilities through Stories, Poems and other human-uplifting arts.” Here’s more from and about the site:

Why We are Different

We believe that the best way to bring the best out of people is to empower and inspire them with awakening stories. This is the basic premise and the foundation of the work we do. We tell and write stories that will nourish your life; stories that will strengthen your spirit and soul; stories that will help you sustain your senses; stories that will help you embark journeys that you never thought about before; stories that will help you preserve your inalienable human dignity; stories that will enlighten your ‘bad’ days, and lift you up!

Many of these stories are real-life experiences. Thus, the intention is to teach you a lesson that you would otherwise had no chance.

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I’ve published several entries recently about April’s Storytelling Weekend in Washington, DC (April 15-17). Steve Denning has now provided a one-stop link to learn about all three days of the weekend and links to register. More details and a registration link are still to come for the Saturday event, Golden Fleece Day.

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I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of artistic intent. What story is an artist trying to tell, or what statement is the artist trying to make in a given work of art?

Having worked for a while in an art gallery, I came to realize that most artists don’t really like to reveal their intent. Thus, the intent or meaning of a work of art is usually left to the beholder to interpret. A major component of art-history scholarship seems to focus on making scholarly arguments for what an artist’s intent was for a work or body or work.

My fascination with artistic intent was piqued by a new contest Canon is holding, called “The Story Beyond The Still,” which the company describes as “the first user-generated HD Video Contest where photographers become filmmakers, and we all see beyond the still.” The contest is largely to promote Canon’s EOS 7D camera, but also to “demonstrat[e] the social appeal of collaborative storytelling.”

The contest, as it turns out, is not really about artistic intent. If it were, the contest’s name might be “The Story Behind the Still.” Instead, it’s more like “what happens next” in the story of the still photo. The idea is to move the story forward rather than to look back at what inspired the photo.

Canon asked photographer, Vincent Laforet (who is also a judge for the contest), to “interpret” what story lives beyond the first still and to tell that story with the new camera. Laforet collaborated with Grey New York to bring his interpretation of a still image to life in a short film entitled “The Cabbie,” which begins on a still image depicting a teddy bear left on the sidewalk outside of an airport. “The Cabbie” serves as the first installment of a seven-chapter collaborative work in which each participant is asked to interpret the previous winning photographer/filmmaker’s final still image to start their vision for the subsequent chapter. The still photo at right above, a large trunk sitting in what appears to be a warehouse, is the still for Chapter 2. Submissions for the next chapter are due February 11.

Even though I’m a little disappointed that the contest doesn’t focus on the storied intent of these visuals, I admit that Laforet has created an intriguing first chapter (below), and I’m looking forward to subsequent installments.

You can read Canon’s press release here.

The Story Beyond The Still: The Cabbie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

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A year ago today, my heart soared as Barack Obama was inaugurated. While my regard for the president remains undimmed today, I find myself tending to agree with Arianna Huffington, who wrote in Huffington Post yesterday that the US political system seems to be broken (largely by bitter partisanship and punditry-disguised-as-journalism) and incapable of getting much done to move the country out of its doldrums. Huffington says Obama-brand Hope needs to give way to Hope 2.0 in which citizens must create change because government can’t or won’t do it.

Seth Fiegerman on the site Mainstreet has put together a slideshow, The Upside of Unemployment: 15 Stories, that shows how folks are making the most of the current jobless recovery. The stories remind me of last year’s Job Action Day, in which we similarly looked at silver linings and places that people were finding pockets of hope in these tough times.

The protagonists of Fiegerman’s very brief stories did not wallow in the misery of their unemployment but saw it as an opportunity — an opportunity for a mom to stay home with her new baby, for people to start businesses, for folks to qualify for cheaper homes and college tuition, for newlyweds to travel the world (using money they’d saved to buy a house), for a writer to author a book, for a woman to undergo self-actualization and learn the kind of work she really wants to do, for a woman to pursue personal fitness, for a property manager to go back to school, for a woman to care for a dying parent, for a dad to spend more time with his family, and more.

No matter what situation in our broken system is in need of fixing, stories of grassroots efforts to take the initiative and generate hope and change will inspire others to mobilize toward creating a better nation.

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Lou Hoffman, president and CEO of The Hoffman Agency, writes about storytelling as seen through a business prism in his blog Ishmael’s Corner.

He has identified his top 10 storytelling-related blog posts of 2009 in two parts:

• Part I
• Part II

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Over the weekend, Jared (who doesn’t use his last name on his blog), writer of the fascinating and popular blog Moon Over Martinborough, told me about a dilemma he’s having. He recently added a podcast to his blog. Here’s the issue:

I’m aware that these podcasts are more ‘books on tape-ish’ than they are “campfire story-ish.” It’s amazing the way a written text changes things. I’m hoping to be able to shift them more towards the campfire/oral storytelling as I get better, but to do that I almost need to ditch the text. Or improvise a bit while referring to the text.

Boy, I can sure relate to this dilemma. Oral presentations rarely sound great when read from written text. I’m not a bad presenter, but I’m neither great at extemporaneous speaking nor telling off-the-cuff stories. I almost always need some sort of written text as a prompt or crutch, even if it’s just a few words or a picture on a slide. (By the way, I don’t think a “books-on-tape” sound is necessarily a bad thing; I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and most readers — many of them actors — do a great job.)

I watched the Golden Globes last night. The best acceptance speeches were those that were obviously planned yet delivered off-the-cuff (Mo’nique, Meryl Streep, Robert Downey Jr.) The worst was the one that was obviously read from a piece of paper. In the middle were those not planned and therefore very stream-of-consciousness and all over the place. Here I’m thinking of Drew Barrymore’s wacky speech. While it was somewhat incomprehensible, it was still endearing because it was real — and very Drew Barrymore.

I think Jared, whose blog is about about his adventures as a an expat American running a New Zealand farm with his partner, is right about ditching the text. My hunch is that the best approach may be write the story just to get it mentally organized and cemented in your brain. But when speaking the story, have — at most — an outline of one-word or short-phrase prompts in front of you. Or is it best not to write the story at all first?

