The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

by Stephen Denning

  Similar issues exist with talk of “choreographing the dance” of communities.31 Once again, while the analogy has positive associations—the free-flowing motions of dance are certainly more relevant to the impromptu and spontaneous creativity of high-performance teams and communities than the mechanistic notions of command-and-control. But here also, “choreographing” carries with it implicit notions of hierarchy. The quintessential choreographer was Marius Petipa of the Russian Imperial Ballet, who had the talent and expertise to lay out in advance the precise steps and body movements that every ballet dancer who dances ballets like The Nutcracker or Swan Lake is required to follow. By contrast, the work of high-performance teams or communities might be likened to a dance, but it isn't choreographed. Much of it is spontaneous, impromptu, and unprogrammable. It's precisely these unchoreographed characteristics that enable high-performance teams and communities to exceed expectations. A more relevant analogy is jazz or basketball, not the choreography of classical ballet.

  Catalyzing High-Performance Teams and Communities

  High-performance teams and communities emerge—and continue to exist—only so long as the members want them to. These groups generate and sustain themselves. Outsiders can't do it for them. Only insiders can understand the intricate web of interpersonal relationships at the heart of a high-performance team or community—who the real players are and what relationships they have to the community issues. And in complex fields, it's often only insiders who can appreciate the substantive issues that make up the subject matter of the community, the challenges the field faces, and the latent potential in emerging ideas and techniques.32

  So ultimately the viability of a high-performance team or community is going to depend on its members. But they must have a minimum degree of understanding of the nature of the entity that they are creating.

  Where this understanding is lacking, one of the first steps is to communicate the idea of what's involved to the potential members. Potential members of high-performance teams or communities can visit vibrant teams or communities and create for themselves the story of what a dynamic team or community looks and feels like and how it carries on its business. If that isn't possible, then leaders can tell the story of one or more vibrant teams or communities—how they came into being, what they do, how they function, and what benefits ensue to members.

  This is where springboard stories can be brought into play to win hearts and minds to the new way of doing things, as discussed in Chapter Three. Typically the stories will be examples of cases where a team or community—preferably within the organization—was able to achieve extraordinary performance. The Pakistan highways story in Chapter Three is an illustration.

  Better yet, bring in members of vibrant teams or communities to tell the story of their community. This can directly communicate the passion that members of a living group exhibit, making the effort seem more feasible to the prospective members of the new group.

  It may also be necessary to persuade the hierarchy to allow the high-performance teams or communities to exist. Creating such groups usually implies changes in the power structure of an organization. It often offers new answers to questions such as these: Who has the right to make decisions about how work is carried out? Who is responsible for performance? Where are resources allocated? How are monetary rewards allocated, and who has access to learning and career opportunities? Changes in these areas are likely to threaten the prerogatives of powerful individuals and groups in the organization, some of whom may overtly or covertly resist changing the existing ways of working.33

  Use Narratives to Set Objectives for the Group

  The objectives of high-performance teams and effective communities need to be clear, compelling, and flexible. If objectives are too complete, they are likely to stifle initiative. If objectives aren't clear enough, the team may get lost. Effective objectives have specificity but also have some fuzz around the edges.34 They indicate what is to be achieved, but generally leave open how it is to be accomplished.

  But how do you achieve clarity with incompleteness? Stories can convey the idea of what's involved without being prescriptive:

  Stories about the past can give examples or analogies of what is required—for example, describing a team that used an unexpected methodology to achieve its results faster than anyone expected, or a community that was able to provide a rapid answer to a complex operational question just in time, or a team that was able to redefine its goal so as to achieve extraordinary performance.

  A future story describing how the eventual client will use the product or service being generated by the team is usually more motivating than a set of abstract performance targets. The form of such user stories is discussed in Chapter Ten.35

  The combination of an example from the past and a future story about what the end state will look like when the group has succeeded, plus guidance on the attributes of the output, can enable the group to understand the journey on which it is setting out while leaving it freedom to innovate about how to get there in the most effective manner.

  Shape the Client's Expectations Through Narrative

  The output of a great team or community exceeds the client's expectations. Where the client is the group itself, the group surprises itself. Surpassing the client's expectations happens not only because the group performs very well but also because it has an interactive relationship with its clients and actively shapes their expectations and then exceeds them.36

  Narrative is the way groups communicate to clients what to expect without pinning down the group in detail as to how to go about the work. For instance, in November 1995, when Lou Gerstner as head of IBM was setting out to persuade the computer industry and his clients that they needed open standards, he presented two alternative narratives of the way the industry might evolve:

  Think about the networked world that we see before us … every digital device connected to every other digital device in the world, all supporting seamless, easy access. How are we ever going to get around the problem of incompatible hardware and software systems?

