Spark: Getting people’s attention · Web viewGetting the audience’s attention. ... Let’s take a 1,500 word novel like Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It has a vast number of characters

The Secret Language of LeadershipStephen Denning

Reinforce with reasonsTHE SECRET LANGUAGE OF LEADERSHIP.................1

Reinforce with reasons................................................................................................11. First, give the beast what it needs...........................................................................12. Tell The Story of “How It Will Work”.....................................................................33. Tell The Story of “Why It Works”...........................................................................54. Use an image where one is available..................................................................75. Support the Stories with “Gee whiz! Facts”.........................................................96. Turn Any abstract Argument Into a Story................................................................97. Communicate the argument through someone’s eyes:..........................................128. Support arguments with more springboard stories,..............................................139. Turn arguments into “common memory” stories..................................................13Conclusion.................................................................................................................14

SIDEBAR #1: THE BASICS: WHAT IS A STORY?.............................................................15SIDEBAR #2: WHY CONVERT THE REASON INTO A STORY?...........................................17Table: Utility of the various communication devices....................................................21

In making the case for sustained change, it is necessary to elicit desire for a different future. But desire by itself is not sufficient. Desire by itself is fickle. Desire may wane, evaporate, lapse unless it is bolstered, supported and reinforced by reasons – good, strong, compelling reasons why the change idea makes sense and should be sustained. In the absence of such reasons, the listeners may awake from the dream of a different future, come back to their senses, back to mundane reality and decide – not to change.

Thus I am not abolishing reason from the persuasion game: instead, we are putting it in a different position in the flow. It comes at the end, rather than as the Western intellectual tradition suggests, at the beginning.

How does one go about reinforcing the idea with reason?

1. First, give the beast what it needsIn the late 1990s, when I was program director for knowledge management at the World Bank, I would attend meetings to discuss some issue concerning implementation of the the program, and at some point I would often be asked, “Where are your metrics?” I

© Copyright Stephen Denning 2006: www.stevedenning.com 5/18/2023 12:59 PM Page 1

http://www.stevedenning.com/

would generally be ready for this request and be able to give the questioner a document full of statistics about various aspects of the implementation of the knowledge sharing program. What was striking to was that there was generally little discussion of those statistics. It was as if I was being asked some kind of macho request, “Say, fella, you got metrics?” and I would reply, “Sure thing, fella, I got metrics,” and then the substantive discussion could be proceed. The availability of relevant metrics was a kind of entry card to a serious discussion.

For a time, I thought that this might be a peculiarity of the World Bank culture. Around 1999, however, I attended a meeting that showed me that the World Bank wasn’t peculiar at all. It was a meeting with other large organizations in the Washington DC area and each organization shared its experience with assembling metrics of knowledge management programs. It had the usual Washington DC public sector organizations as well as outfits like the Marriott group and the Mitre Corporation. We listened a number of presentations of different approaches to measuring the status and progress of knowledge management programs, some of which were truly impressive in their scope and sophistication. Then towards the end of the session, somebody asked the fateful question: in any organization, had these sophisticated metrics had ever been effective in, say, winning a battle over budgets in a time of crisis? The universal answer from all participants was: no. In a time of crisis, the metrics were there as “background music” to the discussion, but decisions were never based directly on them. In the time of crisis, when the question was usually which of several valuable programs were going to be cut and by how much, the decisions were based on a gut feeling of what was important for the organization at that time. One reason for this was that every competing program had a set of statistics showing why it was highly valuable to the organization. Hence the statistics didn’t provide any clear guidance as to what to do. It would always come down to what made sense, what felt right, what did the statistics mean, which in turn boils down to: into what story do the statistics fit?

So giving organizations doesn’t win you the battle, but it is an important entry card into the discussion. What form does the entry card take? It depends on the particular organization. Each organization has its own preferences and fetishes and, once established, these preferences are hard to change. In any kind of debate or discussion, the culture will expect certain kinds of material to be presented in certain ways. And if it doesn’t get them, the organization may go into a spasm.

In some organizations, it will be a knee-jerk call for the ROI – the rate of return on investment. In other cultures, it will be insistence a detailed implementation schedule, with costs for every step spelled out in microscopic detail. In other organizations, the discussion cannot proceed in the absence of a PERT chart.1 In other firms, the



requirement will be the calculation of net present value, based on multiple interest rate predictions.

Often these expectations will be absurd in the presumed ability to predict and quantify the future. But whatever the requirement of the particular organization, it doesn’t make sense to argue, or to point out that it doesn’t make sense. Meet the expectation! Give them their ROI, their PERT chart, their NPV, whether it makes sense or not. Give the beast what it needs.

But don’t waste precious presentation time dwelling on such statistics, or giving lengthy PowerPoint presentations explaining them. Make sure that the metrics are available, for instance in handouts, and make sure that the audience knows that they are available. Instead, you want to get on to talking about reasons that will really resonate with your audience, that will show them what makes sense, particularly how it works and why it works.

2. Tell The Story of “How It Works”EXAMPLE #1: HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS FORMED

Here’s an example of an explanatory story from the physical sciences.

“The universe started out as cold and essentially infinite in spatial extent. Then an instability kicked in, driving every point in the universe to rush rapidly away from every other. This caused space to become increasingly curved and resulted in a dramatic increase of temperature and energy density. After some time, a millimiter-sized three-dimensional region within this vast expanse created a superhot and dense patch. The expansion of this patch can account for the whole of the universe with which we are now familiar.”2

Although there is no human actor on the scene, we have a clear sequence of events linked together by a causal connection, in other words, a story. In this instance, we are looking at a story set in the past. In many presentations aimed at persuading people to change, the story of how it works will be set in the future.

EXAMPLE #2: HOW KNOWLEDGE SHARING WILL FUNCTION

I am sometimes asked whether it is plausible that a big, change-resistant organization like the World Bank fell over backwards, simply l because I told the 29-word Zambia story. The answer is, of course, that it didn’t.

