I’m off to California for a couple of days. Fortunately, Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom came in yesterday’s care package from Amazon. Now, I’ll have something to read on the flight.
I’ve also just started Steve Dennings’s The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Denning used to be at the World Bank and launched their knowledge management initiatives. He discovered that effective storytelling was a central element in getting from the notion of knowledge management to some actionable organizational change. Not too long ago I got an email from one of my former partners at DiamondCluster reminding me of how I used to used Doc Searls “It’s the Story Stupid” to anchor my efforts to teach consultants how to find a compelling story buried in their data and analyses. Consultants always want to tell you about all the interesting work they’ve been doing instead of getting to the point. It takes a long time to break them of that habit.