Members - Articles

1. Deep Story-listening for Marketing Effectiveness
   This article, first published in ETDonline, answers the question ‘Why deep story - listening?’ and shows that story-listening makes for better relationships and better marketing. It begins: In 1869 Lucy Lloyd recorded Bushman Kabbo’s description of storytelling: “I must first sit a little, listen, watching for a story I want to hear, I sit waiting for it, that it may float into my ear.” Story te ...read full article
   
   
2. Why make use of story in business life?
   Stories raise awareness, stimulate thinking, facilitate leadership, offer flexibility and possibility, nurture and engage. The telling of a story provides us with the opportunity to own and take charge of our own stories, beliefs, values and knowledge and share these confidently with others. A professor and an old peasant woman are discussing how it is that the world is held up in space and do ...read full article
   
   
3. Stories for training excellence
   Published in Human Capital Review. Stories have much in common with training, and have great value in engaging, conveying insight, residing in memory, stimulating action. Trainers could adopt a much wider use of story and in the process the motto of Peter Shaffer’s wonderful story-telling character Miss Lettuce Duffet: “Enlarge! Enliven! Enlighten!” This article explores: • the magic of story t ...read full article
   
   
4. Leadership Lessons from leadership stories: Crossing the Alps
   2 millenniums ago, in a time of uncertainty about the future of the Mediterranean world, Hannibal of Carthage (present day Tunisia) led an army from Spain, across the Pyrenees, across the Alps, in order to invade Rome. Possibly the greatest military undertaking ever, his contingent of 30 000 or more men and about 40 elephants had to contend with landslides, snow storms, hostile barbarian attacks, ...read full article
   
   
5. Engaging employees through story
   A bus driver taking a group of elderly citizens on an outing was amazed at how well they treated him. They regularly offered him peanuts to eat during the journey – his favourite. As he dropped them off after the outing, he said, “That was uncommonly good treatment. Thank you” “Oh, absolutely no trouble” a spokesperson replied, “You see, most of us have false teeth. We can only suck the chocola ...read full article
   
   
6. Customer Service : Of saxophones, robots and waiting lines
   Of Saxophones, Robots and Queues: using stories to build customer service superiority. We have found in our work with corporations that the medium of story is the way to open up meaningful conversations about making service improvement along the service-profit-chain and that the process short-cuts lengthy, difficult implementation. Customer service is about technology, business processes and p ...read full article
   
   
7. The power of story - telling and story listening in business
   An extract from this article, which describes the contents of The Halo and the Noose book: Insights include how stories: •open troubled organizations to lateral thinking, and to imaginative solutions. •invoke a new kind of leadership because they hold multiple meanings. •are open-ended. •raise awareness - the emotional, social and spiritual IQ of a company. •offer a c ...read full article
   
   
8. Working Teams, Teamwork stories
   We live in an age where talented individuals are much sort after by organizations and where tensions are created by increasing workplace diversity, and so the ongoing business - success imperative for high-performing teams is eluding many. It is timely to revisit the basics of dynamic teams that achieve, and the Katzenbach/ Smith model is an excellent startpoint.1 They maintain that team performa ...read full article
   
   
9. A story about story: How to navigate the business through stormy seas
   This article appeared in Facts & Fiction UK, and is posted by the Institute of Management Consultants on their thought-leader web site. The corporate world is sailing through stormy seas, facing waves of change. There are more challenges, more stresses, less time. The article addresses the ways in which mindfulness, imagination and story can help our navigation. Mindfulness can help us to shed p ...read full article
   
   
10. Knowledge Management and Stories
    An article published on the IMCSA Thought-Leader site for management consultants. In many ways KM is about story. Knowledge Management (KM) is how organizations make best use of their intellectual assets. Using their technology, processes and people they dredge for knowledge (sometimes very subjective, tacit and hard to articulate) and spread insights and experience to where it counts and can be a ...read full article
    
    
11. Story Resources for HR practitioners
    An article on how story relates to top HR strategies. Two extracts: “A theory fast gaining popularity is that of Eddie Obeng’s World After Midnight, which argues that because our rate of learning is falling behind the rate of change, unlearning of old paradigms and the adoption of new paradigms and rules are needed to overcome our inherent frailties and blind spots”. “We are all immerse ...read full article
    