I’d love to hear from oral-performance storytellers about making that transition from, as Jared calls it, “literacy to orality.” What’s the best way to take a written story and speak it so it sounds like a compelling oral story performance?

By the way, I listened to one of Jared’s podcasts, “The Triumph of Evil Cow”, a word-for-word recitation of the written blog entry of the same name, and I thought it was fine. To me, it’s about on par with, for example, spoken stories on This American Life. It’s perhaps a bit long; a listener may be daunted by noting that the story is 9+ minutes. Jared might consider a condensed version of his blog entries for the podcasts. He included a couple of sound effects, such as a crowing rooster, that remind me of sound-rich stories on NPR. He might include a few more of these in the story itself — such as mooing for the evil cow story.

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Sometime last year, I started a protocol of listing story-related events on an inside Story Events page instead of here on the main page of A Storied Career. Recently, though, I’ve broken that protocol and listed story events here. I’m afraid I let the Story Events page get horribly outdated. In the meantime, I’ve been posting some events helmed by story practitioners I know. I know — and can heartily recommend — the folks involved in these three events:

Storytelling QuickStart Program, led by Michael Margolis (pictured at right), is a 4-week TeleCourse that starts Thurs, Feb. 18, and is limited to 25 participants, ideally, Michael says, “individuals with a big story to tell — visionaries, change-agents, business owners, solo-preneurs, and innovators.” Here’s a partial description from the page for the course, where you can also register for/purchase the course:

This 4-week course will give structure and guidance for how to apply the principles of my storytelling manifesto directly to your work. Each 90-minute session will include: ~ 20 minutes of presentation, ~ 25 minute of facilitated exercise, and ~ 45 minutes of group coaching. This program is limited to 25 participants to ensure individualized attention. You will also benefit from worksheets and HW exercises in between sessions. I’ll be experimenting with new modes of delivery in this program — and you’ll benefit with lots of bonus value-adds. You have to be willing to truly participate and give feedback throughout the program.

The Basics of Organizational Storytelling is exciting because it kicks off International Storytelling Weekend in Washington, DC. This workshop, led by my colleagues Thaler Pekar (pictured at left) and Svend-Erik Engh (pictured at right) on Thurs., April 15, 6:30 to 9 p.m., is sort of the “pre-show” of the weekend. Register here. Here’s the description of the event, from the Smithsonian’s Resident Associates site:

Storytelling has become an essential skills for managers and organizational leaders because it aids in establishing trust, articulating values, sparking innovation, inspiring action, sharing knowledge, building community, and generating followers and new leaders in organizations. Many leaders, however, have no background in storytelling and are confounded by how and when to share stories. In this seminar two individuals who have worked extensively in the field of organizational storytelling teach participants the basics, including the elements of an organizational story, when and how stories can be most effectively used in organizations, how stories told within an organization differ from stories told outside an organization, and how a story should be crafted to achieve specific goals and objectives. The seminar is led by Thaler Pekar, founder and principal of Thaler Pekar & Partners, a consulting firm specializing in persuasive communications, and Svend-Eric Engh, author of Tell a Story: Be Heard, Be Understood, Get Action (Fokus).

Then, the next day is the all-day seminar Smithsonian portion of Storytelling Weekend, Organizational Storytelling—A Tool for Transforming the Workplace. Organizers recommend that novices attend the preceding Basics of Organizational Storytelling the previous evening to get the most out of the Friday event. (The third part of Storytelling Weekend, the Golden Fleece Conference, to be held Sat., April 17, is not yet open for registration). Here’s the description of the Friday seminar. Register here:

Storytelling is a powerful and underutilized professional business tool that can be used to help achieve a myriad of organizational objectives, from generating new ideas to fostering strong work teams to sharing knowledge and transmitting values. In this seminar led by experts in the field of organizational storytelling, participants explore how narrative techniques can be used to ignite innovation and change in the workplace for the benefit of the organization, the people doing the work, and the clients and customers whom they serve.

Matthew E. May, chief strategist for MBox Design, former advisor at Toyota, and author of In Pursuit of Elegance (2009) and The Elegant Solution (2006), examines the stories used to inspire continuous innovation at Toyota, an organization that implements more than one million ideas per year.

Mary Poppendieck, retired 3M manager and co-author of Implementing Lean Software Development (2006) and Leading Lean Software Development (2009), discusses the characteristics of successful leaders and explains how stories can create a context where employees are motivated to perform their best and work as a team.

Steve Denning, former head of knowledge management at the World Bank and author of The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005) and The Secret Language of Leadership (2007), talks about how some companies are re-inventing the workplace using storytelling to inspire continuous innovation, productivity, job satisfaction, and client delight. He also discusses the role of storytelling as part of the seven basic principles of continuous innovation.

Elizabeth Woodward, a software transformation consultant with IBM and co-author of The Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum (2010), discusses how teams can create the change they envision by focusing on prioritization of needs in the form of user stories, continuous feedback from stakeholders, and consistent delivery of high-quality, valuable short-term wins.

Seth Kahan, an independent consultant with a specialty in change management, and author of Getting Change Right (2010), shows how leaders transform organizations from the inside out by getting people on board for bold new ideas.

Madelyn Blair, CEO of Pelerei, Inc., an organizational consulting firm, explains the concept and principles of radical learning and how it can be used to develop strategies for maintaining focus and achieving results.

Coffee and pastries are served 8:30 to 9 a.m. Lunch is from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.; participants provide their own lunch.

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I had a bit of an epiphany the other day while reading a blog post by J. Timothy King on his blog Be the Story.

Story practitioners whose practice includes story development tend to adopt very specific approaches for developing stories. Sometimes they create these approaches on their own. Sometimes they use approaches developed by others. And sometimes they combine their own approaches with those developed by others. I regularly publish the story-development approaches of various practitioners so that folks can consider adopting these approaches — in part of full — to their own applied-storytelling practices.

Because applied storytelling has been applied to so many disciplines, bits and pieces of those disciplines tend to get integrated into story-development approaches.