As I explained in my book, The Springboard 3, the Zambia story was the centerpiece of my initial presentations, and that began to elicit for a different future, but it also contained elements to catch people’s attention, such as the problems we were having in



managing information and knowledge, and it also sketched the story of how knowledge sharing might work in future.

After telling the Zambia story, I would say:

And what will knowledge sharing look like in the World Bank. What would the professional desktop of the future look like? It would have just-in-time and just-enough material, available within reach, everything one needs to get the job done.

Thus when it comes to best practice — our teams will want, not every best practice under the sun, but just the lessons of experience that are relevant to the particular work they are doing. Similarly with the bibliography: our teams will want not the whole Library of Congress, just the references and citations that are relevant to the particular project. With policies and guidelines, our teams don’t need the whole massive operational manual and all the other policy guidelines that have accumulated over decades — just the sections that are relevant to the job under way. Again, with country information, our teams don’t want everything we know about the countries, just the people and correspondence that lead up to the work now ongoing — in effect, the story so far. Also, they don’t want all the previous reports — just the reports that had been done in the same field as the task at hand. And in signaling who are the experts, the team wants to know, not who are the gurus generally, but rather who can answer questions on key issues relevant to the particular area of work. Equally, in analytical tools, the team wants spreadsheets showing previous economic, financial and technical analyses of earlier work in the same area, not everything that has been done.

These are the elements that a task team needs to get its work completed. These are the materials that task teams now spend weeks endeavoring to assemble, and chasing around the organization to find in paper format, often with limited success, until time runs out and they have to get on with the job without always having the proper inputs.

But there’s more. If we can get this far, and assemble all these elements for our own task teams, why stop there? Why not provide the same materials for our clients, who need exactly the same information and know-how for their own purposes. If we are able to assemble it for ourselves, why not share it with them? In this way, the clients can undertake more of the preparation effort — something devoutly wished by both our organization and our clients — and we can thus confine ourselves to guidance, as and when needed. In the past, this would have been technically difficult and exorbitantly expensive. Now the plunging costs of computing and the advent of the Web mean that the constraints are no longer technical or economic. It is a question of imagination and management and willpower to make it happen.



And there’s no need to confine the service to current clients. Thus suppose our professional staff share their know-how and expertise with each other and with their clients and partners and stakeholders around the world, by way of the World Wide Web. In the process, the broader audience that has no access to our expertise will suddenly be able to draw on our know-how in the same way as those immediately involved in financial transactions. In this way, the organization can be useful not merely to our current financial partners, but to anyone in the entire world who is interested in economic development. Thus the problem of coping with a vastly expanded array of clients and partners and stakeholders can be solved. As the material is assembled electronically for staff, the relevant portions can be made available for external clients at the same time.

If we can put all these elements in place, a whole group of stakeholders around the world who currently lack access to the intellectual resources of the organization will suddenly be in the picture. It will enable a different relationship with a wider group of clients and partners and stakeholders around the world. It adds up to a new organizational strategy.

The story of “how it will work” helps stimulate the imagination of the listener to dream what knowledge sharing could deliver. It has several elements:

It is a story set in the future, although it is not clear precisely when or where.

Its protagonists are people the audience can easily identify with: in this case, initially a typical World Bank staff member, and then a typical client of the World Bank.

It is told evocatively, without much detail, rather than with a lot of specifics and contextual detail.

It is positive in tone, looking optimistically to the success of the change idea under discussion.

Its effectiveness is dependent in part on the prior springboard story, the Zambia story, that started the audience to imagine a different world.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STORY OF HOW IT WORKS

The story of “how it will work” helps stimulate the imagination of the listener to dream what knowledge sharing could deliver. It has several elements:

It is a story set in the future, although it is not clear precisely when or where.

Its protagonists are people the audience can easily identify with: in this case, initially a typical World Bank staff member, and then a typical client of the World Bank.



It is told evocatively, without much detail, rather than with a lot of specifics and contextual detail.

It is positive in tone, looking optimistically to the success of the change idea under discussion.

Its effectiveness is dependent in part on the prior springboard story, the Zambia story, that started the audience to imagine a different world.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: BUSINESS MODELS

A business model is a story that explains how an organization will operate. It explains “the theory of the business”. It’s a story set in the present or near future. The narrative is tied to numbers as the elements in the business model are quantified. The business model answers questions like: who is the customer? And what does the customer value? How do we make money in this business? What is the underlying economic logic that shows how we can deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost? Its validity depends both on its narrative logic – does the story hang together? – and its quantitative dimension – do the numbers add up?4

CAVEAT: DON’T OVER-RELY ON FUTURE STORIES

The story of how it will work are in essence future stories – stories telling how the future will unfold. The advantage is that the scope of future narratives is only limited by the what the imagination can dream up. The disadvantage is that because the future is inherently unpredictable, future stories are inherently hard to believe. Listeners suspect instinctively that the future is unlikely to turn out this way. So one one shouldn’t put all one’s eggs in this basket.5

3. Tell The Story of “Why It Works”The story of “how it works” and the story of “why it works” are, not surprisingly, related. The big difference between them is that the story of how it works tends to be a story set in actual time and space, whereas the story of “why it works” tends to be a story set in imaginary time and space, some kind of timeless, generic, Platonic world where the basic causal mechanism of reality is (seemingly) revealed.

EXAMPLE #1: WHY BEARS EAT HONEY

The explanatory of why it works is not set in time and space like a story in the form, “The bear ate the honey because it was hungry.” The explanatory story takes place in a timeless imaginary universe, as follows:

Bears eat honey because their DNA causes both their taste buds to have a predilection for sweet things, and their olfactory nerves to be particularly sensitive to the smell of honey. The DNA of bears is the result of biological



selection, honey being highly nutritious and suitable to the digestive tract of bears.

