• Simple – It doesn’t have to be sophisticated – you hear it once and you get it.
• Unexpected – It throws you a curve ball that you weren’t expecting.
• Concrete – It has names and actual events.
• Credible – It sound real.
• Emotional – It gets you in the gut – impactful stories evoke at least one strong emotion.
• Transport – It transports you to where the story took place - you can feel the experience.
• Human – It happens with real people.

I have quoted Charles Savage here before: “Innovation is like humour – it occurs at the intersection of the expected and the unexpected.”  The same principle applies to storytelling. 

One fantastic little story I heard a while ago that embodies these principles is a vignette in Bill Bryson’s book In a Sunburned Country:

In the 1950s a friend of Catherine’s moved with her young family into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to build a house on the lot. Catherine’s friend had a four-year-old daughter who naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door. 

She hung around on the margins and eventually the construction workers adopted her as a kind of mascot. They chatted to her and gave her little jobs to do and at the end of the week presented her with a little pay packet containing a shiny new half crown. 

She took this home to her mother, who made all the appropriate cooings of admiration and suggested that they take it to the bank next morning to deposit it in her account. 

When they went to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her own pay packet. 

‘I’ve been building a house this week,’ she replied proudly. 

‘Goodness!’ said the teller. ‘And will you be building a house next week too?’ 

The little girl answered: ‘I will; if we ever get the f***ing bricks.’

OK, so it’s not original – but I rather like it. Received by email from my son:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican fishing village. A tourist complimented the local fishermen on the quality of their fish, and asked how long it took him to catch them.

“Not very long.” they answered in unison.

“Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?”

The fishermen explained that their small catches were sufficient to meet their needs and those of their families.

“But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“We sleep late, fish a little, play with our children, and take siestas with our wives. In the evenings, we go into the village to see our friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. We have a full life.”

The tourist interrupted, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.”

“And after that?”

“With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”

“How long would that take?”

“Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years.” replied the tourist.

“And after that?”

“Afterwards? Well my friend, that’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the tourist, laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks, and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?” asked the fishermen.

“After that, you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends…”

And the moral of this story is: know where you’re going in life – you may already be there!

Read more about this on the previous post here, or go directly to the full list of the lyrics.

My contribution to this was a musical item.  It was introduced something like this:

Australia actually has a long history in Knowledge Management.  Over a hundred years ago, we had two key practitioners in the field – ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Henry Lawson.  They did some ground-breaking work in conveying knowledge of life in rural Australia to the emerging urban environment. 

They collected knowledge using Anecdote Circles (around the campfire) and delivered it as Springboard stories, often published in a major Knowledge Management publication of the day, The Bulletin magazine.

Tonight, we will look at one of Banjo’s key archetypical characters, Clancy of the Overflow.  Clancy works in an ideal environment as a drover.  The Narrator is contemplating his lot in his “dingy office”. 

We are updating the story: how would these knowledge workers fare in today’s collaborative environment?

To find out, read the full lyrics.  Breaking news: The video is now on YouTube here.

For a CoP to be successful, the community must become part of the practice itself… the community needs to become part of how they do their job.

People in an organisation will just not do things that aren’t part of their job accountability and that they see no point in doing. 

Just today I hit on a really neat metaphor to illustrate this…

These days, I usually work from my home office.  This is a small study off our family room, with a north-facing window (the sunny side in this part of the planet).  One of our cats tends to like to sit with me in the study.  (Her name is “Ares” - this a long story; to do with a once-aggressive cat, and young children that watched Hercules on TV and weren’t concerned about name genders.)

This time of year, sitting on the window sill in the sun is a favourite spot, but she also likes to sit on the desk beside me (often in the way of the mouse, ironically).  Another favourite spot is on top of the PC monitor (I still have a CRT monitor). This blocks the cooling vents, of course, and she will only stay here for so long before getting too hot, so she migrates from one spot to the other.

When I am the only one in the house during the day in the cooler months, I turn down the central heating, turn on a small heater in the study, and close the door. 

The door, however, doesn’t latch properly.  So, if Ares is outside the study, she will simply push the door open, walk in and take up one of her accustomed spots. This exposes me to a draught of cold air, and I need to get up and close the door.  (She is happy enough to go to the door and wait for me to open it when she wants to leave the room.)

Here – finally – is the point of this story.  Ares is quite happy opening the door for herself, but she never closes it again.

Why not? Because it is not part of her practice.  There is no way that it will ever be in her interest to close the door, thus – even though she would be physically capable of it – there is no way that I could ever teach her to do it. She would be incapable of even comprehending a need to close the door.

If you are ever trying to encourage your community to do something, just think about what you are expecting of them, and how they would view the task you are asking them to perform.

————

PS: When my mother was a child living in the bush in the Otway Ranges in western Victoria, the family had a horse that had learnt to open a gate, go to a water tank, and turn on the tap to get a drink of water.  Needless to say, the horse never bothered learning to turn off the tap or shut the gate, either…

“… I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”

(If you are out there, Yorick, I hope you don’t mind me posting this.  I’m not making fun of you, but I do wonder about your parents’ taste in names…)

• The lunch menu has been rearranged to rank dishes by popularity.
• Monday night (normally the slowest night) is now Game Night.  Bring your own board game, use one of theirs, or play the Trivia questions on the big screen TV at the bar.
• Sign up online for the Networking Lunch, and have lunch with five randomly-selected strangers.
• For an instant party, bring your own iPod.  They provide the private room, food, dance floor and the iPod DJ sound system.  They’ll even play your photos on their laptop and big screen TV. (Almost forgot to add this item!)

Neat ideas – where else could you apply this sort of thinking?

Mistake makes ‘iPhone girl’ a celebrity

“A Chinese factory worker has become a celebrity after her smiling face was accidentally loaded onto an Apple iPhone and shipped to the other side of the world, her employer has said.

“The unidentified worker flashed a smile and made a peace sign to a co-worker whose job was to test the device’s camera in the southern city of Shenzhen, said a spokesman for Foxconn, which assembles the phones for Apple.  The woman’s colleague apparently forgot to delete the photo from the phone, which was sold to a consumer in Britain, who posted it [to MacRumors.com] on the Internet, Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun told AFP on Wednesday.”

Apparently Apple have no plans to adopt this as standard practice, but this raises an interesting question:

“As one person wrote in an Internet post: ‘It would be great for every Chinese worker who makes your iPhones to take a snap of herself or her factory friends … a hello from a person you would never otherwise meet.  Globalisation in practise.’”

A new social networking technology?

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.  Also, set up a system of cold water sprinklers over the whole cage.

Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs to climb towards the banana.  As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. The monkey will leave the banana alone and try to get away from the water.  Turn off the spray.

After a while, another monkey will make an attempt with the same result. Pretty soon the monkeys will get sick of getting wet, and will stop any of the monkeys from attempting to climb the stairs, even though no water sprays them.

Keep this up for several days.

Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. Even the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Some (and eventually all) of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the monkeys in the cage have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why is this?

Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here…

———————

This story appears in a few places on the web – one is on the Wow Zone site.

The thing that I would really like to know is whether or not this was ever performed as a real experiment, or if it has only ever been a thought experiment.  Either way, though, it seems to be a powerful illustration of the pitfalls in standardised work practices and bureaucracy.  This is another topic that Shugg wrote about recently, too.

When will we learn to keep a constant eye on the things we do to ourselves in most organisations?

(Thanks, Nerida!)