    
12. Chasing Charisma
    “The minute you walked in the joint I could see you were a man of distinction…….…” Shirley Bassey There is always, in a room, around a table, at an event, an impressive person endowed with the ability to attract and influence others. Win their hearts and minds, seemingly effortlessly. Human Resource practitioners have been for some time debating this elusive thing called charisma. How does ...read full article
    
    
13. Story and the Unconscious
    How do the concepts of the individual psyche, the collective unconscious, story, mindfulness, imagination and business challenges fit together – and why is this fit important? Imagine a number of wells filled with water. These wells represent the personal unconscious. Deep in the earth these wells draw from a common aquifer that feeds them all. This underground source represents the collective ...read full article
    
    
14. Graham's Story
    Life has its random ups and downs, surprise turns, cycles. Graham’s has been no different. He shares: · EARLY YEARS The kettle, Bookworm escape, The music lesson · ADULTHOOD And the winner is………, Work, Family, Study, Church and Search, Consulting, Set-backs · MELLOW YEARS · DOTE - AGE ...read full article
    
    
15. Stories to ring the changes
    Published in Human Capital Review and selected by Knowledge Resources to feature in one of their forthcoming educational books, the article shows how stories work during times of change and transition – covering: · Stories offer a context for change. · Stories engage. · Stories raise awareness. · Stories open troubled organizations to lateral thinking and to imaginative ...read full article
    
    
16. A forest reborn, and the business of story telling
    “Two weeks ago, Pam and I got back from a woodland vacation in Ontario, Canada. While we were there, we learned the story of the privately owned forest we were staying in, the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. Starting in the 1870s, lumber companies clear-cut the easily accessible white pine stands in the area. Destructive tree harvesting continued until the 1960s, when the forest was so wea ...read full article
    
    
17. Stories are for children
    Stories work at multiple levels for adults and for the child within. A brief extract taken from this article: Scientists are beginning to catch up with what societies and parents have intuitively always known, for example that “stories have such a powerful and universal appeal that the neurological roots of both telling tales and enjoying them are probably tied to crucial parts of our social c ...read full article
    
    
18. Secrets of Top-Class Business Process Design
    The alchemy of successful business process design and redesign is explained, and consists of: · aiming for radically improved business processes that eliminate delays, errors, duplications – and are customer-facing · putting people first · involving those who actually do the work in the design process (using the laboratory methodology) · using new proces ...read full article
    
    
19. The Stone that Resists Fire: Warming the Corporate Soul - corporate governance principles
    Most corporations espouse good corporate governance, ethics and values. Few have entrenched these so that they are lived spontaneously and consistently. Take integrity for example. It is seen to be very necessary, yet a prevalent notion amongst leaders and managers is that displaying integrity or doing what is right for the business, are sometimes in conflict. It’s ‘either/or’ instead of ‘and/both ...read full article
    
    
20. Trees, Words and Work: towards an ecology with metaphor pointing the way
    About tree metaphors, word eco-systems, and work symbolism – a thought-piece that starts with a quote: “A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world”. (Ralph W. Emerson) and ends with a question: How does the Emerson quote that prefaces this article apply to you and your working environment, both what is above and below the ground in that eco-system? Grah ...read full article
    
    
21. Dorian: A story about a story teller
    Dorian’s life and story-telling life – Dorian speaks of many things. Of how he fell into stories, school days, musical appreciation, relationships, falling into a vocation, Life Line counselling times, achieving a PH.D in Literature, opting out of a Professorship, following a passion for working in imagination and creativity……………. ...read full article
    
    
22. Therapeutic value of silence
    Author Reverend Peter Fox is the Spiritual Director at St Luke’s Hospice in Cape Town, where he has led a team of volunteers in the spiritual accompaniment of the dying for the past 15 years. He has a diploma in Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy and is a Board Member of South African College of Applied Psychology, having lectured for them in Grief and Loss since 1998. He is the co -author of Dying : ...read full article
    
    
23. Coping with the loss of a loved one
    We can cope with power outages and the lights going out; we can cope with the interest rate going up; we can cope with water restrictions. But the death of someone we love is often an overwhelming experience. One that leaves us feeling devastated and shattered emotionally. Unable to cope. St Luke’s Hospice Spiritual Director, Peter Fox, outlines the grief process, and provides sound advice, enc ...read full article
    
