See Terrence’s bio, photo, and Part 1 of this Q&A and see Part 2 of the Q&A, Part 3 of the Q&A and Part 4 of the Q&A.
Q&A with Terrence Gargiulo (Question 5):
Q: I’m sure you can write (and have written) at length about StoryScrap™ Books. Can you briefly summarize this concept for readers?
A: Story Scrap Book Objectives
- Create a conversation piece to encourage open communication.
- Capture key stories to examine the connections between them and transfer knowledge.
Background
Thank heavens for big sisters; especially mine. I was over at Franca’s house sipping hot chocolate and catching up on life. While we spoke she was immersed in assembling another one of her family scrap book masterpieces. I’m one of those unfortunate types who love trips down family memory lane but lack the discipline and patience to keep scrap books. We started talking about Franca’s work. She is an international marketing and publication relations consultant. As we discussed the internal communication challenges one of her clients was facing I had a flash of brilliance. What if we helped the client put together a story scrap book and then used it to facilitate conversations around the organization? That’s exactly what we did and with fantastic results. Since then it has become one of the standard tools and interventions I use. My clients have anecdotally shared some of the following results with me:
- Increase the number and quality of communications between management and employees
- Engender greater willingness among employees to share information
- Develop a repository of stories to incorporate into other collaterals
- Create a repeatable communication business process that people look forward to and enthusiastically participate in
- Facilitate improvements in organizational morale and sense of community
How do story scrap books encourage meaningful conversations? Story scrap books promote reflection. As we create them we remember our experiences and uncover new insights in the process. People respond to scrap books with stories. Our scrap book is a ritualistic object that achieves its highest purpose when we use it to facilitate dialogue with others. Scrap books promote community because they are shared record of identity. Think about how a family photo album functions. Our stories trigger other people’s stories. Through a dynamic exchange of stories our conversations become insightful gold mines full of authentic pieces of ourselves. We see ourselves for how we are and we generate meaning from how we reflect on our stories and how others respond to them.
How do story scrap books help transfer knowledge? The most valuable information in an organization is unstructured data. This is data that lives in the minds and experiences of people. It is not easily captured or stored in central repositories. Furthermore in most organizations there are few if any incentives to share knowledge. As a result knowledge sits untapped. People do not speak with one another in ways that enable knowledge to flow. Stories activate informal peer to peer networks. The scrap books are wonderful tools for recording and transferring knowledge. Every story chronicled in a scrap book has relation to other stories. The collection of stories forms a cluster of knowledge that can be tapped. Patterns of organizational best practices, experiences, and encoded organizational cultural values reside in these clusters of knowledge. Through dialogue these can be clarified, brought to a focus, and cultivated to inform future successful behavior.
Case Study
The CEO of a Fortune 500 manufacturing company pulled me into his office and closed the door. He had just spent a mint on printing 10,000 extra copies of the company’s annual report. He motioned me to take a seat and dropped one of the annual reports on my lap with a beaming grin of satisfaction. “You’re going like this,” he said. “I want every employee to be proud of our accomplishments so I am distributing a copy of this report to every employee. I’m having all my VPs go around the company to hand these out during special town hall meetings. This is just the sort of thing that will get people fired up to exceed next year’s goals.”
I had already seen the annual report and despite its spectacular design, stunning photographs, and stellar numbers it was as drab as drab can be. I was nonplussed. It was the right idea but the wrong tool. I acknowledged the merits of his strategy and then I asked him if he was open to trying an experiment. He asked me what I had in mind. I told him to identify a division or area of the company which was going to be critical to the achievement of next year’s goals. There were some unused days on my monthly retainer that were going to expire so I asked him for a couple of days to do some digging. I held a couple of meetings with groups of people from the division and ran them through a version of the story scrap book activity. I started each meeting by handing out the annual reports and asking people to thumb through them looking at the key objectives that had been achieved during the year. Then I asked them to develop a story scrap book for the year that captured their personal experiences of how they had played a role in the achievement of these key objectives. Next I scheduled a town hall meeting for the entire division and invited the CEO to attend. I asked two people with very compelling story scrap books to share them with the group. Then I gave everyone 10 minutes to speak to the person next to them and share their experiences. I reconvened the group and opened the floor for ten minutes so that people share some of the stories they had heard. Finally I had the CEO briefly share the organization’s new goals and ask people to imagine how their stories next year would be different. We were thrilled by people’s energy. We succeeded in engaging people’s imaginations. I coached some of the CEO’s directors and VPs and we rolled out a similar process across the entire organization.