Take King’s former discipline — software development. King ascribes to the software-development philosophy called “Agile Software Development,” in which the developer “start[s] by accepting that change happens — Deal with it! You deal with it by building your software in tiny pieces, the most valuable parts first.” Now, as a writer and story consultant, he applies Agile Software Development. His blog post, in fact is titled Agile Storytelling.

King’s approach, unlike many, is more process than content/story structure. King uses it for novel-writing — but I’ll bet at least part of it would be useful in other types of applied storytelling. Here’s what he suggests:

1. Write brief character sketches for each of the main, viewpoint characters.

2. Describe each character arc and story thread, in a sentence each.

3. Expand these to scenes, a sentence or two per scene. (You can do this using plot cards, if you’re more comfortable working with them.)

4. Write each scene in 100-300 words. This is “draft zero.” By the end of this, you should be able to see your story having taken form. You should be able to see whether it works, and whether it will be about the right size to hit your word goals. You will also have enough detail planned so that you can track word targets and target dates in writing your first draft.

5. Rewrite the story, expanding each scene to its full length, producing a first draft. Where necessary, insert additional scenes, split scenes into multiples, combine scenes, rearrange scenes, and redefine scenes.

6. Revise the manuscript.

7. Final line editing.

In what other applied-storytelling disciplines might this approach be useful?

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I love The Moth and have written about it numerous times, most recently here, where I shared some favorite stories from The Moth’s podcast.

I receive regular email updates from The Moth, announcing its events mostly in New York City but sometimes in other parts of the country. It’s kind of frustrating to receive these because I’ve never been in a situation where I could easily travel to a Moth event.

But The Moth has come up with a rather obvious solution for people like me. If you can’t travel to a Moth event, create one of your own, called a MothUp, in your own home.

On a page called MothUP - The Living Room Satellite Moth, The Moth tells how to hold such an event.

The Moth is quite serious about these events and institutionalizing them as part of The Moth. “Videos from your MothUP night will be featured on our website,” the MothUp page states. “Posted stories will be considered for our radio program, The Moth Radio Hour. You and your friends could end up on our show! If your event continues to grow, and you can establish that you have a large enough crowd to warrant moving to a larger venue, your city could become the next place for an official Moth StorySLAM.”

Another indication of the seriousness with which The Moth regard this initiative is that participants are asked to download a set of MothUp guidelines, complete a form, and agree to The Moth’s terms.

Here are excerpts from the organization’s basics of holding a MothUp:

What you need:

A group of friends, co-workers and acquaintances who you can lure to your place to share a night of true, first person stories. You’ll meet once a month. All stories should be true as remembered by the storyteller. You must have a minimum of five people, but you set the cap for the max number of group members.

A video camera to capture the stories. If you have the gear, we also urge you to record the audio in broadcast quality. We want you to record your stories, so that they can be shared around the world and your group can become part of our storytelling community. The best video content from the MothUP groups will be featured online (at the sole discretion of The Moth).

How to start:

Send out an invite stating the theme of the evening. (See our webpage for each month’s suggestions, use our prompts and send folks to our “Storytelling Guidelines” webpage for hints, tips and rules) Provide the where and when info. Tune into The Moth Podcast and The Moth Radio Hour for inspiration.

Provide snacks and drinks, or ask folks to bring their own. Turn OFF the tv, the radio, the cell phones and the computers. Have enough seats for everyone, or have friends flexible enough to sit on the floor.

Ask everyone who comes who has a story to put his or her name in a hat.

Have a timer and some sort of musical instrument or noisemaker handy to warn each storyteller when he or she gets to the five-minute mark!

Take pictures and record good audio of your livingroom MothUP.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Madelyn Blair and Denise Lee are planning this year’s Golden Fleece conference, with Madelyn noting the organization has received several proposals but wants more. They’ve therefore extended the date for submission to January 25.

This year’s theme is “You, Me and We: Connecting through Story.”

Golden Fleece is a superb and rich applied-storytelling conference. I wish I were attending this year, but I’ve established a pattern of attending in odd-numbered years — plus, this year’s event is very shortly after we will have made our big cross-country move. I’m glad Madelyn shared this info because at least one reader has asked me for details about the conference. I see that the conference is back at George Mason University (after several years at the National 4H Center), where it was when I first attended in 2005. The photos above are from the 2009 conference.

DETAILS OF THE RFP

The Golden Fleece is seeking proposals on “You, Me and We: Connecting through Story” for workshops and presentations on storytelling in the workplace and our teams, communities, and beyond for our upcoming one day Conference to be held:

Date and Time of the event: Saturday, April 17, 2010 from 9 to 5.
Theme: You, Me and We: Connecting through Story
Location: George Mason University, Arlington, VA, Campus
(Washington, DC area)
Workshop Proposal Submission Deadline: January 25, 2010.

Golden Fleece, in conjunction with the 2010 Storytelling in Organizations seminar of the Smithsonian Institution’s Resident Associates Program (April 16, 2010), is pleased to announce the ninth annual International Storytelling Weekend in Washington. This one-day conference offers the possibility for change leaders, executives, storytelling professionals, organizational development practitioners, students and researchers to conduct workshops, present findings, and discuss the important aspects of using story to explore all of the myriad of contemporary challenges we face today and in the future.

GOLDEN FLEECE IS CONVENING THIS DAY TO:

• Open a Forum for peer-to-peer learning about what has and hasn’t worked and to create insight into the experiences of those who use story in their work with organizations including an examination of constraints and difficulties - and how they were resolved.
• Introduce New Tools through presentations, experiential workshops, case studies and discussion in a collegial atmosphere. We will explore chosen topics in-depth and are especially interested in identifying new tools and applications with the expectation that participants will have gained enough specific knowledge to adopt/adapt these after the session.
• Promote Inclusiveness by creating an event that encourages new faces (especially students) to feel open to participate
• Strengthen Golden Fleece by enlarging our community of practice.

