Steve Denning - Storytelling and Innovation

By Mark Binder

What is the power of story in the real world of organizations, communities and businesses?

In 2001, the East Bay Coalition for the Homeless was in the red. Like many non-profits, we lived or died from grant funding, and the Federal government was cutting back. In the old days, the EBCH would apply for any grant that looked good, and then do the work that the grant required. This led to projects that weren't really in alignment with our mission.

The first thing I did as the acting director, was craft our story. "The East Bay Coalition for the Homeless provides transitional housing for families with children." From then on, we only applied for grants to do what we were already doing. It cut down on the paperwork, and our success rate skyrocketed. By 2003, we were in the black and had enough funding to run the organization for three years – even if we didn't get another grant.

We didn't change what we were doing – we just changed our story.

Rhode Island Leaders Hear The Story

On Wednesday, April 12, Steve Denning, the guru of storytelling in business, was in Rhode Island training leaders at the Business Innovation Factory to tell their stories.

As a professional storyteller and consultant, I wanted to watch the master work with some of the biggest players in our state — including executives from CVS, Blue Cross, and Hasbro.

Denning told us that he stumbled into the power of storytelling by accident. As a victim of a power shift at the World Bank, he was exiled to ‘explore the possibility of information management.' The "Centurion guards," he said, expected him to die in that wilderness.

Instead, Denning found a story that both inspired him and concisely described the possibility of Knowledge Management. It was a 29 word story of a health care worker in Zambia who used the Center for Disease Control's website in Atlanta to solve a problem about malaria. Why couldn't the World Bank do something like that?

"How do consultants persuade people to change?" he asked us. "They use charts, and boxes with arrows. They try to persuade."

More often than not, though, the consultant's listener's eyes glaze with data overload, and nothing changes.

"When I told a story," Denning said, "problems seemed to dissolve, and obstacles seemed to vanish."

Quite by accident, he had learned the power of story.

Human Beings Tell Stories

Over the course of the next six hours, Denning led us in a series of exercises to pull stories from the mouths of managers and executives.

It turns out that getting people to talk and tell stories is the easy part. Human beings are hard-wired to communicate through story from an early age.

"Dogs sniff each other," Denning joked. "People tell stories."

Unfortunately, we are also untrained at an early age – by schooling that requires quiet, by written work that requires intellectual development at the expense of emotional connections, and by conventions in businesses and organizations that tell us to communicate in bullet points and numbers.

The good news is that letting go of the untraining only takes a matter of minutes. The bad news is that honing and crafting a story to make it into an effective tool takes a combination of commitment and practice. In other words, it's not as easy as just opening your mouth and starting to talk – although that's certainly a step in the right direction.

What story should I tell?

The starting point for what Denning calls a "Springboard" story is an understanding of the specific change in the "organization or community or group that you hope to spark." If you don't know what you're trying to change, a random story is unlikely to make it happen.

Once you know, then you find an incident that describes the change. Focus the story on one person, and set it at a specific place and time. Denning suggested that the story should be "true, positive and minimalistic – one that can spark action."

During the workshop, participants struggled to develop their stories. They had problems focusing, finding stories that illustrated the changes that they wanted to create, and none of the stories were particularly concise.

It's not easy to shape a story, especially one that's supposed to inspire people and move entire companies. As Denning said, you may have to tell the same story eight, ten or more times to find the most effective way to communicate it.

The purpose of the story is not to make people realize what a great storyteller you are, but to inspire them to create their own story about how the change you're describing can happen.

Then you need to tell it over and over again to everybody who will listen – and eventually to those who won't.

After the first story is told…

Suppose you manage to craft a story that inspires change. The leaders of your business, organization, or community have become converts. You've got the green light. Now, Denning warned, comes the hard part.

If you start pulling out the PowerPoint, issuing orders, making charts and arrows, you're likely to lose all the headway you gained.

You need to keep telling the story. Keep expanding it. Keep focused on it. After all, there are lots of reasons not to change anything. In fact, one of the most valuable exercises during the workshop helped the teller understand exactly what might be going on in the mind of a resistive listener.

Can't we just send an email?

You can try. But if you're like the rest of us, you're swimming in email. You're overwhelmed by web pages you need to look at. You've got meeting after meeting scheduled.

I work with stories all the time. It's my job. Even so, it took me a long time to grasp the power that stories have to instantly connect people. I was delighted to observe and participate in this process to give the tool of storytelling back to the world of businesses, organizations, and communities.

For instance, what if you met a decision maker in an elevator? Imagine being able to tell them a persuasive story during the trip between floors.

"When you are trying to get people to understand a strange new idea, it's difficult at best," Steve Denning said. "You're not going to be able to convince them with an email. You have to do it eyeball to eyeball…. I'm not really telling the idea with the story. I'm sparking the idea in their imagination. Then they reinvent it in their own context."

For a change to be taken hold, you have to let go of the story and give it away. Instead of your story, it becomes the listener's story, something that they can tell and pass on. And ultimately your story becomes the new story of the organization.

So, what stories would you like to make happen, and how can you begin to tell them?

A Few Quick Tips

Here are a few quick tips from Steve Denning.

• "Tell your story so that it sounds happy." If it's not a happy story, then "Start with the bad news up front, and then tell the happy part."
• Practice the story with others before you use it in a crucial situation. Edit it, and work out the kinks in advance.
• As a performer, make eye contact, have an open body stance, don't hide behind a podium or your notes, use gestures and body language, be yourself, and plant yourself firmly on the ground and just be there."

Mark Binder is the director of the American Story Theater and consults with businesses, organizations and communities as the resident storyteller at New Commons.