We are dealing with a sequence of events, not about any particular bear, but a story about “bears in general”. Most scientific knowledge consists primarily of such explanations. Some scientists would be horrified to think that their knowledge consists of stories, albeit stories. Other, more perspicacious scientists recognize that this is the case.6

EXAMPLE #2: WHY A SPRINGBOARD STORIES MUST BE POSITIVE IN TONE

An example comes from my own presentations about why the springboard story needs to be positive in tone:

And most important, Hollywood is right. It's got to have a happy ending. I have had no success in telling a story: “Let me tell you about an organization that didn’t implement knowledge management and it went bankrupt.” No success at all with this kind of story.

And there is actually some neuro-scientific evidence explaining why this is so. Over the last four hundred years or so, most of the attention on the brain has been focused on the cortex, that is to say, the human brain. But in the last 20 years or so, a lot of the attention has been on other parts of the brain that hadn’t been accessible in the past. In particular, we have been looking at the mammal brain and the limbic system, which sits just under the human brain, and the reptile brain, that we all have and which sits just under the mammal brain. These mammal and reptile brains are not very smart, but they are very quick and they make a lot of noise.

And so if I tell you a story with an unhappy ending, that company that bankrupt because it didn’t implement knowledge management, what seems to be happening is that these ancient parts of the brain, the limbic system kicks in and the message is: “Fight! Flight! Get out of here! Trouble! Something bad is happening!” and so on. Now the human brain, the cortex, can intervene and override this and say something like, “Now calm down, calm down, let’s analyze this, we may be able to learn something from this experience,” but by the time the commotion is over, the opportunity to invent a new future is past. Learning may take place, but no rapid action ensues. There is no springboard effect.

But by contrast, if I tell you a story with a happy ending, what seems to be happening is that the limbic system kicks in with something called an endogenous opiate reward for the human brain, the cortex. Basically, it puts the human brain on drugs. It pumps a substance called dopamime into the cortex and this in turn leads to a warm and floaty feeling, the kind of feeling you have after you have just



seen a wonderful wonderful movie. And this is the perfect frame of mind to be thinking about a new future, a new identity for yourself or your organization.

EXAMPLE #3: WHY A SPRINGBOARD STORY MUST BE A TRUE STORY

Stories give simple explanations of statements in the form of generic stories. Here are some examples of my presentation when I am making the argument that a springboard story needs to be an authentically true story.

STATEMENT: It’s very important that a springboard story be a true story. It’s not a fictional story. It’s a true story, because (EXPLANATORY STORY) when you tell one of these stories, one of the first things that happens is that people go and check it out to find out if it actually happened the way I said it happened. And if they find it was true, they race back and announce loudly, “It didn’t happen. It’s just a myth.” Then everyone can relax and go back to the standard ways of doing things.

STATEMENT: I’ve had no success at all with an imaginary story like, “Just think what the World Bank would be like if it adopted knowledge sharing.” (EXPLANATORY STORY) The answer to this kind of story is, “That will never happen around here. It might happen in some good organization, but not here in the World Bank.” And if the story is imaginary, that is usually the end of that. But if the story is true, one can say, “This already has happened. It happened right here. Here’s the guy it happened to. Go and check it out. It actually happened.” Then it’s the truth of the story that shakes the listener out of their complacency. They have to grapple with the fact that the story actually happened. So maybe it could happen here, after all.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EXPLANATORY STORY

The story of “why it works” helps the listener grasp the underlying causal mechanism that enables the idea to work. It has several elements:

It is a story set in imaginary space. It makes no sense to ask when or where this story is occurring. It occurs in some kind of generic, Platonic world where the basic causal mechanism of reality is (seemingly) revealed.

The audience identification with the protagonist is not important. The protagonist of the story is the limbic system – first the reptile brain, that urges fight or flight upon encountering a negative story, and then the limbic system which injects dopamine into the cortex. The emphasis is on understanding the mechanism.

It is told evocatively, without much detail, rather than with a lot of specifics and contextual detail. The focus is on causal connections between events.



It is neutral in tone, neither positive nor negative in tone. The focus is on the causal mechanism – what causes what.

In its most evolved form, in terms of scientific explanation and technical accounts, such explanatary stories aspire to describe a stable and universal pattern. The technical account of bears’ hunger aspires to describe, not just one bear, but all bears. The stories explaining the limbic system’s role in positive and negative stories aspires to describe the operation of not just one person’s limbic system, but rather every limbic system.

Its effectiveness is dependent on its plausibility as a causal explanation of what is going on.

In some circumstances, there is no need for the story of why it works. For instance, in 1996, when I was arguing for knowledge management in the World Bank, I didn’t need a story of why it works because most audiences in 1996 understand what the World Wide Web was and how it worked. But if I had told the story, say, in 1994, I might have needed an explanatory story to show what the World Wide Web worked.

4. Use an image where one is availableA picture can be worth a thousand words. Where you have a powerful image, use it. For instance here is the image of the desktop of a World Bank professional from my presentation at the World Bank in May 1996.



Here is another image from the same presentation showing the change in relationship that will occur if the World Bank pursues a knowledge-sharing strategy.

So images can be powerful. And where you have them, use them.

But then again, why do we need words to make the point that images are powerful? In fact there are pitfalls in using images. Images tend to simplify complex ideas. That’s their strength and their weakness. In trying to create a visual map that conveys the immense complexity of an evolving concept you can,

unwittingly, ape the behavior of the scientists of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century, who insisted on depicting complex non-linear phenomena with simple linear pictures, or isolating one or two variables from a phenomenon that had ten or twenty variables.

After four years of trying, I was never able to come up with an image that “explained” knowledge management.

Two dimensional charts are at best partial truths of much more complex phenomena.7 They can reflect a few dimensions of a multi-dimensioned reality. If you add more dimensions to capture more of the reality, you find, as the scientists found, that the chart collapses into incomprehensibility at about the fourth dimension.

So in response to the question as to whether the failure of charts to communicate is due to map-drawing capacity or to the whole idea of drawing maps to describe complex multi-dimensional problems, it is usually the latter.