See proposal guidelines in the extended entry.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I’ve written in this space several times about stories — as opposed to data-filled PowerPoint slides — as the linchpin of effective presentations. In her Musings blog, Christine Thompson recently compiled several excellent resources for better — and often storied — presentations.

Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Dan Roam are Thompson’s favorites, each offering both a Web site/blog and a book on or related to presentations. None of the three are totally story-focused, but story plays a presentation role for all three.

You can find storytelling in several places on Duarte’s site/blog: Clicking on the storytelling tag yields a few blog entries focusing on storytelling; she offers story-and-structure, as well as visiual-storytelling sessions in her Webinars, and you can preview some of the story-related content of her book, Slide:ology (this book, along with Reynolds’s PresentationZen Design, are the best resources, Thompson says, and Duarte also praises Reynolds’s book in a recent blog entry).

The best way to pinpoint story content on Reynolds’s Presentation Zen blog is to conduct a search on the term “storytelling”, resulting at this writing in 157 mentions.

Roam’s material is the least story-oriented of the three (at least overtly); his focus is on visual thinking. His book is The Back of the Napkin, and you can download nice bits of it.

Thompson also cites the books Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World, by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.

For a reminder of the power of stories in presentations, check out this storied Steve Jobs speech that reader Lisa Rosetti shared with me. In a way, it’s not a perfect example of stories in presentations because it’s a graduation speech, where PowerPoint slides would be quite unusual. So, this is not a case of someone opting to deliver a storied presentation instead of a slide-based one. But it’s still very good.

Listen as Jobs tells his audience that he plans to tell them three stories and then does just that:

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Two interesting concepts in visual storytelling have crossed my desk recently.

In a speech addressing criticism of 19th-century realist art, Fred Ross notes that 19th-century realists got a very raw deal — harsh criticism for lack of relevance — and should be appreciated: “The suppressed truth about this period,” he says, “… is that during the 19th century, there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects and perspectives that had never been dealt with before. They covered nearly every aspect of human activity.” The most disturbing aspect of Ross’s piece, however, is that this snobbery about art that tells stories continues today:

Storytelling has become somehow a dirty word in the world of fine art. Storytelling is demeaned as mere “illustration,” and “illustration” itself is relegated to the “commercial arts.” Go sign up to study in the fine arts department of any college or university in America and tell the officials who run the place that you want to paint great anecdotal scenes, either as histories or allegorical paintings, that symbolize, capture, and express the most powerful of human themes.

What do you think will happen?

After looking down their noses at you while trying to figure out how to say what they want without insulting you, they will politely tell you, “Well dear, you really need to go and see the department of commercial arts.”

They will tell you that storytelling is not what they do. It doesn’t interest them. It’s not a fitting purpose for fine art. What is fitting? Form for its own sake, color for its own sake, line or mass for their own sake are far more worthy of accolades of merit than recreating scenes from the real world or from our fantasies, myths, or legends about our hopes, our dreams, and the most powerful moments in life.

Meanwhile, a recently ended art show in Miami is called “Denarrations, Pan American Art Projects.” Critic Ernesto Menendez-Conde, writing in ArtPulse Magazine, explains “denarration:”

… in denarrations, the act of analyzing, subverting, or even deconstructing narratives is an intrinsic part of the structure of storytelling. Denarrations are, therefore, paradoxical means of constructing narrations while dissecting, erasing or destroying them. If deconstruction is, above all, a tool for questioning the nature of philosophical discourses, denarration is primarily a tool for storytelling and structuring representation.

Pictured above is a piece from the Denarrations exhibition, Casa, (2009) by Jorge Perienes.

It’s worth considering both prejudice against storytelling in fine art and the denarration concept when viewing some recently talked-about examples of visual storytelling:

• Two much-tweeted entries on My Modern Metropolis by “Alice” were 12 Masters of Visual Storytelling and 12 (More) Masters of Visual Storytelling. Pictured at left is In Da Car, which Alice cites in the first dozen, by Ashot Gevorkyan and Yaryshev Evgeny.
• A similar piece is Art Meets Storytelling: 15 Amazing Illustrators on WebUrbanist by “Steph.” While Steph seems to use “artist” and illustrator” interchangeably, “illustrator” makes me think of Fred Ross’s speech and wonder if “illustrator” is a step down from “artist.” If you work in editorial illustration, comic books, video games and advertising as these artists do, are you any less of an artist? Pictured below is a selection by Andrey Gordeev.

• Alex Andreyev has been cited as a visual storyteller. See what you think by viewing his portfolio. Pictured at right is July from the portfolio.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Sometimes commenters to this blog share information that readers probably would like to know about but might miss because comments are a bit obscure on this blog. Others e-mail me with share-worthy information. Here are a few morsels about recent entries:

• Barbara Ann Kipfer, author of 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, mentioned in yesterday’s entry about prompts and questions for life-story writing notes that she also offers story-prompt questions on her Web site.
• Also in response to that life-story-prompt entry, reader Lisa Rosetti shared with me a few of her favorite story-prompt questions: What’s always been important? What do you bring to the world? What’s next? And this question she credits to Michael Margolis: What’s the one story you have the power to change?
• Bernadette Martin, about whom I wrote back in October reports that her book, I Need to Brand My Story Online and Offline — Now What??? is off to the publisher and should be released soon. She also shared her take on holiday newsletters: “Since my daughter’s birth 12 years ago, [I have] written a newsy letter at Xmas but in my daughter’s voice. As she got older we would together identify what to highlight but I would pen it (obviously not written by a child). However, as she is becoming quite the writer and voracious reader in French and English, this year we made 2 major changes……we ‘canned’ the list of highlights and went for a story that in fact she penned for the most part (I did some fine-tuning).” The resulting story was about the mother’s and daughter’s Christmas Day spent in Paris.
• Another Barbara — Barbara Burke — expanded on Saturday’s entry about her business novel/fable, The Napkin, the Melon, and the Monkey:

Stories are used in two important ways within The Napkin, The Melon & the Monkey

Isabel (the wise woman) offered Olivia (main character) advice in the form of stories that had been passed down in her family from generation to generation. In truth, The 11th Problem, SODA (a metaphor for mindfulness), The Fighting Melons, The Monkey Story have their roots in the Buddhist tradition and are 2,500 years old.

