I read between 50-70 books a year.
This year, though, I’m not going to recommend my top 10 or similar.
Only one recommendation:

“Made to stick”

If you’re only reading one single book next year.

(I don’t know how many books I’ve read about stylistics, creative writing, narratives etc, however this one beats them all)

When you read it, you’ll know all about the Frank Sinatra-test, Costco and the Salmon example, the inverted pyramid, the theory about identity as the basics in decision making etc.

A book that is what it advocates: simple, unexpected, credible, concrete, emotional and full of thoughtful stories.

For me, the groundwork for life-long learning. Something that influenced me instantly while trying to cancel my train tickets with SJ.  Something that was too late – I had already checked in with my cell phone.  However I managed to get it through by fyllowing the advices in the book – at the same time leaving the personell with a feeling that they helped me for a good cause.

“I have a dilemma.  I’ve planned to visit my parents and have booked tickets for me and my wife, plus two for my children 3 and 5.  Yesterday when I checked in, it was minus 15 celsius and I thought, Ok, that may work.  This morning however, it was minus thirty – what can I do to solve this?”

Instead of complaining about their rigid rules for cancelling tickets.

“Oh, my, I wouldn’t want to go outside in that kind of weather”, the woman answered.

Problem solved.

Money back.

I probably would’ve solved it with earlier strategies also, but rather through anger making the personell helping me out of nothing but terror.

Compliance can easily become abstract and incomprehensible.  Or whatabout: “The ability to reasonably ensure conformity and adherence to organization policies, plans, procedures, laws, regulations, and contracts.”

And the reader is yawning.  It’s something somewhat easy to understand intellectually, but still theoretical and difficult to comprehend – why is compliance important?

But whatabout…

Imagine a house.

That you want to buy.  But you’re not sure if it lives up to legislation, standards and norms for electricity, drains, ventilation etc?

Imagine that you walk into the house, open the front door, pass the jade plants and further into the living room.  You approach the living room window, bring up your smartphone and scan the tag number.  You receive information about the window, the legal requirements, standards and norms as well as how the window lives up to them.

You continue into the bathroom and scan the water and sewage.  As you go through the house you receive information about ventilation systems, electrical installations – time for installation, relevant requirements, results at the last inspection etc.

This is compliance.

To assess whether a company has “the ability to reasonably ensure conformity and adherence to organization policies, plans, procedures, laws, regulations, and contracts.”

Not relevant for all industries.  But for some, vital for their survival – they must be able to show, for a regulatory inspection or in the event of an incident, how their business meets the requirements.

One example is the pharmaceutical industry, another is the nuclear industry.

When it comes to buying a house – probably not critical, although nice to have.

I’ve just initiated a coaching program with two management consultants. It’s a concept I call “make your stories WORK“.  You find it briefly described in my presentation below.

The first step deals with the question – Why storytelling and why should I bother?

The second – What is your strategic purpose with storytelling?

Here, they have their first assignment for tomorrow: Why do you want to become a better storyteller?  Do you wish to become more convincing?  Increase your influence?  More entertaining?  Do you wish people didn’t fall asleep during your presentations?  Or at least not lose their attention  Do you want people to remember more of what you say?  What are your target groups?  Do you already have ideas of what channels you want to use for your storytelling?  What previous experiences do you have ?  Successes?  Setbacks? How do you think other people perceive you?  Where’s your greatest challenge as a storyteller?

Not easy questions, I know.  But most important in order to define your baseline and ambitions to refine your storytelling skills.

A brief analysis of Tom Davenport’s article “Why we don’t care about information overload” from Harvard Business Review.

1.  He wants to be thought provocative – questioning one of the fundamental ‘truths’ about Information Management.  He makes some good points (1-3) where the reader can (at least partly) identify him- or herself, but at the same time includes (insults?) us to a community of information junkies (spam, trash-tv etc).

2.  He deliberately makes no difference between Personal Information Management (infotainment) and professional / business critical Information Management where’s it’s crucial to have the right information at the right time to make the right decision (medical information, control room, board rooom etc, etc). Although he’s highly aware of this distinction, considering his expertise.

