John Kotter Interview – The Power of Storytelling
For the last few weeks Seth Kahan has been conducting a number of very good interviews with some of the top thinkers and Knowledge Management leaders that I can certainly recommend checking them out. There are quite a few of them already and I just thought I would comment on a couple of them that I found particularly interesting and inspiring. One of them is the recent interview he did with John Kotter around the topic of The Power of Storytelling where John comments on how crucial he feels the role of storytelling is in helping spread the knowledge amongst knowledge workers in order to help them become much more productive and collaborate with one another.
Indeed, a really worth while going through interview to say the least. In it you will be able to find plenty of gems that will certainly make you nod a few times and which for the sake of giving you a teaser I am going to reproduce over here:
“Stories stick in the brain in a holistic way, better than charts, numbers and concepts. As a result the probability that the message will have an impact on behavior goes up“
Yes ! Indeed, one of the reasons why I have never been very keen on using charts in order to deliver a message. I have a tendency to divert from them big time to the point where I now use them to just present different key topics and then develop on them through the usage of stories or narrations to describe them. But the key point is that those charts are not the center of the speech. Stories are.
“But, you add a lot more information if you not only tell the stories, you show the audience. I do this by picking out parts, just like a play. I create little one-act plays“
That is perhaps one of the main items that would separate a good storyteller from a great one ! If you have a story you would want to share with others to deliver a message you certainly need to show the audience; engage with it in the conversation and, above all, show the passion! That acting while delivering your story is what will actually get people to remember your story, not the wonderful charts you may have put together. Last week, while I was attending the TLE event in Madrid, there was a presentation by one of my colleagues around the subject of stress and how to manage it and the audience was thrilled throughout the session not by the charts she was using but because of the stories that were behind them. After the session everyone actually remembered everything about the presentation itself and could relate and apply some of the different tips shared just because of those same stories and not because of the charts. People have a tendency to remember stories, not charts.
“Stories are key. If you want people to remember ideas so they can change and get better results, tell them stories“
Absolutely ! I just couldn’t have agreed more with that statement. In fact, that is what would make Knowledge Management really meaningful and successful at the same time. That sensemaking through telling stories (And with passion) is what will stick with knowledge workers and somehow we probably need to understand that some times things are a lot easier to deliver than what we thought they would be. Indeed, telling stories would certainly help achieve that. Thus next time you have to put together a presentation for a particular audience, think about that same audience and use stories to convey your messages. They would certainly be enjoying them, and learning a whole lot more in the process, than without them!
Technorati Tags: Storytelling, Knowledge Management, KM, Seth Kahan, John Kotter
Why Storytelling Is Important…
If you have been doing Knowledge Management for some time now you would probably agree on the key role that storytelling could be playing all along in order to allow knowledge workers to share their knowledge and collaborate with others……
[...] A couple of days ago I created a weblog post on a recent interview that Seth Kahan did to John Kotter on The Power of Storytelling and then yesterday I created another weblog post detailing Why Storytelling Is Important. And I thought that today I could share with you another interesting interview by Seth but this time around the interviewee is no more, no less than Steve Denning, one of the first pioneers on storytelling and storyteller extraordinaire. The interview can be found over here: Storytelling and Social Networks and there are plenty of gems over there to touch base on. So here is my take on the interview itself: “[…] so that command-and-control and mechanistic management is universally seen as an anomaly, an aberration, an exception to be used only in very unusual circumstances, if at all“ [...]
[...] Either way, since I, too, have always had some difficulty in coming up with a short definition of what KM is all about I thought I would create this particular weblog post and share with you some of the definitions that people have been sharing so far. And as time goes by, if more of them come up I will be adding them up into this weblog post. One thing though the attached quotes are actually definitions that I would feel comfortable with because they related to the same concept that I have myself about KM, thus if you are part of the mailing list and do not see a particular quote that is because it didn’t strike me as good enough for me, which is what we should all be doing at the end of the day, look for a definition of KM that would work for you so that you can then convince others about it. Thus without any further delay here you have got some of my favourite definitions so far: “We always know more than we can tell, we can always tell more than we can write down. Knowledge Management is not just about the things we can write down, its also about the stories we tell and the stuff we know but can never articulate in any way.” by Dave Snowden. Does it ring a bell ? “KM is a systematic process of connecting people to people and people to the knowledge and information they need to act effectively and create new knowledge” by Mark Schenk (From Anecdote), taken from Carla O’Dell, ‘The Executive’s Role in Knowledge Management’ “Knowledge management is a business process that connects people to people and people to information for competitive advantage and better decision making.” by Kaye Vivian (A slight variation from Carla’s quote mentioned above that I particularly like) “Knowledge management helps people learn, to use the new knowledge they acquire through learning, to share what they know when appropriate, and to help create knowledgeable communities – of work mates, colleagues, and friends. It is concerned with innovation, managing complexity and ambiguity, forming and using knowledge networks and connections, sharing behaviours, and utilising people-centric technologies” by Ron Robinson (I like the learning aspect put together by Ron on this one, since I have always believed that KM and Learning walk hand in hand all along) [...]