Olivia used a story circle as a team building exercise to help her dysfunctional team work together. Using the story of the Fighting Melons as an example, she asked the team members to sit quietly in a circle and listen as each person told their story of the person in their life who had the most influence on who they are today. It worked. Once her team stopped bickering and started being more compassionate and supportive of each other, they rose to first place in a matter of weeks.

If any of your readers would like to use the book within their organizations for team building or as a tool for leaders to create better employee engagement, I’d be happy to share what I know. I also do speaking about using mindfulness in the workplace.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Came across an interesting juxtaposition of two interests of mine. In an article title How to Write One’s Life Story in which author Christina Hamlett writes:

Fill out self-assessment quizzes and introspective writing exercises. In addition to personality tests you can find in consumer magazines and on the Internet, books such as Barbara Ann Kipfer’s 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, Margaret Tiberio’s The Book of Self-Acquaintance and Dr. Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions will get you thinking about what really makes you tick.

I’ve studied assessments (that measure skills, aptitudes, interests, personality, values, etc.) for a couple of graduate courses, and every couple of years, I update an Assessment Review Chart of free and inexpensive Internet-based assessments on A Storied Career’s parent site, Quintessential Careers (it’s currently in need of updating). I also keep a large 3-ring binder with all my assessment results.

I can certainly see that some of the consistent patterns that always show up when I take these assessments — my creativity, intuition, and introversion, for example — could provide food for thought for life-story writing. Did I always have these characteristics? Are they the product of nature or nurture? Do my parents share these traits? My sisters? What stories from my life best illustrate these aspects of my personality? In what ways have these traits helped me in my life? In what ways have they presented obstacles?

While assessments get you thinking about consistent patterns in your core being, the kinds of question books and sites Hamlett recommends are terrific for stimulating your thinking about all kinds of aspects of your life. These questions generally help you get at more specific bits of your existence.

I did a quick Google search using the terms “life story prompts” and saw promising sets of questions at sites like:

• Family History Products
• Memoirs By Me
• A book: 545 Life Story Prompts
• Sample 100 writing ideas taken from a list of 1,000 that sells for $13.95 (geared to students but can work for others).

What assessments or sets of prompts/questions have you found useful for life-story writing?

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Barbara Burke self-published her novel, The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey, in 2006 and found it to be so successful that Hay House bought the rights to publish it in 2008. The Hay House version releases Feb. 1.

I enjoy “collecting” business novels — works of fiction that teach business lessons through storytelling — and am usually so excited to come across one that I tend to spread the word before I’ve finished reading them. (interestingly, Steve Denning said in a blurb for the book that business fables are “a dime a dozen;” yes, I come across them with some regularity, but I don’t feel they are all that common.)

A synopsis from Burke’s site:

As a new customer service agent, Olivia has been trained to handle irate customers in a calm, professional manner. But one day she loses control and yells back. Terrified that she’ll be fired, she seeks out Isabel, the call center’s sage.

The extraordinary advice she receives from her wise mentor changes her life:

SODA (Stop. Observe. Decide. Act) — a sure-fire formula for remaining calm in any situation

Unplugging — a centuries-old practice to reduce anxiety and promote creativity

Aha!s — 22 practical insights that become the framework for living a happy life

This modern-day fable shows us that the best way to reduce stress is to cultivate mindfulness. While we cannot control much of what happens, we can get better outcomes if we stop to see situations clearly and calmly.

This book serves as both a powerful resource for business professionals looking for practical, easy-to-use tools for dealing with difficult people and an inspirational tale for those who want better relationships and a happier life.

From the Cover:

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could become happy and successful
by simply changing your mind?

Meet Olivia, the newest hire at Mighty Power’s customer service call center. Excited to have a stable job and a good salary, Olivia starts out with a sunny disposition and a can-do attitude. However, the constant barrage of angry calls from frustrated customers soon wears her down. Instead of handling these irate customers in a calm, professional manner, as she was trained to do, she loses her temper and strikes back.

Terrified that she will be fired for her behavior she asks Isabel, an experienced rep and the call center’s wise woman, for help. The extraordinary advice she receives changes her life, and may change yours, too.

In this modern-day parable, author Barbara Burke introduces 22 unforgettable life lessons that are the framework for living a happy, struggle-free life. We learn that while we have no control over much of what happens to us in life or the behavior of others, we can choose our reaction. The secret to success is being able to stop long enough to see situations clearly—to see “what is.” Making this one small change gives us the power to make better decisions and get better outcomes. Being more mindful enables us to handle even the most challenging interactions with customers, co-workers, friends, and family with grace and ease. The Napkin, The Melon & The Monkey serves as both a powerful resource for business professionals looking for easy-to-use tools to sharpen their “inner game” and as an inspirational tale for those who want better relationships and a happier life.

You can listen to the book’s first chapter, read by the author here.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

President Obama repeated yesterday that the US intelligence community “failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from attacking America.”

I’m thinking that imbuing the various intelligence organizations with storytelling techniques could help them get better at connecting the dots.

That’s what storytelling’s all about after all — connecting dots, making meaning, sensemaking.

Obama talked about better analysis, but perhaps conventional analytical approaches aren’t best suited when there are dots to be connected.

My colleagues who are storytelling practitioners and consultants know better than I do exactly how the organizations could be trained in storytelling approaches.

NASA could also provide an excellent model for storytelling approaches as storytelling is well-ingrained in the NASA culture. This article (and many others) describes how storytelling works to teach lessons at NASA: “APPL [NASA’s Academy of Program and Project Leadership] uses stories as their chief knowledge transfer method — the mechanism these program leaders use to shape and define their culture and to pass along lessons to the younger generation. Quite frankly, the process of writing the stories is often how they discover lessons in the first place.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Two notable back-to-back story events coming up:

Jill Golick is organizing a Social Media Week Story Project, Social Media Week being Feb. 1-5. Golick wants to “use the social media to tell some stories about how social media are affecting relationships” and is recruiting writers, actors, designers and other interested collaborators to “put together a story room … to turn … data into story arcs.” Then, Golick wants to “have each writer create a character on the web using social media tools like blogs, social bookmarking, FriendFeed and Twitter. They can cast actors to ‘play’ their character in profile pictures, photo albums and other media they may develop.”

