Story+Telling

JA NOTE:

//In creating an "open source" page today I recalled Kevin Brooks, the Motorola storyteller who spoke at Multiples of One. Yesterday via a post from [|KIN]'s Gary Colet I caught up on the [|Anecdote] site that is all about story telling in organizations.

Considering Steve Denning's focus on story telling and visiting his site I find his new// [|//book publishing in September//] //that talks about "Narrative Intelligence". Digging into Steve's site I found a treasure, a// [|//story telling workshop from 2001//] //including Steve, John Seely Brown and Larry Prusak. This is food for thought.

Knowing that Steve Denning started life as a lawyer in Australia, and Shawn Callahan and Anecdote operate out of Australia, I have to wonder if there is something in the Australian culture that is relevant here. Looking for, but unable to locate, my Banjo Paterson volume for inspiration.

Bottom line: As we explore "learning through participation and connected intelligence" here, where does Story Telling fit?

Thoughts anyone?//

STEVE DENNING ON STORY TELLING AND NARRATIVE INTELLIGENCE:
July 1,2007 via email

QUOTE:

~ Steve Denning
 * //"What inspired you to use story at the World Bank?//**//The starting point was that I was a desperate man: in 1996 at the World Bank, I had a great idea but no one was listening. Being desperate, I was willing to try anything. Even something as counterintuitive as a story. Since it worked, I kept doing it. But I was quite skeptical about it and found it difficult to believe that anecdotes could be more powerful than analytics. It was when Harvard Business School Press suggested that I write a book about storytelling that I started to think: if HBSP thinks there's something in this, then gosh, maybe I ought to look into it! The rest is history.// **//Narrative intelligence://** //There's something wrong with the term, "storytelling", since it implies a kind of one-way relationship: I tell and you listen. The kind of "storytelling" I'm advocating is very much two-way. It's interactive. There's at least as much "story listening" as "storytelling". An ability to navigate successfully in this quicksilver world of interacting narratives is what I call narrative intelligence."//