My conclusion: Davenport wants attention and he gets it by being provocative in order to stand out in the information overload that he says we don’t care about

Something we will see more of.  Given the exponential growth of information (report from IDC in pdf-format) and the need to understand the information at our fingertips.

Here’s a presentation from Ted India by Hans Rosling – statistical storytelling at the very best (sorry, didn’t get the embed to work)

Gartner also talks about this.  In the article “Business Narratives Supplement Traditional Data Analysis” they give an example from a Service Desk where they gathered data that was difficult to understand.  They put together a task force and elicited stories related to the data.  The result was stories that conveyed solutions that otherwise never had been found – even simple, intuitive solutions that could be implemented directly.

That I’ve published in various magazines over the years.

(sorry, Swedish only)

Short Stories for Christmas
http://tinyurl.com/tomteverkstad2-0
http://tinyurl.com/kravspecjul
http://tinyurl.com/midvintermara
http://tinyurl.com/nastajulblirgron

Short stories for New Years Eve
http://tinyurl.com/detblirettbraar
http://tinyurl.com/genesis2-0

IT Short Stories
http://tinyurl.com/fordengodasaken
http://tinyurl.com/instruktion
http://tinyurl.com/novellenstrax
http://tinyurl.com/kukdator

Other
http://tinyurl.com/dimitar
http://tinyurl.com/stokalitegrann
http://tinyurl.com/farmorochfarfar

I uploaded a presentation about organizational storytelling to Slideshare.

During the first ten days:

• About 2000 views, 23 favorites, 169 downloads
• 7 comments on slideshare
• 10 comments on Facebook
• 3 comments on LinkedIn
• 4 comments on Yammer
• 2 blog comments
• 10 mail with positive response

The response has been mostly positive.

“ The best I’ve seen in a long time. I am dead tired of dry business cases that few can understand and relate to. If you want to create interest and involvement, a good storythat can do it – and if you spice it up with some facts you can get really far”

“Highly interesting and exciting!  A tribute to you R”

“Thanks for a nice run about the opportunities in storytelling. Now it’s just to open the space for stories, harvest and enjoy the fruits …;-)“

The only criticism is about the lack of stories – somehing done deliberately to give a freedom to improvise when I present it orally.  The slides are the foundation from which I improvise for a specific audience, time and place.

For me, there’s a big difference between the digital / visual and the verbal storytelling.  Here it was important to try to involve the reader, bring the problem solver to life and convey a message through emotional images.  If, on the other hand, I want to present it orally, it’s more important who I am, what stories are relevant for that situation – although the message about storytelling would be the same.

An intellectual worker performing some kind of multitasking

Peter Bregman writes about the need of identity diversity – a sort of back up plan if one of them becomes obsolete.  He believes that we’re increasingly identifying ourselves with our jobs and when we meet an obstacle, lose or jobs etc, it’s not just a loss of employment – it’s the loss of identity.  This is why, he says, it’s important to have multiple identities – parenting, hobbies, jobs etc.  My brief reflection, out of literature that I’ve read about burnout: this is a movement away from the agrarian, physical way of work – a society in which we where more identified with what we did, contrary to the more intellectual (in the sense of the inner thoughts) society where we more identify ourselves with what we think.  When our thoughts no longer fit into the business case, the identity is at stake.

Itay Talgram talks at TED about leadership and gives examples from conductors and their leadership styles.  Excellent inspiration for anyone interested in exciting approaches to leadership.

Speaking of inspiration – here’s a clip with two guitarists playing four-handed on the same guitar.  They play partly on different as well as the same strings.  Advanced team work – also, they seem to have a lot of fun.

And then of course, Google Wave – something new and exciting.  For my part, I’m struggling with three issues: 1) I need friends to wave,  2) I need friends with the same interests (preferably a common task or a project),  3) I need friends with similar  interests who have the need right now, in real time.  In other cases, we have asynchronous variants (email, discussion forums etc).  And at the same time, for the synchronous we have telephones, IM, IRL (!) etc.  On the other hand, perhaps the advantage of wave is just that – the combination of the two, i.e. convergence of asynchronous and synchronous into a single application.

