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As more and more firms grasp that narrative is central to addressing many of today's key leadership challenges - for example, articulating the risks and opportunities identified by strategic management tools like strategic plans, scenario analysis, and dilemma resolution - the question becomes: how is a CEO to make effective use of storytelling? While leading companies increasingly recognize the need to train leaders to use artful narrative to inspire and guide their organization to respond effectively to these strategic challenges, the reality is that most organizations need help to get the full benefits of using storytelling.
The discipline of business narrative
What most firms don't know when they first embark on employing narrative in their organization is that there is no single right way to tell a story. Narrative - also known as storytelling - comprises an array of tools, each suitable to a different business purpose, as summarized in Exhibit 1. Understanding the differences between these patterns is key to the effective use of storytelling, and to avoiding the most frequent mistakes that organizations make. For instance, using a story with negative tonality will generally fail to spark action. A "Burning platform" story - for example, showing that the company is about to be overwhelmed by its competition if it doesn't innovate faster - won't by itself inspire innovation in the audience. However useful such a story might be to get people's attention or to share understanding of the perils of complacency, it is unlikely to inspire and move people to take independent constructive action.
By contrast, a springboard story - a story that communicates a complex idea and springs people into action - is positive in tone. Such stories are usually very brief and talk about a change that has already happened, as in the Zambia story discussed below.
Telling a personal narrative in the pattern of a traditional, "well-told" story (i.e. a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, a hero, a plot and a turning point, and a lot of context) is also unlikely to inspire listeners to redirect their actions in support of a revolutionary corporate goal.
A success story will typically be ineffective at communicating knowledge because it lacks the nitty-gritty details of how things actually get...