partum intelligendo

Upcoming training course

The next masterclass on storytelling that we're doing with Melcrum is fast approaching on 17th November 2009 in Central London.  Details and registration are here.

I'm also speaking next week at the Leeds Castle Leadership programme for local government.  These will be the last two public speaking engagements this year.  I've got a couple of planned sessions in January and will post details of those shortly, but I'm not now taking any more until February.

For those interested, I've got the slides and MP3s for the talk at KCUK 2009 earlier this year, where I talked about "Retaining business capital" - a long-winded and jargon-laden way of talking about sharing experiences and knowledge.

The slides are here: Download 001 Retaining essential business capital and the audio - in four pieces - is here: Tony Quinlan part 1

Tony Quinlan part 2

Tony Quinlan part 3

Tony Quinlan part 4

(Thanks for the recording go to Kathryn Chin - the excellent now-freelance conference organiser. Tweet/thank her at kat_mandu_)

Standards for England conference slides

I've spent the last couple of days in Birmingham with Standards for England at their Annual Conference. The slides are here: Standards for England presentation October 2009

It's highly pictorial, so may not make a huge amount of sense without the audio. Of which there isn't one for this presentation. I will, however, put up the audio and slides shortly from the KCUK session earlier in the year, which covered some of the same material.

Tony Quinlan, Chief Storyteller, Narrate

Random stories or last.fm?

There's an increasing trend I've noticed recently among people looking at stories - to take a brief look at stories to find the ones that "typify" the organisation.  And, because of the perception of storywork being highly resource-intensive, it's generally a very small number of stories that are used.

Somewhat akin to the periodic iPod randomizer memes that crop up (the latest being here) - fun to see what comes up, but from such a small sample it's impossible to tell what's actually the dominant taste.

For example, my five random songs this morning were:

Beachcomber Voodoo by Julee Cruise (The Art of Being a Girl)
Haunted House by Leon Redbone (On the Track)
Better Be Home Soon by Crowded House (Farewell to the World)
Somebody Told Me by The Killers (Hot Fuss)
Losing My Religion by REM (Precious Rarities)

And it would be very easy to see patterns and make assumptions about my musical taste from that.  Even more so if, by chance, an artist were repeated.

Yet a better way of seeing the bigger picture is to look at Last.fm (my profile is here) which builds up a cumulative picture from thousands of pieces.

Similarly, it's more accurate to look at larger volumes of stories and pick out patterns than it is from taking a small sample of stories from within the organisation.  And, despite the assumptions, it doesn't have to be either difficult or expensive - it's relatively straightforward to build systems that gather and collect story material in volume and to be able to see the patterns that emerge. Software like SenseMaker^TM make it very simple to look at thousands of story fragments quickly.

From those patterns, it might be possible to see specific stories that dominate a culture, but they'll be far fewer and not necessarily the ones that come out of a simple sample of a few hundred stories...

Melcrum masterclass details

Details are finalised for the "Storytelling for audience engagement" masterclass with Melcrum.

The date is Thursday 29th January 2009, it'll be 9am-5pm and held at Broadway House, London, opposite St James' Park tube station.

More details here and you can register from the page.

Comments from previous sessions include:

Excellent course. Very relevant, very practical. I have
tools and techniques I can take back to work and use
straight away.

Diverse hearts and minds

(Tomorrow I'll confirm the Melcrum masterclass details and how to register.)

I notice in the CommsNetwork mailing list there are recent emails asking for advice on how to "engage people in values".  My inference (and I think most correspondents' implication) is that they're actually asking how they get everyone to conform to the values as best as possible.

Responses cover the usual sins and techniques, focusing on events, comms vehicles, etc.  Nowhere is there the helpful response of "You'll never make them all sign up to the values and behave accordingly".  And even less so the addition "And if they did, it would be disastrous for the organisation"

Why do we continue to indulge this lazy thinking and idealistic, managerial way of working?  There are legal requirements around diversity in the workforce - diversity of colour, gender, ability, age, etc.  Assuming that you've got people who are different in their experiences, their outward qualities, what on earth makes you think they should think the same?

You want people who think and act differently - it's how you make the business effective, robust and innovative.  The real challenge for communicators should be how you enable conversations, dissent and then action from the diverse population.

Upcoming conference

I've agreed a couple of further public engagements in the first quarter of 2009, and won't be taking any more conferences/internal events now until after April/May, although I'm happy to talk now about later events.