So.

Perhaps the idea with Google Wave is this: make our intellectual work more physical, at least in terms of documented in the form of waves, independent of asynchronous or synchronous.  And at the same time, collaboration just as advanced as playing four handed, that will need new and exciting ways of orchestration, or leadership.

Or perhaps it’s just a tool.

What do you think?

Organizational researchers as anthropologists

I just read “A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies”, by Barbara Czarniawska.

Fascinating reading.

I don’t claim to understand everything.

But she helps me look at organizations and organizational research from a different view.  By using narrative concepts.  For me two worlds miles apart – management and literary theory.

She believes that a company mainly produces narrative artifacts.  She mentions the annual report, marketing campaigns etc – but also the products and services – all surrounded by tales of various kinds.  Also, the company itself, its history, present and future, also consists of stories.

She makes parallels to the anthropologists and the study of tribes and races.  How the researcher can view the ‘field’ and collect stories from it, or tell us about the field, or participate in shaping the stories in the field.  She also demonstrates the difficulty in getting into the field – to get sufficient narrative knowledge to understand what the field means, to be allowed to take part of its narration.  She also points on the difficulty, as an anthropologist, to be alienated enough to be able to describe the field from the outside and at the same time have sufficient knowledge to not be an idiot that doesn’t know what he or she is studying. She also points on the difficulty in that, once you have broken into the narrative, break away from it to not make it part of one’s own identity.

For me, very interesting.

In particular, the way I see how my double competencies as a management consultant and literary theorist, can combine the two worlds.  Here I can use my literary instrument in an completely different way.  Not only to analyze literary texts, but also as a way to analyze an organization.

She also discusses the literary texts versus academia.  She believes that the academic text is based on a dialogue with other researchers.  On one hand, a way to strengthen the arguments, on the other, as a means to boast oneself – the more references the better, and the more people that refer to me, the more I’m worth in the eyes of academia.

Perhaps I reduce her complex thoughts somewhat, but I think she means that this is not always good – using brief quotations reduces (!) other academics.  A reduction used only to strengthen the argumentation for something other than was originally intended.

This also seems true in literature – the more literary references, the better (standing on the shoulders of giants).

But what happens to the innovative?

The geniuses with own ideas not based on centuries-old research? Authors who write without any apparent inheritance (Kafka is a great example)

Well.

What I bring with me from this book is primarily the parable of the anthropologist, and the use of literary theories to analyze an organization.

The notion of a company as primarily a producer of narrative artifacts is also an idea will I continue to explore.

The story of the week is about Eilerth.

He was one of my oldes friends since, well, I was two years old.

Great sadness to all.

For my part, I did not have much contact with him during the last fifteen years.  We talked once or twice a year, but somehow we chose different paths in life.  At the same time, I think we had the same motivation in life – the desire for confirmation.  His ways far more destructive than mine though, while I struggled in the path of academia and career.

Anyway.

When I heard he was dead, my first reaction was in indifference.

”That was sad, but … we had almost no contact.”

My second reaction was that of deep sadness.

My whole life flashed by.

My childhood.

My stories.

For me, Eilerth was associated with summer, cristmas holidays, easter etc.  He lived in a small village in the northern parts of Sweden.  In my mind a place filled with light, something to long for during the darker periods of the year, when school was unbearabale, when I was sad, felt isolated and abandoned.

We spent bright summer nights out on the lake where we fished perch and pike.  We played soccer in the midnight sun, watched it sink slowly and hesitantly behind the mountains, only to see it rise again a few hours later.  We stole strawberries, hunted for small birds, drank the ice cold water from the natural water springs, spent the nights in the barn where we wrapped ourselves in blankets and slept on the hard, wooden floor.

I have thousands of stories.

For me, Eilerth was, and always will be, a part of my identity.  He was a bearer of my culture, someone who cared for our shared experiences, our stories.

He had seven sisters and it happened that he called me his brother.

I think it was because we shared the stories.

I hope he knew what he meant to me.

I guess this is another example of story is thicker than blood.