I curate organizational storytelling, business narrative, career storytelling, and job-search storytelling using Scoop-it. You can see the curation here or in the widget embedded below:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve told you the last Reinvention Summit was amazing.

I’ve shared with you this year’s jaw-dropping lineup from the storytelling firmament.

I’ve mentioned the deals — that buying a ticket is like getting half price because you actually get two tickets for the price of one. If you have an enterprise of your own to promote, you could give your extra ticket away in a contest, as Casey Hibbard did. The other deal is that you can pay for your ticket in two installments — and still get the 2-for-1 deal.

And, finally, I’ve noted that you get all kinds of awesome extras with your ticket.

If you’re not yet convinced that Reinvention Summit 2 is a worthwhile investment in yourself and your business, a set of free bite-size presentations from 7 storytelling experts that are part of next week’s Reinvention Summit just might. “It’s like speed-dating for storytelling ideas and insights,” says summit founder Michael Margolis.

Find this menu of summit appetizers here:

• Oren Klaff on How to Pitch Anything — 4:57 MIN
• Rohit Bharghava on How to Reinvent Marketing — 16:37 MIN
• Bo Eason on Your Personal Story Power — 7:09 MIN
• Jonah Sachs on Social Change Storytelling — 18:41 MIN
• Marie Forleo on How to Reinvent Yourself — 2:33 MIN
• Robert Tercek on how to reclaim the Power of Personal Narrative — 16:38 MIN
• Michael Margolis on how to Tell your Story Online – 5:45 MIN

Just a few days left; Reinvention Summit 2 starts Monday, April 16. Invest in yourself today.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Did you know that if you buy a ticket to this month’s content-packed Reinvention Summit 2012, it’s essentially half price because you also get a ticket for a friend?

Did you also know that you can pay for the summit in two easy installments — and still get the 2-for-1 deal?

Based on the 2010 Summit, I can promise you won’t regret your investment in this brain-feeding, idea-breeding, bond-building, eye-opening, business-boosting, spirit-lifting, and possibly life-changing virtual event. All without even getting out of your pajamas. (I know you wouldn’t stay in your PJs all day during the summit … but you could.)

The Summit is less than two weeks away. You’re gonna wanna get in on this one!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The folks at onethousandandone have restructured their Success Through Stories Coaching Program, which, they say, “not only means a new structure but a brand new price that we believe is fantastic value for money.”

The interactive program contains more than 30 training modules and is “designed to take participants from a white belt in storytelling to a master black belt … with a clear focus on business success and results, all using the power of storytelling.”

Those who register before Easter Sunday, April 8 will receive a 10 percent discount off the Story Mastery Bring It On option. Simply enter the coupon code 10OFFSTS and your 10 percent discount will be applied immediately. BUT you must register before April 8 to get access to this special offer.

Here are a couple of testimonials about the program:

“The Success Through Stories online coaching program was beyond my imagination …The quality of the content is exceptional” — Kristin Owen, Kumon franchisee

“What a wonderful experience it’s been soaking up your storytelling knowledge and applying it to my business. You really sharpened up my game over the course.” — Paul Kaan, The Social Larder

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

During my PhD program, I tried to latch onto the term “organizational entry” to describe, in part, my field of research. Organizational entry is the term used in academia to cover there activities surrounding bringing new employees into an organization. Though the term is much more commonly applied to what happens after employees are hired, it also refers to the actually hiring process. (Job search, recruiting, and hiring don’t get an enormous amount of attention in academic research, though.)

All that is a long-winded intro to my observation that organizational people in the real world don’t, as far as I can tell, use the term “organizational entry;” instead, they use “onboarding.” It’s a perfectly decent term, but I like the descriptiveness of “organizational entry.”

Writing on ERE.net, David Lee yesterday offered 5 Kinds of Stories to Tell During Onboarding. His thesis is that helping new employees develop pride in working for your organization is the most important message you can convey to them. Happily, Lee prescribes stories as the best way to convey that message and suggests five themes:

1. What makes your product or service great.
2. How your product or service has made a difference in the lives or businesses of your customers.
3. The good things your organization does in your local community, or for the world community.
4. Examples of employees performing at elite levels, such as providing over-the-top customer service that blows your customers away.
5. How your organization is run with integrity, respect for its people, and competence.