“During Social Media Week,” Golick says, participants can “play out the stories of our characters through their social networking activities.” She invites interested folks to e-mail her.

Then, on Feb. 6, Noa Baum (pictured), whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the 2009 Golden Fleece Conference last April, is holding an all-day seminar called “Your Life’s Story and the Legacy You Leave” under the auspices of the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program.

Some snippets from the seminar description:

Noa Baum shows how to shape memories into a personal narrative and how to reveal underlying universal themes.

The morning session provides an introduction to the oral tradition of storytelling as the oldest tool for transmitting wisdom and values from one generation to the next. After lunch, participants learn techniques for deepening and expanding the images within their stories, exploring the connections between personal narratives and universal archetypes. They also explore the role of the listener in shaping a story and learn how to interact with their listeners to gain insight into how stories become legacies.

Go here to reserve a spot in the seminar, which is held in Washington DC, at the S. Dillon Ripley Center of the Smithsonian.

Thanks to Thaler Pekar for alerting me to this one.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

The other night, Randall and I watched the HBO movie Taking Chance, starring Kevin Bacon.

We were struck by how emotional, compelling, and affecting this film was given the simplest, starkest of stories.

Essentially a high-ranking Marine (Bacon), who is a number-crunching cubicle-dweller, makes an unexpected decision to escort home the remains of a fellow Marine, a PFC. Apparently it’s unusual for an officer of the protagonist’s rank to escort the remains of a PFC.

That’s pretty much the entire story. Beginning = the decision to escort the remains. Middle = the journey of Bacon and the remains. End = arrival of Bacon and the remains at the home of the family of the fallen Marine.

As I reflected on what made such a simple story so powerful, I concluded that two factors gave the film its gravitas.

The first was the revelation of the process and ritual of the returning of military personnel killed in wartime. Americans have a vague concept of remains arriving at Dover Air Force Base, but we don’t know much beyond that. I didn’t know that each of the fallen gets a military escort back to his or her family.

The film shows many details of the process — how the bodies are cared for with love, honor, and dignity at the Dover mortuary. They are given perfect uniforms, even if their physical bodies are so mangled by war that the military recommends a closed casket so that no one ever sees the uniform. At every point in the journey home, the military escort must verify the contents of the casket and give it “honors” (a salute). Visual storytelling is key to this aspect of the film’s storytelling, with snippets of the process of caring for the remains repeated several times in the film as reminders. The entire process and ritual comprised a revelatory glimpse for me — and I would guess they would for most Americans who don’t hear about these procedures.

The second factor that gives the story power is the tacit knowledge held by many of the people Bacon encounters on his journey that he is an escort and his cargo is a fallen serviceman — from the flight attendant who gives Bacon a crucifix, to the baggage handlers who remove their hats and bow their heads as the body is removed from the plane, to the drivers of the vehicles that turn on their lights and form an impromptu funeral procession during the final drive of the remains to the family’s home. This aspect, too, is a triumph of visual storytelling.

The film serves as an excellent example that a story need not be complex or twisted to elicit a deeply emotional response.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I regularly evangelize the idea of using stories as a way of communicating in the job search. But another way job-seekers can benefit from stories is by learning from the stories — or case studies — of others. With this entry, I conclude a short series of job-interview stories that may prove instructional for others.

Interviewing for position in new industry

“Wayne Braverman” had spent six years in management consulting, managing projects of all sizes and with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, when an opportunity came up with the customer business solutions unit of a large, multi-national beverage manufacturer, where he would have the opportunity to “help build an organization, utilize my background and skills, and work with an environment that was constantly growing and changing.”

Braverman’s entire career had been in management consulting, so this opportunity represented the first time he had considered changing industries. “I was passionate about consulting, and at the same time, I felt that I needed to get some ‘industry’ experience and not just follow the standard process to [become a] partner within the consulting world,” Braverman says. “This was an opportunity to help build a new organization, work with an amazing team, and expand my skill set.”

Description of interview process: To prepare, Braverman researched the company, identified the key players who might know something about the role and team, and spoke to them prior to the interview so he could go into the interview sessions with as many facts as possible. The prospective interviewers also provided considerable material about the organization, team, culture, and more, Braverman says. “At the same time, I outlined my own personal brand on paper and with my resume created a ‘Wayne Braverman package.’”

The series of interviews Braverman underwent comprised a mix of case questions and situational questions. A number of questions, he recalls, delved into his change of industries, revolving around adapting to a highly political environment that was different from consulting. “I expected these questions and had given a great deal of thought to the career transition - pros and cons,” Braverman says.

Braverman made sure he was knowledgeable about the new industry, but he also used his outsider status to his advantage. “In large industry-centric organizations, hiring external ‘non-system’ individuals can at times be a challenge,” Braverman acknowledges. “Knowledge of the consumer-packaged goods industry and the organization were critical to the position, and at the same time, this was an opportunity for the organization to bring on fresh thinking and new ideas in a role that did not require 100 percent knowledge of the organization on Day 1.”

To sell the employer on the idea that his qualifications would transfer to the new sector, Braverman outlined his experience in leading projects related to the skill set required in the position for which he was interviewing. “I outlined my personal brand, career goals, and aspirations, reasons that I felt the role was a solid fit, value that I felt I would bring to the organization, and I did a lot of listening,” he says.

Braverman also asked about the culture, the team, career-growth options, and potential for professional and personal development. “I asked about opportunities for ‘entrepreneurial’ thinking vs. ‘system’ thinking,” he recalls.

Outcome: Fortunately Braverman felt he truly clicked with his interviewers and experienced a connection. He received and accepted the offer.

