"Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories." -- Mary Cathering Bateson
"Through a story, life invites us to come inside as a participant." -- Stephen Denning
We are delighted to have Steve at the 10th annual Convergence because we've been trying to entice him to join us for several years but our schedules kept missing. Steve has been enormously influential in bringing storytelling into organizations. His eureka! moment came during his time with the World Bank when a 28-word story changed his life.
Steve in a nutshell:
This sharp, crisp left-brained analyst discovered -- just a few years ago -- the warm, fuzzy, right-brained storyteller within.
Now inspires other left-brained types to find the storyteller lurking within them and to tell their story.
Writes novels and Elizabethan sonnets for fun.
Steve shares a bit of his background below.
MY LIFE IN STORYTELLING: CHAPTER ONEThe first chapter of my life in storytelling is very short, although it lasted a long while. More than five decades. You see, I was born in Sydney Australia. I grew up there. Unlike most people, my father did not sit me on his knee and tell me a story. My mother did not put me to sleep telling me fairy tales. I had S.D.S. – Story Deprivation Syndrome.
But I did well at school. I studied psychology and law. I worked as a lawyer in Sydney. I got a post-graduate degree in England.
And then I joined the World Bank in Washington D.C. I was the quintessential analytic manager. Crisp. Clear. Sharp decisions. Stories were the last thing on my mind. These were the things you stayed away from. You needed bottom-line. You needed analysis. Those were the things that got you on. And I got on. I climbed right up the managerial ladder of the World Bank. Stories played no part in chapter one. Stories were not part of my life.
Don't miss Chapter 2 where he tells you how, rather than being fired, he took on a project that had a zero probablility of succeeding. This is where he met his 28-word hero story. And Chapter 3 tells you how he began to connect the dots into a powerful change agent that can be used by anyone in any organization.
Here's a recent article by Steve from HBR.
Steve is the author of two great books:
Squirrel, Inc. -- which will be released later this year ... we hope by Convergence.
and co-author with John Seely Brown, Katalina Groh and Larry Prusak of Storytelling in Organizations, available June, 2004
You can read some of Steve's thoughts on knowledge management on his website.
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