Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management [Paperback]

I read with keen interest and anticipation "Storytelling in Organizations", by Brown, et. al. By profession, I coach an organization in a fortune 100 firm in how to create and deliver stories. I concur that telling stories in the organization is extremely effective in educating and persuading teams to improve products and services, and for my company, that has translated to literally millions of dollars in savings, improved product usability and service delivery, margin preservation, and increased market share.

Though the book is written by professionals and academicians, they only do a fair job of telling the story and describing "what" storytelling is and to some extent "why" it works. It is ineffectual in teaching the most important lesson--the "how" to tell a story.

Regretfully, only one author's work is effective, and it is a shame his strength is watered down by the mediocrity of the others. The result is that this book represents a lost opportunity to impart meaningful, actionable knowledge sharing.

Two reasons account for the failure. First, no clear-cut model is presented. This hinders the would-be story teller in that there is no repeatable roadmap to follow in structuring a story, thereby making storytelling practice and critique difficult. Second, the book itself is a poor example of story telling.

The reader is severely distracted by the disparate writing styles and sometimes overlapping content of the authors, the not-so-occasional editorializing and a peppering of poorly written case studies that lack the very punch that the authors are suggesting is the power of the story. I found myself asking, "what's the point" a number of times.

Had I not been holding out hope that some useful nugget of wisdom might be forthcoming, I would have set it aside after the first chapter. Now, after finishing the book I wish I had. A trip to the library for recent articles on the subject might better serve the would-be story teller.

Sad to say, I to agree with the previous reviewer - this book is a real disappointment.

Of course the title is incredibly vague, and is in one sense entirely true even if the authors merely mention both storytelling and organizations in passing. They don't - in order to justify this title - have to tell us anything at all ABOUT storytelling or organizations. Though having said that, I suspect that the title will lead most people to EXPECT to learn something about the use of storytelling in organisations, the what, the when, the why and the how.

Unfortunately, as the previous reviewer comments, only one of the four authors comes anywhere near meeting these expectations.

The book, which comes in at just under 200 pages - just under 180 if you ignore the index, the potted biographies and the "Further Reading" list - is divided into just six chapters.

Chapter 1 consists of 4 descriptions of "How I came to Storytelling" - one by each author.

Chapters 2-5 inclusive are each allocated to a different author and consist, as far as I can tell, of (a) the transcript of the person's presentation at a conference on storytelling held in 2001, followed by the author's "reflections" approximately four years later.

Chapter 6 is a "wrap up" chapter by Steve Denning on "The Role of Narrative in Organizations."

First problem - the way someone talks in a presentation should be quite different from the way they write the same information. Apart from anything else, repetition is useful and necessary in a presentation - it can be boring and frustrating in a written text. And that is certainly the case throughout most of this book.

Second problem - although the authors occasionally mention what one of their co-authors has said/written, the text doesn't link up particularly well. Indeed, there seems to be a remarkable lack of agreement as to what this book is about. Maybe the title wasn't dreamed up until after all the draft manuscripts were in?

In Chapter 2, Larry Prusak appears to be talking and writing about business communications in general - and Larry Prusak. He certainly mentions "story" from time to time, but only a couple of days after reading his chapter I couldn't for the life of me remember anything that struck me as being the least bit significant about it.

Chapter 3, by John Seely Brown, likewise deals with business communications, though he does get as close to storytelling as the proverbial exchanges of information around the water cooler and the mobile phone equivalent. Whilst this is certainly valid, to still be making it a key point in a chapter on storytelling in 2004 seems extremely "old hat." Again, the chapter made no lasting impression as far as I was concerned.

Chapter 4, Steve Denning's initial chapter, was the first to actually address "storytelling," as such, IMO. It certainly contains a few interesting pieces of information and some helpful examples, and if it had been supported by chapters of a similar calibre from Denning's co-authors then I'd be giving the book a 4 star rating at least.

By itself, however, even when taken in conjunction with the wrap up chapter, Denning's contributions aren't enough to save the book, as a whole, from being thoroughly mediocre.

Just for completeness, Chapter 5, by Katalina Groh, seems to be primarily a major excercise in blowing a trumpet for her own film company. Although she does make two or three important comments on storytelling, there is just so much repetition and waffle in this chapter that the good stuff is quickly buried by the dross.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is how little any of the authors - including Denning - seemed to understand about "how" to tell stories - which is maybe why that topic receives such scant coverage.

For example, at one point Denning comments on his idea as to why storytelling is more effective as a way of conveying information compared with a simple presentation of facts and figures. The crux of the matter, he tells us, on page 170, is that:

"We remember what is in a story because our feelings are reached and because the listener becomes personally involved with the story."

Well, that's open to discussion. Not all stories automatically inspire a particularly emotional response, yet even then stories tend to be more easily remembered than plain facts and figures.

Why?

Because information is more easily remembered when it has a clear framework which makes it a coherent whole.

In storytelling the story itself is the framework. A list of facts and figures only becomes a whole if (a) a framework is provided along with the information, or (b) the listener already knows the context in detail, and/or (c) the listener is in any case used to receiving and dealing with information presented in this format.

Overall, a very underpowered and unsatifactory book.

The word storytelling evokes soft, touchy-feely emotions about family, friends, and yesteryear. What do any of these things have to do with organizations? If you allow yourself to get past the title you'll find that storytelling has a lot to do with how things get done in organizations, big and small. The authors will convince you that stories have been underutilized tools for organizational development and behavior change, but the growth and interest in storytelling is expanding dramatically, and the benefits can be quite dramatic. These are the types of people who know organizations and big business. Represented in the quartet of authors are former leaders at Xerox, The World Bank, IBM, and New World Entertainment. John Seely Brown, Stephen Denning, Katalina Groh, and Laurence Prusak are all heavyweights in their own spheres and perhaps the leading advocates on the storytelling in organizations. These are business leaders, not academics selling the idea of storytelling. The examples from and the relevance to business are what make "Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management" a book you're compelled to not only read, but use. While there are more than just business examples in the book, people will be most impressed how some of the largest enterprises run on something that seems so trivial: stories. "Storytelling" describes the history, impediments, successes, and the very human nature of this art. The book is so wide in scope of information and has such a strong impact on both a cognitive and emotional level, it was difficult to find much negative in it. However, this is not a perfect read. For example, some of the ideas and concepts developed and associations made in the book are difficult to agree with. Yet, none of the imperfections diminish the overall message or success of the work. While it is certainly not a panacea, the book does offer a different perspective to gather and sustain knowledge and implement change. At a minimum, "Storytelling" is entertaining and thought provoking. Any of the great thinkers or other authors mentioned should stimulate you to do further reading.

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