  I think we have two choices.

  We can ask customers to set aside their freedom of choice and preferences in hardware, operating systems, applications and user interfaces … junk their trillions of dollars of investment in information technology … and all of us—everyone, everywhere—move to one architecture provided by, priced by and controlled by one company.

  Or …

  We can embrace open industry standards.

  Open means that software from one vendor can operate on or with hardware and software from any vendor—not just one guy's. We need to work with standards organizations. We need to openly agree on APIs [application programming interface], interfaces, tools and protocols—on anything the customer sees and touches in the journey to get something done.

  Compliance with standards does not mean that we won't compete aggressively or that we can't distinguish our products. We will. But we'll compete on the basis of innovative implementation of industry-standard technologies and architectures, on performance, features, design, service and support.

  Besides, in the long run, closed, proprietary architectures—that's a losing strategy. I bet you thought you'd never hear that from IBM. But having had a near-death experience, we know what we're talking about.

  Every time I meet with customers, I say the same thing. I urge them to demand compliance with open industry standards in the products they buy. And you know what? They're beginning to listen. They understand the need for the industry to move to this level.37

  Narrative can also be used when the group's client has misguided expectations or requirements, for example, when the manager to whom a team reports sets a direction for the team that is wrongheaded, or when the management sets conditions for the performance of a community that members can see are at odds with the very purpose of the community.

  Writers on traditional management advise people to do what the manager says, because “those w
ho own an enterprise, or act on behalf of the owners have the right to specify collective directions and aspirations.”38 Nevertheless, teams have more constructive options to deal with such situations, beyond simply doing whatever they are told.

  Use Narrative to Adjust the Mandate

  With access to the manager or client, the group may be able to tell the story of another team where a similar direction led to an unsatisfactory result, as well as a narrative of a different approach that led to a better result. If no such narratives are available, the team may be able to construct a future story that fleshes out the consequences for the team and the organization—if the wrongheaded course is persisted in.

  Use Narrative to Uncover the Deeper Reason for Managerial Misdirection

  In many organizational situations, the team may lack the hierarchical status that is needed to have such narratives taken seriously. In such circumstances, one avenue may be to explore the deeper reasons that the client or supervisor is adopting a wrongheaded approach. Seemingly irrational behavior usually has a reason—a story—behind it, and if the group can discover this story, it may be able to find a new way to respond to the deeper reason driving the manager.

  Thus, some years ago when I was appointed to head a task force in the World Bank to streamline the organization's procedures, the senior vice president gave me clear instructions at the outset as to which process changes were possible and which were not. One difficulty was that one of the principal substantive problems in the existing procedures lay outside the boundaries specified in these instructions. I could see that if this restriction was maintained, the report of the task force would be stillborn.

  At the outset, the senior vice president was adamant against any expansion of the task force's mandate. However, in the course of continued interactions with him, I realized that his opposition to expanding the mandate had two sources. First, he was in the grip of a story that the board of directors would oppose any change beyond the boundary he had indicated, and second, current processes included certain elements that helped him carry out his own review function. Once I had discovered these reasons, I set about finding out why the board of directors would oppose the change and discovered that they wouldn't: the board members in fact would welcome change. So I was able to put together a proposal to both solve the underlying problem and show the senior vice president why the proposal would continue to meet his own review needs and be embraced by the board of directors. He accepted my story and became enthusiastic about expanding the team's mandate—retroactively.

  Have a Respected Messenger Tell the Story

  Sometimes the group cannot find the reason for the management opposition. It may simply be that one is rarely a hero in one's own organization. In such circumstances, the team may be able to bring in a respected outsider who has the standing and stature to tell the story in an effective way.

  In 1999, the senior management of the World Bank had become uneasy about the large number of communities of practice that were untidily occupying the landscape of the organization and asked for a cleanup. An external panel of world-class experts was called in to examine the situation and essentially told the management that communities of practice are an inherently untidy phenomenon: the experience of other organizations indicated that any drastic cleanup of the communities would likely result in killing them. The management was willing to listen to a story from an outsider that it had been reluctant to accept from staff inside the organization.