The underlying problem is that the nature of what you are trying to describe – the world of organizations – is complex, messy, fuzzy, irregular, asymmetrical, random, in continuous dis-equilibrium. These phenomena cannot be depicted simply in two-dimensional charts.


The challenge is to move from seemingly

interminable “blah” to a series of engaging

“aha!” moments.


5. Turn Any abstract Argument Into a StoryThe kind of reasons that might first come to mind are likely to be some of the following:

The benefits of the change idea will be large.

The costs of the change idea are moderate.

The risks of the change idea failing are low or manageable.

The change idea has a high rate of return on investment.

The change idea is an unusual opportunity that may not recur.

The change idea can be completed within a reasonable period of time.

We possess the competencies needed to implement the change idea.

There are dangers ahead, which this change idea will obviate.

The change idea is wanted by someone – the boss, the clients, the government, investors, us, whoever.

We need the change idea for some other reason, e.g. to enhance our reputation, or to deliver on a promise.

You can present these as factual, abstract statements. And certainly giving these as reasons is better than giving no reasons at all.

But you can generally do better than this.

You can make your reasons more compelling, more memorable, more persuasive by turning them into stories.

Of course, in some contexts, as noted above in #1, abstract reasons are necessary as part of the customs, habits, rituals of the particular organization. In some contexts, it is a requirement to have ROIs and detailed scheduling plans, and so you give those things. But you do that, not in the hope of persuading anyone by giving the ROI, or the detailed schedules, but rather because it’s the entry card to this particular debate in this particular context. But as soon as you have done what you have to, (and you may do it by circulating papers with those compulsory details included there) you get on to the reasons as stories so that you can really persuade the audience.

HOW DO YOU CONVERT A REASON INTO A STORY?

There are a number of ways of doing this.

STEP 1: CHOOSE THE PROTAGONIST.

In principle the protagonist for every story will be the audience, or someone like the audience.



STEP 2: TURN THE ARGUMENT INTO THREE ACTS

By adopting a three-act structure, with the audience as the hero:

Act 1: The protagonist (the audience) and their context

Act 2: .. has a problem

Act 3: … which gets resolved in a certain way…

In any such story, the hero is the audience. You are seeking here to mimic the very mental process by the audience will use to change its behavior.

Thus suppose you were trying to sell advertising to The XYZ Corporation for its home products and your arguments consist of the advantages that your firm could offer. Instead of presenting the arguments as arguments, you weave them into a simple story in which the arguments constitute the resolution, or Act 3 of the story. By using the form of a story, the presenter steps inside the shoes of the audience. By beginning from the situation of the client and the challenge that it is facing, the presenter develops rapport with the client. The presentation takes the audience through the mental process that they would go through anyway, if they are to buy your services. The arguments appear not as abstract arguments “out there” but rather as elements that emerge naturally from the story of the client:

Act 1: The hero: The XYZ Corporation

The XYZ Corporation has ambitious goals for its home products

Act 2: … has a problem

The challenge of reaching The XYZ Corporation’s goals is immense, because of the scale, complexity and multiple-media that will need to be involved.

Act 3: …. It can be resolved:

Our firm has unique combination of scale, multiple media, and creativity to handle the challenge.

STEP 3: PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO ACT II.

One of the big differences between an abstract statement and a narrative is in the conflict and reversals of Act II. Abstractions tend to be linear in form with a straight line flow between subject of the abstraction (i.e. Act 1 of a narrative) and the outcome (i.e. Act III of a narrative):



Abstraction NarrativeAct I The company … The company Act II …which is in dire need of more revenue because our creditors are

breathing down our necks and there is no other source of revenue in sight, has the prospect of overcoming the obstacles in way of gaining those benefits

Act III … will make significant benefits from the idea

… so as to see large benefits flowing from the idea.

STEP 4: ADD FLESH TO EACH OF THE ACTS

TURNING ANY ABSTRACT ARGUMENT INTO A STORYABSTRACT REASON PROTAGONIST THE STRUCTURE OF THE STORY

The benefits of the activity will be large.

Audience Act 1: You (the audience…)Act 2: …who know that our firm is in dire need of more revenue because our creditors are breathing down our necks and there is no other source of revenue in sight. Act 3:… will see large benefits flowing to the firm, and so to you as managers as well.

The costs of the activity are moderate

Audience Act 1: You (the audience)Act 2: …who know that the cost containment is crucial to our survival in this highly competitive business Act 3: … will easily be able to meet the modest costs involved

The risks of the activity failing are low or manageable.The activity has a high rate of return on investment.The activity is an unusual opportunity that may not recur.

We face a difficult business climatein which opportunities are rare.. but we can grab this one if we move now

The activity can be completed within a reasonable period of time.

The implementer

We possess the competencies needed to implement the activity.

Our firm

There are dangers ahead, which this activity will obviate.



The activity is wanted by someone – the boss, the clients, the government, investors, us, whoever.We need the activity for some other reason, e.g. to enhance our reputation, or to deliver on a promise.

For example, if your reason, “this change idea has large benefits”, then the protagonist will be the audience and the story will show that the audience will indeed get benefits.

If your reason is that “the activity can be completed within a reasonable period of time”, then

6. Support the Stories with “Gee whiz! Facts”For example, McDonald’s in defending the multiple attacks on it as a leading brand, uses some of the following surprising factoids:

“McDonald’s is the world’s largest purchaser of apples.”

“McDonald’s sells the equivalent of 27,000 hectares of lettuce every day.”

“McDonald’s is the world’s largest manufacturer of toys, much larger than Mattel and Hasbro combined.”

7. Communicate the argument through someone’s eyes: Pick an individual affected by the course of action and show through a story how this individual would encounter the change being proposed.