These, of course, are important story themes for organizations to think about in several contexts, including branding and advertising. As Lee suggests later in the article, you can also use these types of stories to attract talent to your organization.

Lee also details how organizations can find and develop stories for these purposes:

1. Collect stories from employees at all levels, about Moments of Truth that illustrate why they are proud to work in your organization.
2. Collect and catalog these stories in a database. Note what message they communicate, what value they personify, and use these as searchable keywords in your database. That way, you can easily locate what stories communicate the specific message you want to communicate.
3. Start including these stories in your new employee orientation program, but don’t stop there. Include them also on your recruiting site, have your recruiters share them at job fairs, and include them in your hiring interviews.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Today’s rollout of finds that will eventually end up on an inside page is in the category of Links to Organizational Storytelling Resources. These links mostly represent organizational-storytelling practitioners and sites/blogs about organizational storytelling.

Many of my most recent finds in this category have resulted from my curation of organizational storytelling, business narrative, career storytelling, and job-search storytelling using Scoop-it. You can see the curation here or in the widget embedded below:

• History Factory: Heritage management firm that helps today’s leading global corporations, organizations and institutions discover, preserve and leverage their unique history to meet business challenges.
• Leadership Story Lab: Esther Choy’s consultancy that teaches storytelling to institutional and individual clients who are searching for ways to more meaningful ways to connect with their audiences.
• Only Human Communication: Uses creative approaches to help organisations and groups improve how they are seen, understood and valued: both inside and out.
• Roger Edward Jones: Consultancy that helps leaders “harness the hidden ROI of Storytelling.
• Seth Kahan: Seth works with leaders of world-class organizations to drive change.

• Seven Story Learning: The consultancy of Andrew Nemiccolo, who helps professionals communicate more effectively through stories.
• SOAR: Significant Orientations, Amazing Results: Consultancy of Mary-Alice, New Zealand’s leading narrative practitioner. At the heart of her work is the practice of recognising, working with and transforming the personal and group stories, conversations and inquiries that impact on success.
• The Story Doctor: Consultancy of Moya Sayer-Jones: “Making stories better.”

• Storytelling Bean Counter: All about narrating the financial story behind the numbers for small business.
• The Storytelling Studio for Business: The business branch of Doug Stevenson’s Story Theater International, a speaking, training and consulting company.
• Strategic Narrative: Dr. Amy Zalman’s consultancy to advance the practice of narrative to solve complex problems among people, cultures and organizations.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Among the many wonderful resources my colleague Karen Dietz offers through her Just Story It site is a terrific monthly email newsletter. This month’s came with the enticing subject line, “Feb. Goodies from Just Story It.”

The newsletter is really attractive and accessible. And goodies there are, such as the article, What Story Are You Telling Yourself?, along with Tiny Love Stories and Love Quotes for Valentine’s Day.

Karen also keeps readers up to date on how she’s helping clients.

If you’re a story fan, you’ll want to sign up for this one.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I was teaching, I was so appalled at the prices of college textbooks that I used an assortment of popular-press books instead of texts.

I knew from Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs that Jobs, too, was appalled, and one of the next things on his agenda was to revolutionize textbook publishing the way he revolutionized the recording industry.

With the announcement today of the (free!) iBooks Author app, the fulfillment of that part of Jobs’s legacy has begun. And as soon as I heard it, I knew I wanted to organize a crowdsourced (and probably peer-reviewed) textbook on applied storytelling, focusing especially on organizational/business narrative and brand storytelling.

How awesome would it be if some of the luminaries of storytelling each contributed a chapter to such a textbook?

Stay tuned for more on this idea as it burbles through my brain. You might just be receiving a Request for Proposal soon.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When Raf Stevens first challenged me to present more examples of good storytelling two years ago this month, I scarcely imagined I would later get involved in his effort to produce an important new ebook in the applied-storytelling space.

I had criticized the lack of storytelling quality among the winners of a slideshow contest, and Raf wanted to know what elements would have contributed to better stories. Raf’s question sent me on a quest that resulted in at least seven blog posts in which I explored the question of what makes a good story — especially in presentations.

Now, in his just released ebook, No Story No Fans, Raf devotes a whole chapter to what makes a good story.

