A story from Anecdote

Shawn Callahan offers up a slice of Anecdote's history via YouTube. Shawn's conversational style and wry, frank delivery make this a bit of a must-listen if you're at all interested in narrative-based management techniques.

Narrative

I had the great pleasure of attending a workshop run by the Anecdote crew yesterday with a few other people. I first met Shawn back when he was in the IBM Cynefin Centre and I was impressed by the extent to which they had simplified and refined many of the ideas and added from other sources - such as Most Significant Change.

Key takeaway: narrative management is all about managing with stories rather than the management of stories. You cannot control stories but you can use them to gain a rich-picture understanding of your environment.

One thought: Lauchlan discusses an HBR article on innovation. The overall framework of the authors is useful as a diagnostic - and presumably narrative techniques could be applied to this. Anecdotes around successes, failures & managerial attitudes could be matched to 6 categories: If you have mainly positive stories around a particular area then good! If you have mainly negative stories then something needs urgent attention. If you have few stories then you have an opportunity to create a capability you don't currently have...