What kind of hero are we looking for? Tom Thumb who cunningly outwits the giant? Puss in boots who willingly deceives the evil wizard? The Bremen Town Musicians who by cooperating scare away the thieves?
A good story resonates with your audience on more and deeper levels than any, excuse my French, boring presentation on methods and strategy. A good story captivates your audience and will be remembered. It addresses fears and dilemmasn. In short, a good story is exactly what is needed in organizational change. Not so much in the sense that we, the change agents, will use demagogic stories to tell the rest what to do or how to behave. Of course not. But we do know that the road ahead is not easy, we have a hunch of what challenges may be ahead, what kind of enemies to expect. Let’s not keep that to ourselves.
In this practical 2 hours’, hands-on workshop you will walk away with your own fairytale that reflects your wisdom and experience in change. I will tell a bit about what makes a good story and then we’ll quickly plunge into the creative part of looking for metaphors: heroes, treasures and quests. During these two hours I do not want to go into reflections and discussions on how and why storytelling works; or on how stories can be used for sensemaking as well; or on the the situational applicability and so on. This, too, is interesting stuff, but why not do that after this workshop? If your comments indicate that you’re interested in this discussion, we might add another session about the ways to use and the power of stories!
Arjen Uittenbogaard is agile coach and consultant at inspearit and professional storyteller at www.verhalenmaker.nl. At the SEI/IEEE Software Saturn conference 2012 my presentation ‘Mythology for IT Architects’ was awarded with the ‘New Directions Award’. He also proposed the workshop “Improvisation: metaphor and skill.”
Social Web