What is Your Company’s Story?
The great American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, often said that storytelling is how we learn, grow and develop as individuals and as a society. This is true for organizations as well. It is called “narrative knowledge.” The stories we tell about ourselves or our organizations define us. Stories of victory and success, or loss and failure, have greater impact within working environments than we can measure. People are propelled into action and belief by stories of overcoming obstacles. Organizations are just as easily deflated by stories of unfairness or weakness. Stories drive the culture.
But leaders drive the stories. Authentic, real, and powerful stories resonate and spread like lightening around organizations of any size. Leaders at every level of an organization have the opportunity to drive the culture by communicating stories that impact their people. Many great leaders instilled great passion for their causes by sharing important ideas through powerful storytelling.
We work with leaders of organizations on framing and assessing the stories that drive organizational transformation and culture shifts. This is essential and critical work for every organization.
Several years ago, I was taught by Steve Denning, a pioneer in organizational storytelling. He transformed the World Bank from a lending institution into a knowledge sharing organization. He convinced the leaders of the World Bank that project expertise and stories about their programs were just as important as the money they were lending. For example, sharing vital infrastructure development experience across continents was critically important to funding recipients who needed both the money and the knowledge. He became the bank’s first head of Knowledge Management. He is a remarkable presenter and expert on the power of storytelling in organizations.
He is the author of several books on leadership and organizational storytelling, including The Secret Language of Leadership, selected by the Financial Times as one of the best 16 business books of 2007. He is also the author of The Leader's Guide to Storytelling and the article Telling Tales, published by Harvard Business Review. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the James McGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland. Visit Steve Denning's Site.
What stories are driving your organization’s culture? What stories would support greater success and innovation?