Lessons learned/What the candidate would do differently if faced with the same situation: “If I were leaving one industry for another today,” Braverman says, “I would certainly do as much industry research as possible to understand the macroeconomic trends affecting the industry as well as the organization-specific strategies, objectives, and measures. Title is important, but not nearly as important as the culture, people, role, and responsibilities.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I regularly evangelize the idea of using stories as a way of communicating in the job search. But another way job-seekers can benefit from stories is by learning from the stories — or case studies — of others. With this entry, I continue a short series of job-interview stories that may prove instructional for others.

Description of interview process: Although employers sometimes ask the candidate to deliver a presentation as part of an interview, “Michael D. Simone” gave a presentation on his own initiative at his interview for a CFO position with a $50-million AV systems integration group in the Mid-Atlantic region. This interview marked the first time Simone had used a presentation in an interview.

Simone was sought for the position by a recruiter, from whom he requested company background information to prepare. “She was not able to provide much help other than directing me to the company Web site,” Simone recalls. When he mentioned that he planned to use an interview presentation, Simone learned that the recruiter had never heard of an interview presentation. “At first I could tell that I was not the recruiter’s top choice,” Simone says. He believes both the quality of his questions and his persistence in responding to them persuaded the recruiter to begin to consider Simone the top candidate.

To create his interview presentation, Simone used a service called InterviewBest and followed the service’s step-by-step guide that enables users to include or exclude any of the suggested pages. “I chose to use some of the examples as is, modified others to suit my needs, as well as using some of my own ideas,” Simone says. He found the actual process of creating the presentation extremely helpful as interview preparation. “After completing the presentation, I was ready for any question they had for me,” he said. “I had a success story ready to go for each question and/or situation that arose.”

Simone’s completed 12-page presentation included:

• Cover page
• Position Requirements (directly from job description)
• My Match with the Position Requirements (content from resume and success stories) Additional Areas of Expertise (content from resume)
• Outstanding Accomplishments (Success stories, including content from resume and InterviewBest’s libraries)
• Personal Success Factors (examples and modified examples from InterviewBest’s library, along with Simone’s own content)
• Strategic Action Plan (examples and modified examples from InterviewBest’s library, along with Simone’s own content)
• Why Hire Me? (content from resume and success stories)
• Closing Questions (content from InterviewBest’s library)
• Contact Information

Simone also uploaded his photo and the company logo to personalize the presentation.

(Although Simone did not want his presentation published for confidentiality reasons, InterviewBest founder Eric Kramer provided a similar sample presentation, which is reprinted with permission: Interview Presentation)

The presentation enabled Simone to deliver key points describing the employer’s challenges and how he could meet them. He told the interview panel that he would:

• Improve communications among departments.
• Ensure the accuracy and clarity of financial reports.
• Take the team from the current status quo of “customer-service focused” to “entrepreneurial-big picture focused.”
• Conduct an actionable competitive analysis.

Candidates might wonder how to arrange for the appropriate technology for an interview presentation that the employer is not expecting. Simone simply had his presentation professionally printed and bound rather than projecting his slides.

Simone reports that the interview panel members were impressed by the presentation’s content and “well-organized approach that systematically answered their most important questions.”

Outcome: Simone got and accepted the job offer.

Lessons learned/What the candidate would do differently if faced with the same situation: If he were interviewing in the future, Simone says he would definitely use an interview presentation again. However, he would “conduct a more thorough investigation of the prospective company.”

Simone’s advice to others who want to employ an interview presentation: “Don’t get caught up in following the presentation item by item and page by page. I used it as a conversation piece and a reference tool. It is also an excellent leave-behind to remind the interviewer about the important discussion points of your interview.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I regularly evangelize the idea of using stories as a way of communicating in the job search. But another way job-seekers can benefit from stories is by learning from the stories — or case studies — of others. With this entry, I continue a short series of job-interview stories that may prove instructional for others.

Two CEO Interviews with Boards of Directors

Although boards of directors often interview prospective CEOs, boards also sometimes interview other high-level executives, such as CFOs, says Jacquelyn Saad, president of Inter-Change Consulting Inc., Toronto. “Other executives will be interviewed by the head of the board committee that governs their piece of the organization,” Saad says. She explains that when she interviewed for the role of senior vice president, human resources, for a broadcasting company, her eight interviews included the chairman of the board and the chair of the HR subcommittee.

The role of boards of directors in large public companies is to determine the type of CEO they would like to hire, notes Keith Daniels, owner and president of Capital Selective Advisors in Chicago, “and then give that description to an executive recruiter firm. That firm will then obtain candidates and then thoroughly evaluate them to see if they fit what the board of directors was looking for,” Daniels says.

Daniels explains that at certain points, recruiters will advise the board about possible candidates “who have emerged from the scrubbing, and then the board is likely to have a sub-group handle further interviews until such time as a smaller group of candidates remains.” Candidates will then likely each have an opportunity to meet and be interviewed by the board in its entirety, Daniels notes. “Depending on what are the metrics being used by a board, members may look only at current CEOs with other companies, or they might look for persons with Chief Financial Officer experience, or in some cases, they might want someone with experience managing large operations,” Daniels says.

“Richard G.” has been a CEO in a Fortune 500 company and on multiple boards of small and larger companies as well as interviewed for several CEO positions. All told he has undergone about a dozen interviews for CEO and board positions, ranging from highly structured interviews to short conversations with people he already knew quite well. “The processes were often very dissimilar,” he reports. “I find that for board positions, the processes are all very variable, but for CEO positions, more structured,” he says. He described both a successful and unsuccessful interview with boards of directors.

Description of interview process: To prepare, Richard learned as much about the companies and people as possible, both through published material and by talking to ex-employees. The successful interview, for a high-tech company with sales in the tens of millions, “involved a recruiter who already knew me quite well, but then introduced me to the chairman,” Richard recalls. “He and I had probably eight conversations, including over dinner, and another half a dozen detailed email exchanges.” Richard says the chairman sought considerable help and advice before he would make a commitment. “I was somewhat concerned that he was simply picking my brain, but the recruiter kept reassuring me that he was not, and she was correct,” Richard says. “He did make a commitment after several months.”