    
24. Language,Truth and Logic
    Author Ralph Windle is known as The Poet Laureate of the Boardroom (coined by the Financial Times for his long weekly series in the FT and Harvard Business Review). His books include The Bottom Line: A Book of Boardroom Ballads, The Ultimate Guide to the Organisation, and The Poetry of Business Life. He runs www.creativevaluenetwork.com Here Ralph delves into the elusive nature of language ...read full article
    
    
25. Story of The Hero's journey
    “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are …encountered and a decisive victory… won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man”. (Joseph Campbell) As individuals or in groups, our lives, life stages and passages, transitions and events are all journeys. Journeys in w ...read full article
    
    
26. Mindfulness, Mindset, Meaning & 'Magination (Dynamic Future Creation through Story)
    How meaning, mindfulness, mindset and ‘magination can carry business to new heights. Our business intervention process (Grador) makes use of a comprehensive menu of tools, techniques and approaches, strongly underpinned by story and the attributes of mindfulness and imagination. Typically, the course of the intervention journey is project initiation, excitement, early disillusionment, shad ...read full article
    
    
27. Hiking and story
    The Whale Trail is named after the over 100 Southern Rights that return each year to mate and calve in the Indian Ocean waters alongside the De Hoop Nature Reserve. The reserve is some 4 hours outside of Cape Town, and the 5 day slack-pack hike covers 55kms over 5 days. Mainly coastal, the highest point is 611m. Along the way are clear tidal pools with abundant marine life, unique flora, birdlife, ...read full article
    
    
28. An Introduction to Deeper Mindfulness for Better Work Performance
    Published in Training Zone and Civil Engineering magazines. The world of business is increasingly becoming a world of busyness. Frenetic activity, the constant chasing of deadlines, more and more challenges from more and more sources - for many it’s what the Red Queen told Alice: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at le ...read full article
    
    
29. Tapestry of Our Memories
    Visiting our memories with kindness. An address given by Peter Fox, Spiritual Director of St Luke’s Hospice in Cape Town during a pre-Christmas tree – lighting ceremony. If we are being rushed, distracted, distressed and pressured, our memories are not easily accessed. They blur in our consciousness and become opaque. So tonight, find a stillness within even as the carols are sung. Memories ...read full article
    
    
30. A Poem as a Story
    We devote a full chapter of our e-Workbook Story Matters @ Work to poetry. Friend and business connection Ralph Windle wrote the first ever international anthology of business verse: ‘The Poetry of Business Life’. Stories hide in poems. There are narrative poems that tell of a sequenced event in time and space – a ‘what happened next’ story. Other poems offer descriptions or insights into emotion ...read full article
    
    
31. Performance through Innovation – a model that works
    Published in Management Today Journal. A model of leveraging the factors promoting creativity, and using proven techniques, in order to be innovative with products, services, processes, technology. The explanation follows this path: • Jumping Out of the Groove • Capturing the Elements of Creative Thinking? • Using the right tools and techniques to infuse these elements into our work environmen ...read full article
    
    
32. Donkey Tales
    A fun essay on what we can learn from the humble donkey, including a story called The Last Burro, from Baxter Black’s book: A Cowful of Cowboy Poetry. Baxter may be visited on http://www.baxterblack.com ...read full article
    
    
33. Midrash and the Imagination: Fleshing out the Bones of a Story
    Many traditions such as the Jewish midrash, honour the imagination. Midrash involves putting flesh on the bones. Re-telling a story, filling in the gaps in order to expand, and supplying details that are not recorded. Being part of, living a story, and seeing with different eyes. This allows for different interpretations of meaning and personal revelations and insights. Doing a midrash exercis ...read full article
    
    
34. Christ and the Buddha Meet
    A contemplation of an icon by Brother Richard Maidwell of Cape Town: Christ and The Buddha meet. Questions posed are “What do these seemingly opposite religions have in common?”, “What are the possibilities that may be invoked when Christianity meets Buddhism?”, “Could their meeting spark the evolution of a new consciousness throughout the world, and take us to a new awareness of our humanity and ...read full article
    