Thus, in the example just described of The XYZ Corporation, instead of describing the details of the multiple components of the advertising campaign as abstractions, you can tell the story of how one of the eventual consumers, a single individual – let’s call her Ann Haines, a mother of two, who lives in Boise – would encounter the various facets of the advertising program. “First, Ann reads the magazines and sees …. Then she goes online and notices that… Then she watches television and



observes that … Finally she is intrigued sufficiently to go and visit the model home that has been constructed at …” and so on.”

8. Support arguments with more springboard stories, i.e. examples of individuals who have already successfully implemented the

change, in whole or in part. For example, let’s a firm called Global Consulting aspires is trying to become the leading provider of consulting services in its field. A springboard story is an example of that change is already working out:

It’s about James Truscott, who works for us in London and a few months ago he heard about an invitation to bid on a large consulting engagement for one of the largest industrial firms in the UK – British Engines. What had been happening even as recently as a couple of months ago is that we weren’t winning many of those big consulting engagements, because our staff from different countries would compete among themselves for the same engagement and end up totally confusing the client.

What James did in this case, when he heard about the invitation to bid for this world-wide account, he contacted all the people in Global who deal with British Engines around the world. He brought them all together as a team and together they developed Global’s pitch to British as a global team with him at the front of it.

As it turned out, a competitor undercut us with a lower price, but James went back to British. He didn’t lower our price, but he went back to British with experts from the Global to explain why we were more expensive, so that in fact British could see that they were in fact getting a better deal.

And guess what? We won that multi-million pound engagement with British. It was a huge thing. It showed to us the power of acting together as a global organization, rather than acting from individual country perspectives. Just think what a company Global could be if all of us would join up together internally and think about the client from a global perspective and so that we could see how to the client better as a whole. Just imagine the impact on our bottom line.

9. Turn arguments into “common memory” stories i.e. stories that draw on common experiences and remind people of things that

they already know. Here’s an example from one of my presentations, when I am



trying to persuade people that the tools of hierarchical leaders are not all that helpful in terms of persuasion:

STATEMENT: Hierarchical leaders often have the right to fire people. But that doesn’t necessarily help you become a leader and get people to change.

COMMON MEMORY STORY: Think back to the last downsizing you experienced when there was a mass firing. It started out of course with the noble goals that the organization was going to get rid of the dead wood and eliminate unproductive people. But what actually happened? Usually, it ended up shedding the people with different ideas, the people who didn’t fit in, the people with other ways of doing things, in effect, the very people you might need for transformational innovation.

COMMON MEMORY STORY: And who did the organization keep? You will remember that they ended up keeping the people who knew how to work the system, the ones who knew how play organizational politics, the people with connections, the flatterers, the people who fitted in to the existing way of doing things.

CONCLUSION: And then they wonder why the organization hasn’t changed!

ConclusionWhen it comes to presentations aimed at persuading people to change, a revolution in communications is under way, which involves setting aside the Western intellectual tradition of several thousand years. Presentations that are effective in sparking action depend on:

Getting the audience’s attention

Stimulating the audience’s desire for the course of action being proposed.

Reinforcing the decision with rational reasons.

Transforming abstract arguments for change into compelling stories.

Leaders who don’t understand the basic rules of the communication revolution are doomed to go on making ineffective presentations, all the time wondering why people don’t change. Those who understand and use these principles will find that their presentations are unexpectedly effective.





Sidebar #1: The Basics: What Is a Story?These five dimensions are crucial for understanding the mechanism of business narrative.

1. WHAT IS THE DATE AND PLACE OF THE STORY?Are we dealing with a true story? Are we dealing with something that actually happened? Or

are we dealing with something might have happened but didn’t? Or something that could happen in the future, but hasn’t happened yet? Or maybe something that is logically impossible to happen, like a fairy story, with magic and miracles in which the laws of nature are subverted?

What is the reality of this story? Stories occur in time and place. The time and place might be imaginary or real. It may be past, present or future. Often it’s obvious. But at other times, for instance, in a business model. Keeping an eye on the time and place is important because…

Of course some imaginary stories can ring true. Hamlet may seem more real to us as a person than many real life characters, due to the skill of the storyteller. But it’s a good idea to keep in mind that Hamlet is an imaginary character, because …

2. WHO IS THE PROTAGONIST?All stories have a protagonist i.e. a hero or heroine. The protagonist is normally a human

being, but given our willingness to anthropomorphize everything, it can be something other than a human being, a dog, a cockroach, a washing machine or the planet.

I had a job in a firm … and my boss was horrible to me … eventually I solved the problem by leaving.

Here obviously the hero is the speaker. Sometimes the hero/heroine isn’t obvious. And it could have been told with another person as the protagonist.

You can tell the same story with a different protagonist and it will sound very different.The supervisor in firm had an employee who just didn’t fit in …eventually the problem got solved when the employee left. What a relief!

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT_Chart:

2 From a presentation by Marie-Laure Ryan, speaking at the Smithsonian in April 20053 The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Boston: Butterworth Heinemann, 2000), chapter 1.

4 Magretta, J., Why Business Models Matter. Harvard Business Review, 2002. May 2002: p. 87-92.5 The example given in the excellent book, Beyond Bullet Points (2005) by Cliff Atkinson, concerning the “Contoso Marketing Plan Presentation”, could be seen as falling into the trap of relying too heavily on future stories. In the both five-minute and the fifteen-minute version of the presentation developed there, the entire presentation comprises abstract arguments and future stories. It is only in the 45-minute version of the presentation that one gets to stories about things that have actually happened – material that could be developed into springboard stories. In a subsequent version of this chapter, I may show how this high-value material could be brought forward into the shorter versions of the presentation so as to make them more compelling.

6 Deutsch, D.: The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes – and its Implications (NY: Allen

Lane, 1997)7 Knowledge management might be seen as comprising multiple dimensions, including knowledge strategy, communities of practice, help desks, knowledge bases, knowledge capture, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination, knowledge taxonomies, quality assurance, authentication procedures, budget, incentives and knowledge measures.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT_Chart

The choice of the protagonist can have a huge impact on the meaning and impact of a story. In business narrative, you are often trying to get your audience to identify with the protagonist. That is one of the underlying mechanisms. If you have the wrong protagonist, i.e. someone with whom the audience has difficulty empathizing with, you may need to change the protagonist.

