story

Release Control of the Corporate Narrative—and Reap the Rewards | IABC World Conference

What lesson does Disney’s Frozen have for internal communicators?

In the lead up to the IABC World Conference, this came up in the conversation with Natasha Nicholson, Executive Editor of IABC’s CW Magazine about how transmedia storytelling is changing the game for internal communication.

We discuss the difference between stories and story worlds, seeing the corporate story from multiple perspectives and the idea that sometimes, communicators need to ‘let it go’ when it comes to trying to control the message.

A good story is still a good story, but the ways in telling it are now very different and the ways of sharing it are a lot more open.

Release Control of the Corporate Narrative—and Reap the Rewards | IABC World Conference.

The full interview runs 14 minutes and is available here.

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Why comms plans fail: understanding complexity and the breakdown of narrative

Internal communication is a Frankenstein’s monster of practices, disciplines and theories. Part corporate communication, part change, part behavioural science, part craft. Increasingly it seems that the smartest thinking in internal communication is coming from fields outside of the traditional communication space. Cognitive studies, data, technology, knowledge management, UX, design and anthropology are providing new ways of sense-making.

A great case in point is the intersection of design thinking, user experience (UX) and progress in neuroscience. Dave Snowden is the founder of Cognitive Edge, and in this talk at LEANUX14 provides a potted introduction to complexity theory. He does a pretty solid job of demolishing the traditional approaches to communication and change through establishing a change vision and defining the future state, arguing that humans – and organisations – are far too human and complex for that to work.

Keynote: It’s the Process, Jim, But Not As We Know It – Dave Snowden at LEANUX14.

There are many notable things here, but I love these quotes about how we sense make through story.

You manage what you can manage, and you don’t waste time and energy pretending you can manage things in an ordered and structured way when the world is more complicated than that.

Stories are unique to human beings. People remember a story, whereas they don’t remember a document or a best practice tear sheet.

The stories that profoundly influence us though are not the stories told in highly facilitiated workshops by new age fluffy bunny consultants who really get their rocks off by getting more profound stories than anybody else. They are actually the day to day micro fragmented narratives of the water cooler, the school gate, the checkout queue, the beer after work. It’s those small micro fragments which fundamentally influence who and what we are…we recall those stories as if from nowhere in contextual need.

All human storytelling traditions (until Disney got hold of them) are deeply negative dark stories because we learn from failure, we don’t learn from success.

Snowden’s explanations of how organisations as complex systems naturally resist and defy the attempt to change them in a linear way is thought provoking stuff and points to why so many communication efforts fail abjectly. He provides some cautions in terms of how designers, Lean and UX practitioners approach change.

  1. Stop mandating idealistic and ideological future state models
  2. Don’t try to replicate without taking into account context
  3. Over-simplifcation is the enemy, face the complexity
  4. Rebranding is disingenuous
  5. “Pragmatic compromise should not lapse into prostitution”
  6. Compromising excessively is as bad as not compromising at all…
  7. Don’t replicate the how, unless you know the why

There is much here that applies directly to internal and change communication and (at the risk of falling into the trap of the second point). It’s worth spending the time to explore this disruptive view which is a challenge to the traditional approaches adopted by many communication practitioners and a way of seeing organisations as they are, rather than how we want them to be.

A big HT to @semanticwill for RT:

Is Adobe Voice really a storytelling app?

When the interwebs went a little crazy for the announcement of Adobe Voice, the new iPad-based ‘storytelling’ app, my first reaction was skepticism. After all, ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ are terms that get bandied around a LOT. Rather than be critical initially, I deleted a snarky tweet, went to the app store and gave it a try.

Wow. Let me repeat that. Wow. I created my first Voice in about 15 minutes. I’m not saying it’s going to win a Golden Lion, but as an example of what this can do a tool for pulling together an idea rapidly, you’ll get the idea.

As an occasional gadget geek, I have like shiny objects. But immediately I can see this has some real potential for helping people structure messages, think through what they want to say and get ideas across in a simple way. There are a variety of basic story structures to select from; promote an idea, explain a concept, share a personal experience, and even the classic hero’s journey. There are a selection of visual themes, the ability to draw from a broad range of icons, or the options to draw in files from the cloud, from Facebook or take a fresh pic on the spot. It is a very intuitive interface.

I’m excited by the potential something like this has for capturing ideas and helping people share their stories within organisations. In fact, I predict a Prezi like rush on people putting this to use. I’ll keep experimenting and save a longer post when I get some feedback from other #comms and #internalcomms folk.

In the meantime, give it a try and let me know how you would use this in your communication toolkit.

Note: I have no affiliation with Adobe and this is review is an independent perspective. 

Three types of stories encourage workers to be safe

Workplace storytelling is a powerful and effective tool for improving safety culture, because it’s more likely than “information and instruction” to provoke emotion and encourage workers to act, says communication expert Jonathan Champ.

Founder of communication consultancy Meaning Business, Champ – who is presenting a webinar for OHS Alert subscribers next week – says stories are “great for explaining the ‘why’ of a situation” and painting a picture of incidents.

They also create an emotional connection between workers and an issue.

“Sharing lots of stories of ‘what happened when we did this’, or ‘this is the problem we were having and then this is how we solved it’, is a really strong way of reflecting that culture is changing or that culture is developing,” Champ says.

Three types of stories that help improve workplace safety are warnings, quests and tragedies, he says.

He recommends storytellers – that is, anyone responsible for sharing safety messages – consider children’s fairy tales, which are “often very cautionary in nature”, when sharing stories.

“There’s an inherent human love of a bit of danger or a bit of risk, and a desire to alert people and say ‘look out over there, behind you’,” he says.

“The cautionary tale… is a really powerful tool.

“People engage with the idea that there was a problem or something went wrong, or there was harm or some form of risk.

“Finding ways to be able to illustrate ‘this is what happened, this is what the risk was, and this is what we did as a result’, is a very natural frame for being able to bring that [story] to life.”

People also enjoy listening to “quests” (how someone got from point A to point B), Champ says.

These kinds of stories should be shared when, for example, a safety campaign is held in the workplace. They show what the safety culture is like at the beginning of the campaign and the process of improving that culture.

Stories of workplace safety tragedies, meanwhile, provoke emotion in workers, which has been shown to drive behaviour, Champ says.

Storytellers need to ensure that no matter what type of story is told, it is credible, and ideally based on truth, he says.

Information versus storytelling

The “big difference” between storytelling and information sharing is that workers are involved in the storytelling process; providing information is “instructional and dry”, Champ says.

Information that is sent out as an instruction, process or guideline, and says “this is what needs to happen”, doesn’t reflect how people interact in their day-to-day environment, he says.

Stories help workers see themselves in a situation.

“Stories are how we make sense of the world… We’re kind of hardwired to take things in a story format,” Champ says.

In OHS Alert’s free subscriber webinar on “effective safety communication” next Wednesday, Champ will explain how to:

  • create an appetite for essential safety information;
  • amplify the safety message across all channels;
  • structure communication campaigns for the long haul; and build a committed safety culture.

The webinar will include a 20-minute Q&A session – click here for more information or to register.

This blog first appeared on OHS Alert.