Jennifer Frahm Collaborations

Last week I attended a Storytelling for Leaders Workshop run by Shawn Callahan from Anecdote and the Ark Group.  Shawn runs a terrific workshop, and if you are looking for a way to infuse your organisations with compelling stories of change and leadership, you really should be giving him a call. I won’t go into too much detail on what he covers, he has some extremely useful white papers on the website, and he would tell his story much better than I! But one of the things that really struck a chord is the notion of big ‘S’ storytelling and small ’s’ storytelling. Anecdote favours the latter, delving into the little snippets of stories that float around in organisations.

You see, previously in my past academic life, I conducted research on change communication. Storytelling was clearly becoming a popular tool in the change agent’s tool kit, and so fellow change researcher and academic Dr Melanie Bryant (of Monash University) did some work on how change agents can use storytelling during change.

A lot of the work being done in business was focussing on big ‘S’ storytelling; the desire to recast organisational events in the mythic plotlines of Hero, Quest, Happy Ending. This has Melanie and I a little nervous on a number of fronts.

• What happens when employees don’t buy the story?
• What happens when employees can predict the ending?
• What happens when the people don’t identify with the characters?

We both have a tendency to be a little po-mo, and see the world through fragmented lenses.  It struck us that what organisations really needed were change agents who could genre bend. People who were sufficiently flexible enough to mix up the story lines, and the genres, to better meet the organizational needs. Quentin Tarentino was perhaps the master of change?! Anecodote’s small ‘s’ distinction becomes critical in stocking up on the multiple stories of change.

So we started with  conversations about ‘Kill Bill’, and looked at the lessons afforded to change agents and wrote a paper: Kill Bill and the Change Agent.This paper was accepted and presented at the Academy of Management Conference in 2006, in Philadelphia. We are still working on the full journal publication submission, but for now if you can indulge the academic tone, have a read and let us know your thoughts. Would love to hear…