Tip: In fact, if your audience isn’t resonating with the story as much as you would like, try telling the story with a different protagonist, specifically, a protagonist who is similar to the audience. Thus if your audience comprises sales people, your protagonist is likely to be, guess what, a sales person. If your audience comprises oil drillers, your protagonist is likely to be an oil driller. Someone with whom the audience finds it very easy to identify with.

If the protagonist is very different from the audience, e.g. a celebrity CEO like Jack Welch, the audience may have difficulty identifying with such a legendary figure. (They may well be thinking, “I could never be like Jack Welch!”)

3. WHAT ARE THE THREE ACTS OF THE STORY?For the sake of clarity, the plot can be sorted into three acts. One could choose five acts,8 For practical purposes, in business narrative, it’s enough to sort out what’s going by using a three-act structure.

By adopting a three-act structure, with the audience as the hero:Act 1: The hero/heroine in his/her contextAct 2: has a problem Act 3: which gets resolved in some way.

Let’s take a 1,500 word novel like Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It has a vast number of characters and many twists and turns in the plot. Nevertheless, one can still see in it the same basic structure:

The structure of War and PeaceAct 1: Pierre, a Russian countAct 2: ……………. Can’t figure out his life Act 3. ……… gets entangled in the war and marries Natasha

Or let’s take Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a very complex tangle of characters and motives. It can also be viewed from the perspective of the same three act perspective.

The structure of HamletAct 1: Whine, whine, whineAct 2: ……………. To be or not to beAct 3. ………………………I’m dead.

In the same way, we can analyze our little story from this three-act perspective.The structure of our story

Act 1: The speaker had a jobAct 2: ……But the boss was horribleAct 3. ……………..The speaker solved the problem by leaving

4. IS IT TOLD WITH CONTEXT OR IN A MINIMALIST STYLE? Does it have the sights and the sounds and the smells of what it was like being there, as in

Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Or is it told without those kind of details, as in our 60 second story?

8 As Cliff Atkinson does in Beyond Bullet Points. The plot may be simple or complex. Thus Aristotle wrote: “Plots are either simple or complex, since the actions they represent are naturally of this twofold description. The action, proceeding the way defined, as one continuous whole, I call simple, when the change in the hero’s fortunes takes place without a Turning Point or Discovery; and complex when it involves one or the other, or both.” (Aristotle’s Poetics)



The choice is made depending on whether you want the audience to immerse themselves fully in the story, so that they forget their own existence? Or do you want them to be following the story, but also thinking about its implications for their own situation.

In general in business narrative, you will be tending towards a minimalist style of storytelling, for several reasons. One because the modern business audience doesn’t have patience for anything more than that. But two, and more important, because you are typically telling the story to make a point, and the point is more easily made if the story is fairly sparse, and so that the audience doesn’t get lost in the detail. And third, even more important, you are often trying to spark a new story in the mind of the listener, and this is much easier to do if the story is minimalist.

But there are occasions when you will be telling a story with contextual detail. For instance, a story aimed at communicating who you are will tend to be told with context, because you are trying to get the audience to live your life, to feel your pain, so that they get to know who you are, from within, as it were.

5. IS IT POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE IN TONE?For instance, the story might be positive in tone:

Act 1: I had a jobAct 2: ……my boss was horribleAct 3. ……………..I solved the problem by leaving

Or the same story might be told with a negative tone:Act 1: I had a jobAct 2: ……my boss was horribleAct 3. ……………..My life was destroyed because I had to leave

It’s the same story, but the effect of the story will be very different, depending on whether the tone is positive or negative. It could also be ambiguous.

Act 1: I had a jobAct 2: ……my boss was horribleAct 3. …………….. I left with mixed feelings.

Why are we doing this? Understanding different narrative patterns & their uses is a key to using storytelling as a leadership tool. The idea is to make you steadily more alert to the underlying narrative pattern.

Sidebar #2: Why convert the reason into a story?Why would you want to do that? Why is a story, which is subjective, more compelling than an objective abstract argument?There are multiple reasons:

Abstractions are good at explaining expected events by agreed experts within the normal scheme of things. Abstract reasons are not good at explaining puzzling, unexpected or problematic events. Nor are they effective if the person offering the reason is not considered as an expert in the relevant field. When the doctor tells a patient the reason for his actions is that he is sick, his explanation tends to be accepted because he is a doctor. When a colleague gives the same explanation, it may not be accepted, because the colleague lacks the relevant expertise to make the assertion.

Lack of agreed practice or relationship: The surface appearance of objectivity of abstract assertions is misleading. Charles Tilly’s book, Why? argues persuasively that that abstract explanations are typically embedded in relationships and practices that determine their field of operation, the attention that is paid to them, and their eventual acceptance or non-acceptance. Abstract reasons work well when the practices and the relationships in which they are embedded are accepted by all involved. The trouble begins when either the practices or the relationships or



both are in question. In fact, that is normally the case in transformational change. When transformational change is being proposed, the practice is almost by definition in question. In transformational change, the relationship is also usually a question mark. “Who are you to propose such a basic change?” I may say the activity has high benefits, but do I have a relationship of expertise that will make my assertion accepted? Asbstract reasons often depend for their effectiveness on a relationship of power or expertise between the parties.

Abstractions lead to arguments: If I am proposing transformational change, then the risk of giving an abstract reason is that we will get into an argument. “The activity has high benefits.” “No, it doesn’t.” “Yes it does.” And so on. Abstract arguments are right or wrong, and lead to more arguments, whereas narratives are either relevant or relevant.

Benefits for who: Abstract reasons assert generalized benefits. But the audience is often thinking: “What’s in it for me? It may have a great rate return but will my career flourish if this idea gets accepted?”

