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Smithsonian symposium - April 21-22, 2006 #storytelling
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Steve Denning
Last Thursday, I was
listening to Bob Sutton, Professor of Management Science at Stanford, give an
entertaining talk about his interesting new book, "Hard Facts, Dangerous
Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management."
The book argues - who can disagree? - that it's not a good idea to pursue
management practices that evidence has
shown to be ineffective or
counter-productive.
At one point, he was
asked, "Is there anything really new about evidence-based management?" Bob
replied, "No. But then again, neither is
anything else. There are no new management ideas out there. I'll offer
$5,000 for anyone who has a genuinely new idea in
management."
Well, after the
lecture, I went up to Bob and claimed the $5,000. He said, "For what? There's
nothing new about storytelling."
"What's new," I
said," is that we are discovering that there are certain narrative patterns
associated with different leadership challenges. If you understand these
different narrative patterns, you can be much more effective as a leader. For
instance, a story to share knowledge has a very different pattern from a story
to spark action, or a story to transmit values."
Bob agreed that
this indeed did sound new to him. I
gave him a copy of my book, which he's agreed to read and to consider me
for the $5,000 prize. I'll let you know the outcome.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more about
what's going on in the exciting new field of organizational storytelling, you
might want to consider attending the Smithsonian storytelling weekend on April
21-22, 2006 in Washington DC, a time incidentally
when the city is at its prettiest.
It's a non-commercial event, with an array of
speakers from all the around the world, explaining what's happening in this
field, showing its application to a variety of leadership challenges, including
sparking change, enhancing collaboration, sharing knowledge, transferring
values, communicating the brand, taming the grapevine, leading people into the
future and more.
If you
can't attend, you might want to pass this notice along to a colleague.
What: Smithsonian
Organizational Storytelling Weekend
When: April 21-22,
2006, 9 to 5.30.
Where: Washington
DC
Who should
attend: Anyone facing a leadership challenge, who
wants to understand what you do, 9am on Monday morning to get change in the
world.
Fees: Friday:
$95-$140; Saturday: $35-55
For more details:
http://www.stevedenning.com/Smithsonian06-r2.html
To register for Friday April 21: http://residentassociates.org/otoapr/storytelling.asp To register for Saturday April 22: http://www.goldenfleececon.org/ Steve Denning
Discover the discipline of business
narrative
and sign up for my newsletter at
http://www.stevedenning.com
Email: steve@...
Phone: 202 966
9392 Fax: 202 686 0591 |
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