  Getting the Group to Work Together

  Leaders should exploit every opportunity to bring people together and get them to see their common goals and shared values. In fact, every chance encounter is an opportunity to build alliances and nurture shared values and purpose. An informal lunch, a chance meeting in the corridor, a business trip together—all represent opportunities to build a sense of communal purpose and discover an interest in pursuing a common goal through sharing stories.

  In late 1996 in the World Bank, the president, Jim Wolfensohn, announced an institutional commitment to knowledge management. I was immediately appointed program director for knowledge management, but no arrangements were in place to implement the approach. Thus, I was faced with a dilemma as to how to mobilize and channel support for the initiative when I had no formal mandate to do anything in particular. Eventually I hit on the idea of calling a weekly meeting at the same time and the same place for “the friends of knowledge management.” Anyone in the organization was free to attend, and the agenda was open: the sessions generally involved the exchange of stories, gossip, rumors, ideas, and possible plans about the unfolding initiative. Some people came and kept coming. Others came and decided that this was not for them. Over time, the membership of the meeting stabilized. When in July 1997 the management finally put in place arrangements to oversee the knowledge management initiative, this group of “friends of knowledge management” became the knowledge management board that was officially charged with oversight of the initiative.

  Use Story to Jump-Start High-Performance Teams or Communities

  Bringing members of teams and communities together is critical at the launch of the group when work patterns are about to be established. For groups that have existed for long periods, bringing together the members from time to time may also be necessary as energy flags and trust fades.

  To attract people from diverse backgrounds and cultures and get them working together, it helps if they discover what aspirations, goals, needs, and dreams they have in common. People inevitably differ in some respects in what they value. If they can find what values they have in common, it's easier for them to work together. People learn about others' values most effectively through listening to each other's stories.39

  Storytelling is contagious. If one member of a team or community tells a story full of passionate caring, that tends to spark others who share the same passion to tell a story reflecting their own experience with it. This process of contagious storytelling occurs naturally in social settings. This is one reason that coffee breaks and meals are often seen as the most productive aspects of retreats or conferences. In formal sessions, storytelling typically isn't permitted, so its benefits are rarely felt there. However, if a space is created for storytelling in the formal sessions, and a powerful story begins the discussion, then there is no reason that the same process of collective storytelling cannot be generated. At the end of this chapter, I include a template of procedures for accelerating collective storytelling and hence catalyzing passion.

  Bring Participants Face-to-Face to Tell Their Stories

  Healthy groups get better over time, in part because members get to know one another's stories. They learn where the other group members are coming from and what their strengths and tendencies are likely to be, and so each can anticipate what the others will deliver and adjust their own performance accordingly. This process happens easily and naturally when people meet face-to-face.40

  Virtual teams and communities are pervasive in forward-looking organizations, especially for knowledge work and for work that involves people on the road much of the time. In such arrangements, members of teams or communities interact electronically by e-mail, the Web, telephone, and videoconference. I described one such community in Chapter Three—the Pakistan highway example.

  Virtual teams and communities have a number of advantages over groups that meet only physically. They can be larger, more diverse, and collectively more knowledgeable than those that depend on face-to-face communications, because their members can be scattered around the world and still stay in touch. As a result, widely dispersed expertise can be brought to bear on complex issues quickly and efficiently.41

  Nevertheless, periodic face-to-face meetings with members of the group are necessary for the group to become and remain a dynamic living entity. If members of a community have never met, the group tends to remain somewhat blurred, with no one really feeling comfortable as to who is in the group. As a result, willingness to pitch in for group activiti
es is difficult to elicit. Of course, it depends on the complexity of the task at hand as to what is the most suitable mode of interaction: simple updates on project status or requests for information can be conveniently transmitted by virtual means. But when it comes to solving complex problems or figuring out what the group should be doing or creating new designs and concepts, it may be more efficient to meet. The following experience reported to me by Ohio consultant Valdis Krebs is not uncommon:42

  I spent more than a year working on a software development effort with folks in another city. We tried to do everything by e-mail, phone, and WebEx. It was possible to make some progress, but we also experienced many misunderstandings and restarts and do-overs and flare-ups. So we said, “Heck, Let's meet.” We did, and it was amazing how much we accomplished in two days. People who appeared to have difficulty communicating via the Net all of a sudden were clear and precise and open to feedback and understood each other perfectly—what an amazing transformation! This project would have taken many fewer hours if more of them had been spent face-to-face. A $650 plane ticket is cheap compared to a programmer at $125/hour. After our face-to-face meeting, we all came to the conclusion: “Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a day face-to-face is worth a thousand e-mails!”