Need for translation: The abstract reason doesn’t lead to action. “The activity has a high rate of return.” Big deal. So what? For the reason to mean anything to the listener, the listener has to translate it into a story as to what a high rate of return means for him personally. So why put the listener through this effort. Why not tell the story so that he doesn’t have to make one up. You also avoid the risk that the listener won’t imagine the right story: “The activity has a high rate of return. So the company and the CEO will make out like bandits, but I am likely to be outsourced.”

Audiences suspect abstract reasons as manipulation. For instance, Charles Tilly describes his experience as paymaster in the US Navy amphibious squadron. He would carry cash to the eight ships in his squadron and give the sailors their pay. The sailors could also ask for additional money when they were in difficulty of some kind. There was an elaborate code of rules and regulations as to what payments could be made and for what reason. As Tilly admits, “if a request arrived from an importunate sailor at a bad time, I could usually find a legal reason to refuse payment… Of course, if the commodore, my squadron’s commanding officer, needed a travel advance, he usually got it.”

Forgetting the reasons for the status quo: When you put forward abstract reasons for change, you are essentially pitting those reasons against the abstract reasons for keeping things the way they are. It is often the case that people do not recall the reasons why things are the way they are. It was decided upon long ago, by people who no longer work for the organization, and now people can no longer remember the reasons. It’s like the joke about: “how many women with PMS it takes to screw in a lightbulb. The answer is six. Why? It just does.” That’s just how we do things around here, I’m sorry. We have a ballistic bias to keep on doing things the way we have always done them.

Frames focus attention selectively: The very structures of organizations establish frames that focus attention on some kinds of information while screening out a great deal of information that could in principle significantly affect their operation. (Tilly page 58). You might have good abstract reasons, but if the frame of reference of the audience doesn’t consider it a valid area of information, then it is simply ignored. By contrast, stories bypass frames.

o For example, the US military systematically ignored the fire implications of bombing, focusing all their attentions on the blast, despite the efforts of scientists over decades who tried to get attention to the issue. As late as 1992, a vice-admiral terminated scientifically backed efforts to include the data. Asked later why he had done this, he replied, “It was my evaluation that we could spend our money elsewhere…To me, it was just one more of this continuing pile-up of things, that we ought not to be spending money on, because we didn’t need to.”9

o For example, when I was arguing for knowledge management inside the World Bank in 1996, the managing directors didn’t support me or listen to my reasons. Why? Sebastian Mallaby interviewed them for his book, The World’s Banker and discovered the reason: they were looking at things from a personnel perspective. They saw my push for knowledge management as “more linked to (my) need for a new job than to the virtues of

9 Tilley, C.: Why? (Princeton Uni. Press, 2006) Page 60.



knowledge management”.10 They simply weren’t listening to the arguments I was making. Their frame didn’t consider it a valid area of information. So my arguments were ignored – by them.

Abstract reasons are harder to remember. Abstract reasons are less compelling. One study compared the persuasiveness of four different methods to persuade a group of M.B.A. students of an unlikely hypothesis, namely, that a company really practiced a policy of avoiding layoffs. In one method, there was just a story. In the second, they provided statistical data. In the third, they used statistical data and a story. In the fourth, they offered the policy statement made by a senior company executive. The most effective method of all turned out to be the first alternative, presenting the story alone.11

Abstract reasons are divisive: narrative reasons heal and integrate puzzling and unexpected events into our every day life.

Abstractions have difficulty capturing the complexity of our world: One reason why we live in a soup of narratives, why narratives permeate our lives and understanding, is that resorting to narratives is the way that we have learnt to cope with our world of enormously complex phenomena. Even while scientists and school-teachers have been telling us to abandon these unscientific approaches, and adopt linear abstract thinking, the human race has used its common sense and stubbornly — to some extent surreptitiously — stuck with narratives as the most usable tool to cope with complexity. We have used the narrative language of stories as the most appropriate instrument to communicate the nature and shape and behavior of complex adaptive phenomena. Stories capture the essence of living things which are quintessentially complex phenomena, with multiple variables, unpredictable phase changes, and all of the characteristics that the mathematics of complexity has only recently begun to describe. The fact that narratives are not mathematically precise, and in fact are full of fuzzy qualitative relationships, seems to be a key to their success in enabling us to cope with complexity. The story form has been used to record and communicate the activities of complex inanimate phenomena — the weather, disease, war, the stock market, commodity prices — as a short-hand way of making things intelligible that are not comprehensible by any other means.

10 Mallaby, S.: The World’s Banker (NY: Penguin, 2004), page 415 n.18.

11 See for example:

Martin, J. and M.E. Power, Organizational Stories: More Vivid and Persuasive Than Quantitative Data, in Psychological Foundations of Organizational Behavior edited by B.M.Staw. 1982, Glenview Ill.: Scott, Foresman.

Osborn, M.M. and D.Ehninger, The Metaphor in Public Address. Speech Monograph, 1962. 29: 228.

Kouzes, J.M. and B.Z. Posner, Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose it, Why People Demand It. 2003, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Borgida, E. and R.E. Nisbett, The Differential Impact of Abstract vs Concrete Information on Decisions. Journal of Applied Technology, 1977. 7(3: 258-271).

Zemke, R., Storytelling: Back to Basics. Training, 1990(March: 44-50).

Wilkens, A.L., Organizational Stories as Symbols Which Control The Organization, in Organizational Symbolism edited by L.R.Pondy,P.J.Frost, G.Morgan and T.C.Dandridge. 1983, Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.

Conger, J.A., Inspiring others: The language of leadership. The Executive., 1991. 5(1): 31-45.