    
35. Black and White Swans, Black and White Stones: can scenario planning take account of an unpredictable, tumultuous future?
    Published in Management Today and appearing on www.thought-leader.co.za, an article that poses and then begins to answer the question: “Can traditional scenario planning take account of unexpected, catastrophic events?” After considering the role and usefulness of scenario planning in business, the article looks at the recent entry of ‘black swan’ events and how we can mature the scenario process ...read full article
    
    
36. Balancing the brain, balancing the Word
    “Every brain has a story”, writes Jill Bolte - Taylor, a prominent neuro-anatomist, whose left lobe was flooded during a stroke in her middle thirties. In My Stroke of Insight, she tells the story from the inside. As blood flowed from the burst arteries, she could name the left brain functions as they closed down. She came to an understanding of the gifts of both the left – that logical mathemati ...read full article
    
    
37. Hearing God Thinking: Journeying Towards the New World of Work
    Keith Coats who contributed this thought-provoking article is the author of ‘Everything I know about leadership I learnt from the kids’ (Penguin) and has been at the heart of the global leadership conversation for over 15 years in an array of settings, has consulted, presented and taught in countries including China, Russia, the United States, Sweden, Austria, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and Namib ...read full article
    
    
38. Tell to Win and Win and Win:
    Published in Management Today Journal. Stories engage, capture interest. A disquieting trend however is that, as they become more and more used, there is an increasing focus on ‘telling to win’ – that is, to persuade, sell, convince, manipulate. Thus there is a danger of stories being misused, even abused. We believe they should be used primarily to illuminate, convey knowledge and wisdom, raise ...read full article
    
    
39. The Lion and the Ostrich – A Bushmen Story
    After spending a week in the Kalahari desert and encountering a group of bushmen, I wrote this article. Are they an ‘endangered people’ or highly adaptable? Through what lenses do we view them? A traditional bushman story carries one of their key values. ...read full article
    
    
40. The Psychological Power of Storytelling
    Pamela Rutledge on how we connect and thrive through emerging trans-media technologies, and psychological reasons why stories are so powerful. After reading this article you will be convinced that storytelling is a skill worth learning. (Visit http://www.athinklab.com : seeding innovation by learning to see) ...read full article
    
    
41. The Seven Habits of Highly Happy Writers
    Writing is the easist of arts. By reframing our view of our writing ability, adopting the right habits and following the 'creating to editing' process, we can write engagingly. An article for all business writers ...read full article
    
    
42. Let Your 'No' be 'No'
    Most of us find ourselves saying 'yes' when we would really rather say 'no'. We do this because of our own needs, and in response to presuure from others - at home, socially and in the workplace. This article examines this phenomenon and gives guidance on how to improve our lives by saying 'no' when this is appropriate. How to communicate our 'no' assertively. ...read full article
    
    
43. The Orchestra as a Metaphor for Business
    An article contributed by former Conductor Laureate and Composer-in-Residence for the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Hankinson. The first of a series, each addressing a particular metaphor, the article takes a look at the orchestra itself as a business, leadership, teamwork,vision and execution to result in successful service delivery. Workshops are available which include a visit to ...read full article
    
    
44. The Mote and Beam: stories, observation and judgment
    This article examines the nature of judgment, its positive and negative connotations. Judging others. Judging ourselves. Judgment stories that carry wisdom for us. In story - irony, paradox and ambiguity, the three sisters that enrich our life stories, are ever-present in almost every situation............... ...read full article
    
    
45. The question is.................
    At work, in our families, socially: What are the right questions to ask? How should they be asked? The art and discipline of questions ...read full article
    
    
46. The Brain and Branding: build a better brand, boost your bottom line
    The brain - primitive and developed, left and right hemispheres, conscious and unconscious.......and a look at depth marketing and how savvy corporations forge emotional connections, and include the story element to do this ...read full article
    
    
47. The Untapped Potential of Story in a Corporate Context
    Story is penetrating corporate activity to varying degrees in different functions and at different levels. we examine the state of play, offer a rank order of used applications, point to fruitful untapped areas that have bottom-line impact, and advocate the instilling of a corporate-story-culture that takes a careful and deep approach to story. ...read full article
    
    
48. Selecting the right external story practitioner
    In the 1980s and 1990s the management consulting profession came into disrepute as a result of instances of dubious practices, exhorbitant pricing, failing to deliver on promises. As the story movement grows exponentially and there is more and more band-wagoning, will a similar backlash occur, another boom and bust? At this time it is of paramount importance for corporations venturing into story, ...read full article
    