One public one that's agreed now is the Ark Group's European conference: "4th annual internal communications: a vital business function in difficult financial times".  I'll be chairing for the two days 11th-12th February 2009 in London.

Further details on Ark Group's website at www.ark-group.com

 

I will be re-running the Narrative Tools masterclass with Melcrum later this month, but there's some confusion over dates - I'll put details up once it's confirmed.

From the horse's mouth.

From Jasper Fforde's "First Among Sequels", two horses talking together while their book is being repaired:

"So what's this Pride and Prejudice all about, then?"

"It's about a horse that pulls a carriage for the Bennets."

Which seems to tie in neatly to those companies that offer poor customer service that I posted about earlier.

KCUK - Building a change management strategy

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week's workshop at the KCUK conference.  Various odds and sods off the back of the session:

• My presentation slides are here

• The basketball video I mentioned.

• The Harvard Business Review article on complexity/leadership/decision-making by Dave Snowden
• Dave's in-depth article on complexity and its implications, "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world"

It was a distinctly Reduced Shakespeare Company take on the subject - so we're thinking of building a full one-day masterclass around it.  Thoughts to me at tony@narrate.co.uk

Who used to run the Rovers Return?

So much of what we in Narrate do is pure common sense, but comes as a revelation to lots of people.  One example is the Future, Backwards technique.  It's a Cognitive Edge-developed tool that's excellent for all sorts of reasons above and beyond the obvious one of using it to debate/imagine/envision the future of a group of people.

The great moment for many is early on in the process, when we're building up the back-story of the organisation.  The discussions are always good and illuminating, with a fast-developing sense of common understanding around past history.  Often, the different perspectives on a common event are both entertaining and helpful.

Frequently, however, I'm asked why bother with the past when the work is focused on the future.

A couple of reasons for me.  Firstly, the patterns we perceive in our past restrict and limit the possibilities we see in our future.  And by pulling them out of our heads and making them visible to everyone, we have greater awareness and hence choice about our future.  It's also worth noting that the past that's created by people in the exercise usually differs greatly from the official version - different emphases, different takes on events.

Secondly, I liken the organisation to a soap opera - if you're taking over the local pub, it's always helpful to know about the fire/fight/breakup that took place there a couple of years ago.  Coming into an organisation without the baggage of its history can be helpful, but not if you don't know where the pitfalls lie or where the skeletons are kept.

Most importantly for communications and culture, it's helpful to know what people heard/believed the last time the CEO stood up and talked about the need for change.  Because, if you take the same approach this time, they already know what to expect - regardless of what words you dress it in.

Where do you allow dissent?

I've recently been in a number of environments where everybody has been so keen to encourage positive discussions that I've ended up coming away with a flat, slightly unreal feeling - interesting conversations that never really reached any depth.  It's reminded me of the big "hoorah" sessions that organisations regularly run for people around any one of a hundred different initiatives.  Organisers are (like recent conferences) so focussed on getting everyone excited, they don't allow for some fairly basic human issues.

Like dissent.

In my days as a PR consultant or a communicator, the idea of dissent started off as being a threat to be smothered or diverted as early as possible.  The possibility of someone disagreeing with the corporate line generated a degree of fear and prompted distinctly managerial responses.  After a while,as I became increasingly uncomfortable with the approach this required, I became a (sometimes lone) voice for open discussion of both positive and negative aspects of an issue.

Far better, surely, for people to have a wider reflection of a situation and hence make an intelligent, informed choice about their response than to have some glowing, unrealistic ideal picture that can only generate disillusionment or outright hostility when it, inevitably, turns out to be false.

I find it disturbing still when, as happened on the CommsNetwork recently, people start sharing best practice on how to suppress negative news and opinions in an organisation.

Let's not pretend that that's even possible.  Eliminating dissent in public fora and public communications, in addition to highlighting a dishonest, untrusting approach, merely drives it into informal areas where debate and discussion of alternative perspectives is limited and where the dissenting view will be magnified and spread.

Far better, as part of any comms programme or internal strategy, to build in situations and places for dissent to arise, be debated and dealt with openly.

I wish I could say that the real issue here is where that dissent can best take place (and I would love suggestions and thoughts on that topic) but if I'm honest I don't think we're there yet.  First we need a greater acceptance of the value and need for dissent.

I guess I'm dissenting from the common view of dissent.