Abstract arguments work by similes, where the point of comparison is constrained to a certain dimension or effect. The narrative model by contrast works by metaphor, with potentially unlimited points of comparison, including all sorts of potential hidden connections that might emerge later, when the context changes. In a new telling, the context generates a new set of spectacles in which we live the story anew. Abstract thinking mimics the physical world in a limited fashion and then looks at the resulting predictions. In the narrative mode of thinking, the participants visualize and live the story in the mind’s eye, and so experience the story as if they are living inside it. From within the story, they can get a feel for multiple aspects of the situation, immerse themselves in it, and get a fresh sense of perspective. The coordinates of one story, deeply felt, enable the listener to understand another.

The abstract way of thinking leaves us as perpetual spectators – self-conscious and external, turning us into voyeurs that observe the world as though through an impermeable glass screen. The universe of verifiable truth to which this type of thinking aspires can produce generalizations which are useful but which also turn out to be inert. By contrast, the narrative way of thinking is internal and immersive and self-forgetting and attached to the full richness of tacit understanding. Through a story, life invites us to come inside as a participant.

Abstract thinking is passive. The listener stands back and apart, as if viewing the scene through a window, a passive observer of the language. The listeners’ minds might be active when they handle mathematics and abstractions, but they are active in a different fashion from their participation in a narrative. In doing so, they are not beguiled into adding their own experience or background. On the contrary, they are more or less obliged to put out of their minds anything other than the signal that the speaker is transmitting. They are invited to keep at bay their own imaginations, their own experiences, their own personal backgrounds, anything in fact that might be distracting, anything that would interfere with the exactitude of the language that is being transmitted. In this respect, the lived experience of participating in abstract thinking is fundamentally different in character from that of following a story, where the active participation and contributions of the listener are well-nigh essential if the storytelling is to be effective. In narrative, there is an implicit invitation to the listener’s complicity to fill in the missing links in the story. If the listeners accept the invitation, they are thus inside the story, projecting ourselves into the situation, living the predicament of the protagonist, feeling what he or she was feeling, experiencing the same hopes and fears. In such a lived-in experience, it is not difficult for the participants to visualize the missing links. In fact, they will find it difficult to resist adding necessary patterns and linkages to the narrative. This process of having the listeners fill in the missing links helps explain another puzzle – why stories can capture and regenerate dynamically evolving concepts. Thus while the idea of knowledge sharing has kept steadily evolving — from collections of knowledge, to collections and connections, to communities of practice, to partnerships — and the abstract description of the program has had to be steadily updated, and changed to reflect the shifting reality, the stories don’t seem to need updating. Even as the content of the knowledge sharing program has changed, the explicit stories have stayed the same. It is the listeners’ interpretation of them that changes. It is as if the stories have spare DNA built into them, that can be adapted by the listeners to a variety of new situations. The meaning is not in the story itself, but rather in the meaning that the listeners create out of the story, linked to their new context. As the change idea changes, the additional meaning brought by the listeners attach to the previously unnoticed feature of the context — the unused DNA — so as to create an updated meaning.

The abstract reason is mine, not theirs. It is hard to get people to accept pre-determined ideas, or well-articulated plans that have been generated by someone else. It will be easy for a disappointed instigator of change to interpret the lack of responsiveness as resistance. One might even begin to suspect that people innately resist change. But the resistance experienced from others is not to change itself, but rather to the particular process of change that believes in imposition rather than co-creation of what needs to be done. So if we want the group to move, we have to spark a different kind of process, a process that will enable the group to see the idea as one that they create and own, and will seem like more fun than staying where they are.



February 2, 2006





Table: Utility of the various communication devicesCOMMUNICATION DEVICE

EXAMPLE VALUE IN GETTING ATTENTION

VALUE IN ELICITING DESIRE

VALUE IN REINFORCING WITH REASON

Facts, data, analyses. The XYZ Corporation has 41,000 employees and sales of over $1 billion

Low(unless the fact or data is surprising)

None Moderate(if relevant)

A surprising question or a question with a surprising answer.

“Do you know how many US women the XYZ Corporation routinely reaches?”

High Low None

An image A photo of a fashion accessory that you are selling.

A photo of 9/11 can elicit fear of terrorism

High, (provided the image is attractive and relevant to the course of action)

Low (unless supported by a story)

Low

A framing statement

US Comptroller General: “The US is facing a retirement tsunami that will never recede.”12

High Low None

An extraordinary offer:

US Army: Be all you can be:Domino’s: Your pizza in thirty minutes or it’s free.

High High None

A surprise A surprise – an unexpected announcement, some startling piece of news, an unanticipated prop

High Low Low

Have the audience do something unexpected.

Ask them to tackle an unexpected exercise…

High Low None

A challenge “What I am about to tell you is a bit frightening. Sometimes seminar attendees walk out on me as I deliver this material because they’re disturbed by what they hear…. “

High Low Low

A metaphor “We are facing a retirement tsunami that will never recede.”

High Low Low

12 January 4, 2006



COMMUNICATION DEVICE

EXAMPLE VALUE IN GETTING ATTENTION

VALUE IN ELICITING DESIRE

VALUE IN REINFORCING WITH REASON

The story of the audience’s problems:

“I know you are worried about the … situation. But let me tell you. It’s worse than you think it is…”

High Low Moderate

The story of an opportunity for the audience

“Imagine that it’s two years from now. Imagine that your organization has reached its goal of being…”

High Moderate Moderate

A joke “Did you hear the one about the… “

Risky Low None(unless relevant to the argument at hand)

A springboard story It is a story about an example where the change is already happening

Moderate High High

A “common memory” story

It draws on the audience’s common memory of a regularly recurring phenomenon: “Do you remember the last time that you had to … If it was anything like some of my experiences, it was a nightmare …”

High High High

The story of who you are

A concise story about how you dealt with a turning point in your life, that is some way related to the subject under discussion. “Let me tell you how I got into this situation…”

High (where the context is appropriate)

Low Low

The story of who your company is

Speakers often begin with information about the company they work for.

Low Low Moderate(if it constitutes a reason for doing business with the company)





Documents

Spark: Getting people’s attention · Web viewGetting the audience’s attention. ... Let’s take a 1,500 word novel like Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It has a vast number of characters