    
49. Creating Synergy through Personal Stories
    In an appealing article Saskia Tjepkema demonstrates very practical ways of eliciting anecdotes and stories in order to address complex situations in the workplace, and arrive at solutions that foster learning and better performance ...read full article
    
    
50. Like Water is Story
    In her article Sue Hollingsworth,Co-Director of the International School of Storytelling and Co-Founder of the Centre for Narrative Leadership lifts the veil off corporate story telling and listening, pointing out that "Stories are like water. They allow us to reflect, to playfully imagine, to become mobile in our thinking. They bring things back to life. They also demand they we engage our powers ...read full article
    
    
51. Collectively Making Sense of Business Situations and Issues
    An examination of sense-making and how it works, the role of narrative, anecdote and metaphor, and an exploration of the frameworks developed by Dave Snowden (Cynefin) and Cynthia Kurtz (Confluence Sense-Making and Participative Narrative Inquiry) ...read full article
    
    
52. Story time: when is an organisation ready to work in story?
    A look at when an organisation is ready to use story. Factors considered are timing, discarding of entrenched (negative) positions, change weariness, embracing both the emotional and the rational. Thoughts are offered on finding a good reason, where to start,what to do. Then selecting the external practitioner and reaping the benefits. ...read full article
    
    
53. Story telling advice for the Intervention Phase of Participative Narrative Inquiry
    We answer questions posed by Cynthia Kurtz, one of the originators of the Cynefin Sense-making framework and who is evolving her Confluence Sense-making Framework, including the process of Participative Narrative Inquiry (PNI). The questions seek story telling advice regarding the intervention phase of Participative Narrative Inquiry, and form a part of her preparation for a forthcoming book. ...read full article
    
    
54. Stories Matter: how to power-up your activism
    Thaler Pekar, a leading authority on organisational narrative talks about the imprtance of story to activists and organisations. She tells how shared personal stories convey information, and make connections at the rational and emotional levels. This article first appeared in On The Issues, a progressive, quarterly feminist magazine. ...read full article
    
    
55. Using Stories to Increase Sales at Pfizer
    Communication Director for a business unit of Pfizer, Inc. with responsibility for Europe and Canada, tells how “anecdote circles” led to an engaged sales force and improved business results - collecting, analyzing, interpreting and taking action to which people were committed ...read full article
    
    
56. A conversation - starter: younger members needed
    We recently carried out an intervention at a well known service club. Their membership had declined over the years to 40, with active membership at about 15. Average age was 75. Their challenge was to transform into a vibrant,growing club, active and relevant in the community, which incorporated the infusion of new, younger members. This article is based on a conversation-starter used during the i ...read full article
    
    
57. Testing, One, Two: how do I know they're listening?
    Kendall Haven, a former senior researcher is a story strategist, consultant, workshop facilitator and master story teller. In this illuminating article he explains what engagement is and how to monitor it, reveals that the American Military has adopted stories,points out that 'a great mass of quantitative, rigorous research positively and unequivocally substantiates the value of story structure an ...read full article
    
    
58. Things are not as they should be............
    Occupy Wall Street, The Arab Spring, riots and protest all over. This article deals with complaint and protest. Should we complain? How much? How vociferous? ...read full article
    
    
59. Hypnotic Story
    We explore ways in which storytellers can apply techniques in order to deepen story-trance-mode; and discuss the ethics related to their application. ...read full article
    
    
60. The scent of a story
    Stories invoke the senses and smell is the least understood - the ugly duckling of the senses. Yet smell impacts on emotions, memory, relationships. Plays a role in the workplace, the marketplace, our well-being. Smell can lead us to 'source'. ...read full article
    
    
61. The Holy Grail Myth, the French Connection, and the Path to our Emerging Future
    Part of being human means inhabiting the cognitive arena, and living our myths or large encompassing stories. The Holy Grail myth informs much of our professional and personal lives. can we - corporation or individual - find it? ...read full article
    
    
62. Ashley's Story: a tale of courage and humanity
    This isn't a business story, but an inspiring story about a young life of service. I came across it when doing some consulting work for Rotary.Help to continue the work that she started ...read full article