Storytelling

From Steve Denning's website at http://www.stevedenning.com I downloaded the first chapter of an upcoming book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (pdf file ).

Having recently been in planning meetings and an initital meeting of a Community of Practice at which the need for 'new' stories was discussed, re-reading this today was timely. Denning highlights the needs for different types of stories to suit different purposes. The Springboard book mainly focusses on stories to spark action and share knowledge, and my memories of Squirrel Inc which I read at the end of last year are more of stories for sparking action and creating buy in and passion.

On page 20 of the book excerpt (see link above) Denning includes a table of 'eight different narrative patterns'. This provides a good summary of the detail explored earlier in the chapter, and I would recommend this to anyone who is a little doubtful about how storytelling can be used in the world of work.

I guess the need for some new stories comes from changes in the environment, and as it was discussed around the table, I thought of the chapter in The Springboard which explores the difficulties in going out searching for stories. With the extrapolation of types of stories, I feel our story gathering process will have a greater chance of success.