Another CEO position Richard interviewed for was at a $1-billion family-owned food company, where the patriarch had died, and the board had told the heir apparent that, at 37, he was too young to take over. “I interviewed with a panel of all the outside directors and the heir,” Richard remembers. The heir was “hostile,” Richard says, “and the board members were clearly trying to demonstrate to him that I would do a better job than he would.” After hearing nothing for a month after the interview, Richard learned that the heir was taking the job after all.

The questions that Richard has been asked in board interviews include:

• How much time can you invest?
• How knowledgeable are you about reporting responsibilities and legal liabilities?
• What kind of connections do you have?
• Can you advise on implementation as well as strategy?

Richard asked the boards about specific objectives of the businesses, such as sales or mergers and growth or maintenance, as well as about cultural fit.

Throughout his board interview experiences, Richard has picked up on various shades of organizational politics. “I find few boards are as much in sync as they pretend to be,” he observes. “Different factions are looking for allies, and in the case of family-owned or dominated business — as one third of Fortune 500 companies are — there are family politics to worry about. These are difficult to understand since you will not meet all the key people during the interview process,” he says.

Outcome: Richard received an offer from the high-tech company, but as we saw, he was passed over in favor of a family member at the family-owned food company.

Lessons learned/What the candidate would do differently if faced with the same situation: Richard said he would “do more due diligence behind the scenes, discover the hidden agendas, and understand who dominates the group. He advises other executives preparing for an interview with a board of directors to learn “what makes each of them tick, and in a group setting who is really the leader.”

Read the story of another executive’s board of directors interview in the extended entry.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I regularly evangelize the idea of using stories as a way of communicating in the job search. But another way job-seekers can benefit from stories is by learning from the stories — or case studies — of others. With this entry, I begin a short series of job-interview stories that may prove instructional for others.

Multiple interviews over a many-month period

Few interview-process horror stories can top this case study. “Lynne Blake” tells a mind-boggling saga of an interview process that lasted more than nine frustrating months. The epic was so excruciating that Blake gave it a title: “I Could Have Had a Baby … Or Water-Boarding a Candidate.”

Description of interview process: The position was with a very large, very well-known defense contractor, Blake recalls. “A former colleague of mine works with them and raved about how good they are with their people. She kept watching the posting boards, sending me various roles until there was finally one that was a great match,” Blake says. “That was June 2008.” Blake noted that the position was a key start-up role with responsibility for the Pan-European countries. “Compensation was north of $200K,” Blake says, “and the internal business plan called for the person to be on board by Q2 or Q3 of 2008.”

Blake goes on to tell the story of the interview process in diary form:

“July 2008: I have phone screen with internal recruiter. He says he will put my credentials forward and set up phone screens with two or three internal people. He has me log onto the HR Web site and fill out extensive application and background-checking information.

“August 2008: During the first week of August, I have the phone screen, a very general conversation, with the hiring manager.

“September 2008: During the first week of September, I have a phone screen with a person who runs a parallel team for a different division. He has a far different view of what the role needs from the hiring manager’s view, including a difference of opinion on where the new hire will be located and what background they are looking for.

“I then attempt three follow-ups with the internal recruiter for the position over four weeks trying to get an update and more details on strategy. I get no reply.

“October 2008: I finally track down the internal recruiter. He says they don’t really know what they are looking for. There are four people involved, and all four have a different profile in mind. They will try to reach ‘some kind’ of agreement in the next week or so.

“Last week of October: I receive a voice message that says they have shortlisted four candidates, and they would like to have me come for face-to-face interviews.

“November 2008: At this point, I have tried to reach the recruiter for three weeks. Finally I have my “inside” friend locate the hiring manager’s phone number for me. When I reach him, he tells me that the internal recruiter resigned, and they were unable to locate any of my information (what happened to all the stuff online in their HR system?). Thank goodness I called, he says, as all the other candidates have been interviewed. They will contact me to arrange a trip to Belgium for a face-to-face ASAP.

“A new internal recruiter calls me on Monday of Thanksgiving week but says he really has no information about the role. He will have his personal assistant call to arrange the trip because they want me to go on Thanksgiving weekend, which is three days away. The personal assistant organizes a trip that gets me to Belgium at 7:30 a.m., but with a return flight of 10 a.m. the same day. (She didn’t know that you actually get to Europe the day after you leave the U.S.) Unfortunately the travel agent cannot change anything for a candidate and the personal assistant and recruiter have left for the holiday! Finally I call the office in Europe and ask them to contact the travel agency to resolve the situation.

“December 2008: I have a meeting in Belgium the first week of December and obtain a third opinion of what type of person they want. We now have no agreement on the type of background needed for the role, where the person will be based, whom the person will report to, and how the role will be structured (expat or local EU hire). The company closes on Dec. 19 for the rest of the year. I receive no further contact at all after the interview in Belgium.

Read the rest of the saga in the extended entry.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Two new story blogs emerged in the waning months of 2009, produced by story folks I highly admire and respect:

Story Route, published by Cathryn Wellner, features entries in such categories as business narrative, organizational storytelling, personal narratives, poems, social myths, and storytelling quotations. Cathryn writes: “Join me on the Story Route. We’ll explore personal stories, stories organizations tell, even some stories countries tell.” She shared with me this heartwarming video story — with a twist — about training a service dog.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Kurtz has started Story Colored Glasses. Cynthia wrote in her first blog entry back in October, “The point of this blog is to give some of the ideas that chose to land on me new places to go. May life surround them.” Many of Cynthia’s early entries have focused on her “eight observations about stories and storytelling in groups, and about helping people tell and work with stories.” She writes that her eight observations “were not scientific findings; they were just things I had encountered that had surprised me and that gave me food for thought. (Nor were they original thoughts, if there are such things; many others have talked about them as well.) As the years go by I find myself returning to the eight things often; so I thought a good way to start this blog might be to talk about each observation and what I think it means for those of us who work with stories.”

I want to wish my readers a fulfilling and story-filled new year!

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.