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Engagement and Buy-In: The Use of Stories in Project Management

Engagement and Buy-In: The Use of Stories in Project Management. Larry Forster Shell Exploration & Production Co. New Orleans, LA. Checklists (and all PM tools) are essential…. …but who gets excited about a “check-the-box exercise?”.

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Engagement and Buy-In: The Use of Stories in Project Management

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  1. Engagement and Buy-In: The Use of Stories in Project Management Larry Forster Shell Exploration & Production Co. New Orleans, LA

  2. Checklists (and all PM tools) are essential… …but who gets excited about a “check-the-box exercise?”

  3. Unproductive intellectual debate - When we were stuck (in our heads)

  4. Stories unlocked the door to alignment

  5. “What do I do now…something important just happened…technical skills weren’t enough…I’ve got a story to tell!

  6. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front • Before Up Front • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End

  7. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front - Connect & Align, Inspire • Before Up Front – Let ‘em know who you are • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End - Share Knowledge • Surface Issues • Deal with Issues Be visible to your team, leverage the face to face interactions with geographically dispersed groups, don’t use the phone when you can sit down together.

  8. To Connect and Align: “Tell us about a time when you felt especially challenged…” -from “The Power of Storytelling to Jumpstart Collaboration,” by Seth Kahan www.SethKahan.com

  9. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front - Connect & Align, Inspire • Before Up Front – Let ‘em know who you are • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End - Share Knowledge • Surface Issues • Deal with Issues

  10. To Inspire: Use a Springboard! "In June 1995, a health worker in a tiny town in Zambia logged on to the website for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia and got the answer to a question on how to treat malaria….” Steve Denning, formerly of the World Bank, used the above Springboard Story to launch a world class Knowledge Management program at the World Bank in the mid-1990s.

  11. Manually-read Gauges Paper Records Frequent Field Visits Or, Paint a Picture of the Future!Consider this: 30 Years Ago: Today: • Digital Gauges • Paper? Unmanageable! • Who Has Time? We’re Almost There!

  12. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front - Connect & Align, Inspire • Before Up Front – Let ‘em know who you are • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End - Share Knowledge • Surface Issues • Deal with Issues

  13. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front - Connect & Align, Inspire • Before Up Front – Let ‘em know who you are • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End - Share Knowledge • Surface Issues • Deal with Issues

  14. Where do stories go in a project? • Up Front - Connect & Align, Inspire • Before Up Front – Let ‘em know who you are • At “Important” Milestones • Every Day • At the End - Share Knowledge • Surface Issues • Deal with Issues The comparison of the knowledge-sharing story, vs. the report, on conditions in Bangladesh can be found here: “Story Guide: Building Bridges Using Narrative Techniques,” p. 5, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (DFA). www.sdc.admin.ch

  15. The Power of Oratory

  16. See “The Cognitive Style of Power Point,” by Edward Tufte, for a bulletized version. www.edwardtufte.com

  17. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!

  18. Narrative Ethics • A Sampling • Truth is foremost • Everyone has a story. We hold narrative rights to tell our own story over someone else telling it for us. • Any story that “stories-over” or “stories-out” the people the story is most likely to affect, is narratively speaking, unethical. • No story is innocent. Stories have effects for which we are accountable as tellers and audience. • I must be able to tell the story in front of the people most likely to be affected by it. • -from Paul Costello, Center for Narrative Studies, Washington, DC.

  19. Smithsonian Annual Storytelling Conference Visit www.stevedenning.com for details

  20. The image of the sculpture of Apollo and Daphne can be obtained under license from: akg-images London www.akg-images.co.uk +44 (0)20 7610 6103 A reproduction appears in the October 2008 print edition of Smithsonian magazine, p. 76. The story of Apollo & Daphne, along with a discussion of avoiding the “Apollo Run Amok” syndrome, can be found in: Denning, S., The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2005, pp. 296-300. Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 1598-1680. "Apollo and Daphne". (The nymph Daphne is chased by Apollo and is transformed into a laureltree/ Ovid, Metamorphoses I, 452-567). Marble, height 243cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese. Photo: akg-images London / Pirozzi

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