I’m honored to have played a small part in this book’s development; I wish I had done more. Raf asked me to do several things for the book that I ended up not doing, but I think other shining stars in the story world did those things better than I would have.

Raf has created a remarkable compendium on the value of storytelling as “the New Trade.” In an attractive, accessible, reader-friendly volume with many extras (such as QR codes!), he frames the book as “start of a conversation” rather than a how-to; yet he offers tons of how-to suggestions.

Raf also includes the thought leadership of the most brilliant luminaries in the storytelling world. The chapter on the ROI of storytelling is a treasure unto itself.

Here are 10 ways this book really stood out for me:

1. Its generosity of spirit. I have found that most story practitioners freely give away their work and ideas. Raf does so with No Story No Fans, as illustrated in the early oages of the book, where he writes, “You are given the unlimited right to spread this story. Feel free to copy parts from this book or to distribute it via email, your website, or any other means. You can print out or scan pages and put them in your favourite coffee shop’s windows or your doctor’s waiting room. You can transcribe my words onto the sidewalk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet.” He also gives away a preview of the book on its Web site.
2. Some of the best-known and highly touted books about using story in business are surprisingly light on … stories. The same cannot be said of Raf’s book, which offers a cornucopia of stories.
3. Bulleted lists of lessons in red type provide easily digestible how-to information.
4. Chapter 3 about what makes up a good story is must reading for anyone interested in applied storytelling. Raf uses excellent examples to vividly illustrate what makes a good story. He also quotes participants in my Q&A series on how they define story.
5. Raf nicely sums up each chapter with an “elevator pitch” at the end.
6. Case studies in Chapter 4 illustrate some of the many ways story can be used effectively in business.
7. Raf introduces his own model for storytelling, The Matryoshka Principle, based on nested Matryoshka dolls: “Like the nested dolls, re-storying your company, or even yourself, can only be successful if you take all layers of the power of storytelling into consideration.”
8. Raf teaches practitioners to get at those layers through exercises.
9. The book’s “checklist to help you design your (bigger) story” is a gem, though I wish it were longer.
10. The list of “7 bullet points on why storytelling is useful in a business context” in the penultimate chapter sums up why this book is so valuable; through the learning gained in No Story No Fans, practitioners can apply stories to each of these contexts.

The site for No Story No Fans is also a terrific new resource, with lots of ways to connect and learn, including extended book content.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Here are two resources that convey a point of view about storytelling in audiovisual fashion.

My friend Karen Dietz turned me on to the 15-minute video, The Arc of Storytelling, noting:

Run, don’t walk to watch this incredibly inspiring video about what we are all searching for in our storytelling.

Even though Bobette Buster is speaking about the entertainment industry, her words are incredibly important to anyone who is crafting and sharing their business stories.

Bobette talks about the most powerful stories (and this applies to our biz stories) being ones showing transformation, becoming fully alive, and offering hope. When we think about stories in marketing/branding we often forget these fundamentals. The majority of ‘business story’ videos I watch these days totally miss these themes and end up being more like digital brochures than real compelling stories that build a growing cadre of loyal customers.

But think about this for businesses: a founding story of an organization is often about being faced with a challenge and overcoming it — that is showing transformation and offering hope to others.

Business stories about people (customers/staff) and the obstacles they’ve overcome + the results produced offer the same messages.

I could go on and on. It’s better to just watch the 15-minute video. Bobette talked 2 years ago at the Storytelling in Organization’s Special Interest Group (SIO SIG) and was masterful. The book The Uses of Enchantment she cites was a textbook in my PhD program. I’m currently reading Inside Story: The Power of the Transformative Arc, and it dovetails nicely with Bobette’s talk. I hope you get inspired and lots of ideas by watching this.

The other is a Prezi slideshow by Peter Fruhmann called Use your narrative space: How to make better use of stories in organisations by collecting, connecting and sharing.

The presentation offers for steps for telling the right organizational story: 1) Listen/Collect, the step Fruhmann spends the most time on; 2) Analyze; 3) Synchronize; and 4) Tell/Connect.

He also proposes a 3D matrix (at left) he calls the Narrative Space of the Organization.

Both of these presentations are worth your while.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.