Shawn Callahan just gave a great talk at an IKMS evening talk tonight at British Council Singapore. It was great.
The reason I liked his talk so much is because, apart from his stories (of course), Shawn is able to say things concisely and simply: crystallising in a very few simple words thoughts I’ve not been able to form yet about things I’ve been doing, and half-thinking. I was half-aware of these points, they’re totally relevant to my context, but I hadn’t formed them into thoughts, let alone statements. Shawn does this very well. He put into simple words things I ‘know’, but can’t say myself. These simple points resonate with me, so I have to write them here before I forget them. He made the tacit, explicit. Nice one Shawn.
On collaborative tools: “They’re not really collaborative tools, they’re communicative tools. Collaboration is a set of behaviours you might employ when using these communicative tools”. Totally agree.
“Opinions are a push strategy. And what happens when you push? People push back, right? Well stories are a pull strategy.” They’re also more engaging than a presentation of facts or opinion. Early in his presentation, Shawn explained this with a story about a manager who would move away from his computer and sit at another table with a colleague in order to give full attention to the colleague. He told us that when he first shared this story, it had great impact on the behaviours of the managers listening. The managers listening all copied the behaviour of the manager in the story. The same point, as a bullet point in a presentation, would have had little or no impact. But as Shawn says, “stories are plausible”.
Two questions I liked: “Can I do it?”, and “Is it worth it?” The first determines ability or capability, the second, motivation. Beautifully simple. He added that when looking for examples of good stories, find people who are ‘doing it’.
If people are struggling to tell a story, remind them of the key turning points and ask them what happened. Or ask them for the ‘Mood points’ and ask them how they felt at that time. Getting them to draw the event might help them externalise their memories and feelings.
Gossip is a good tool for communicating social information [my feelings exactly - I reckon that even gossip about soap operas has an important social function - exploring, confirming & normalising moral views, etc...]
Stories give permission. Tell a story about something that others have experienced, and they’ll say ‘yeah, that’s what I did. So it must be OK if someone else had the same experience/feeling.’
I had a question about stories, which went something like: “how do you tell a story about lessons learnt on the front lines of a project to senior management so they’ll listen?” My point being, that senior management are often only interested in results, completion and targets met. They might not care too much about the significant changes that have occurred in processes and values that have arisen while completing the project. So how to get this point across to management? Shawn suggested two approaches. First to get the staff involved in telling stories about what they did and why it was worth it (‘can I do it?’, ‘is it worth it?’). Then ask them to keep telling those stories until they become embedded in the project’s success [my imperfect words, not Shawn's]. Second, record the stories and present them to management with the question ‘which of these is most significant/ has the greatest impact’. This, is a great idea. I’ll try this.
Another point Shawn made simply is that being strategic often means knowing how to say ‘no’ to some projects. This is particularly important to me right now, because I’m having to turn down or delegate some great projects – I’m having to say ‘no’.
Shawn’s blog Anecdote has been in my rss aggregator for months, it’s great. I’ve also been following Shawn on Twitter @unorder. It was great to meet him. Thanks Shawn.
And thanks to Patrick Lambe, Green Chameleon & Straits Knowledge for arranging Shawn’s talk tonight. They were both in the middle of a busy schedule giving a masterclass at the Singapore International Storytelling Festival.
