A week or so ago, a friend asked me to help her come up with a seven-minute story to read for a Toastmaster’s assignment. I was flummoxed and disappointed with myself. Here I am exposed to stories all the time, but I lacked any type of mental or virtual database … Continue reading
Category Archives: Organizational Storytelling
LinkedIn Storytelling Groups and 6-Word Stories from Practitioners
Several groups related to corporate/organizational storytelling have sprung up on LinkedIn recently (or at least have recently come to my attention). A lot of overlapping content seems to populate these groups, which confuses me a bit. The group Corporate Storytelling has been discussing The Real Reason Stories Are Important, among … Continue reading
More on Strategy as Story: Stories Are an Important Conduit in Creating New Organizational Mindsets
Sometimes when I get an especially meaty comment on this blog, I publish is as a blog entry since comments don’t appear very prominently on A Storied Career. Such is the case with this comment by Paul Stewart of New Zealand’s On Brand Partners, who commented on my entry about … Continue reading
‘A Company Without a Story Is Usually a Company Without a Strategy’
I have a very embarrassing confession, especially as a former business professor. Three alliterative business concepts — strategy, sustainability, and scalability — elude my total comprehension. I basically understand the concepts on a rudimentary level, but I have not completely wrapped my head around them. If you asked me to … Continue reading
Creating a Culture of Storytelling
Steve Denning published a blog entry last month on an important but often overlooked topic in organizational storytelling — how to create a culture of storytelling within the organization. He offers six steps for doing so. Though grounded in Denning’s earlier work in storytelling, the steps seem very much tied … Continue reading
How Is Your Organization Using Video Storytelling? New Survey Will Uncover Best Practices
The Society for New Communications Research, which I mentioned way back in the second year of this blog, is conducting research on how organizations use video storytelling. Here’s what the organization is looking for: Every organization has stories designed to communicate who they are to both external and internal audiences. … Continue reading
Another Voice Supports Storytelling as a Key Business Competency
Somewhat regularly, I hear practitioners espouse the idea that storytelling must be a required skill for businesspeople. Among the champions of this notion are Lori Silverman, Karen Dietz, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Now add Ron Weisinger, principal of development for LINKS Consulting, to the chorus. In an article entitled Storytelling: The … Continue reading
Story Beginnings, Middles, and Ends Help Us Make Sense of Organizational Chaos
An ongoing emphasis here on A Storied Career has been defining story and examining how important it is to do so. For some, definitions aren’t important at all; for others, they are vitally important. (For a practitioner “conversation” about defining story, see this downloadable document: DefiningStory.pdf). In a short new, … Continue reading
Update: Audio, Slides, Blog Reflections from Storytelling Weekend
Steve Denning reports that audio recordings of Friday’s Smithsonian symposium Storytelling to re-invent the workplace are now available. Also available are audio excerpts from Thursday night’s introduction to organization storytelling by Svend-Erik Engh and Thaler Pekar: here and here. Thaler has published her reflections on the weekend here.
The State of Organizational Storytelling
On the eve of this year’s storytelling weekend in Washington, DC, conference leader and business-narrative pioneer Steve Denning received a critical question from a blog reader: “Why have you abandoned storytelling?” Denning quotes the full question in blog entry: “Why have you in the last eighteen or so months allowed … Continue reading