"The marketplace is demanding that we burn the policy manuals and knock off the incessant memo writing: there's just no time. It also demands we empower everyone to constatly take initiatives. It turns out stories are a - if not the - leadership answer to both issues."
--Tom Peters

Important Reminder
Be sure to renew your SIO SIG membership ASAP! Our list indicates that many of you have not yet updated on the new membership payment plan. So, please contact NSN to find out what you owe.

Urgent Needs
Kate Dudding will be retiring as our webmaster following the Conference, so we need someone who is willing to take over the website. Kate has it set up and will help with the transition, so please e-mail her ASAP with your willingness to help with this important job.

Kathy Flanagan is relinquishing her role as listserv manager, so if you have an interest in building community through meaningful conversation with the group, please volunteer for this position. We need your help!

Chris King, Editor

Find out more about Story Telling in Organizations....

	SIO SIG Launches Lunchtime Learning
Lunchtime Learning Call Offers Diverse Perspectives on Using Story By Paula Bartholome On April 12th at high noon Central time three diverse uses of story will be explored on the inaugural Lunchtime Learning Call of the SIO SIG. Each presenter will introduce him/herself and their topic with posts on April 1 on the SIO SIG listserv. With your responses and questions these posts will begin the conversations leading up to the call on April 12th. Sara Armstrong is an independent consultant who focuses on integrating educational technology into the curriculum. She helps teachers and students create and use digital storytelling to share among themselves and to enhance their understanding of subjects they are studying in the classroom. Peter Engstrom uses story to identify and capture tacit knowledge thought for Science Applications International Corporation's (SAIC) clients. SAIC is the nation's largest employee-owned research and engineering company, providing information technology, systems integration and eSolutions to commercial and government customers. Michelle Howard works in Research for Conkling Fiskum & McCormick, a public affairs and strategic communications consulting firm. She gathers stories from focus groups to incorporate into information her clients can use to inform various constituencies and gain their vote on particular issues as well as to help clients craft crisis communication strategies and messages. This session promises to hold your attention and provide you with great insights on three distinctly different ways members are using story. And this call can be a great way to introduce others to the power of storytelling! Invite colleagues, clients or bosses to join you in a conference room over a brown bag lunch and a speakerphone. (Please do mute the speakerphone though, to reduce the background noise for others on the call.) You may find that you continue your conversation after the call ends! Lunchtime Learning programs are free and a benefit of your SIO SIG membership. To register, email kate@parallax- perspectives.com by April 10th and you will receive the call in number and password. Don't miss this great opportunity to learn from people who are doing the work! PS - we are looking into how to record the call to accommodate our international members (time difference) and others who are not able to participate in calls at this time. Watch for more information on this!

	SIO SIG Pre-Conference PR Plan
PR Plan Needs a Coordinator or Co-Coordinators By Sara Armstrong As you know, with hard work on the part of a number of members of our group, plans are well underway for the upcoming Pre-Conference event at the NSN Conference in Bellingham in July. Be sure to register soon: early bird discount Conference prices are in effect until April 30! One of our biggest efforts, however, is promoting the Pre-Conference and Conference. Volunteers have come forward, but we still need a coordinator. A number of efforts are getting underway, including a group of students from Western Washington University who will take on publicity as a project. The draft PR plan developed by Paula Bartholome and Evelyn Clark is quite specific and will guide us all. I am hoping that a coordinator from among us will step forward very soon, so that we can better organize the plans to inform people about the wonderful opportunity they have to learn, share, and participate in this summer event. If you can take on this role, or share it with someone else, please let me know as soon as possible. E-mail me at [email protected]. This summer's Pre-Conference will be the best yet! Let's work together to get the word out and fill the house.

	The Storytelling, Self, Society Conference
The SSS Conference: Building a Bridge between the Why and the How By Molly Catron, Organizational Consultant and Storyteller It was a beautiful, balmy weekend in south Florida for the first Storytelling, Self, Society Conference, an Interdisciplinary Conference of Storytelling Studies. The conference was held on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. Caren Neile, Healing Arts SIG Member and Director of the Florida Storytelling Project planned the event aimed at building a bridge between academic researchers and the practitioners focused on story. Gioia Timpanelli kicked off the conference with an inspirational keynote bent at reminding us of power of the oral tradition. She said, "Story is either the stone we find or the soup we make." She set the tone for a weekend of collaboration featuring the leading minds in academic research and application from multiple disciplines including: storytelling, arts, narrative studies, communication, sociology, psychology, healing arts and business consulting, just to mention a few. Paula Bartholme, Madelyn Blair, Karen Dietz and I represented the SIO SIG on a panel to discuss the application of story in organizations. After sitting through several sessions following the academic protocol of reading papers, our group broke the rules (surprise, surprise) and changed the format for our panel to include audience participation. The resulting change led to a lively discussion generated by questions asked by the participants. The following is a list of the questions: What are some useful models by which informal leaders can tell stories that will affect more humane and open listening leaders? How do you structure the moment to do the telling? In all organizations, there will be negative as well as positives. How do you go about pulling the positive stories out? How do we start the dialogue in a large organization? How do you turn the recounting of an event into a story? How can story be used to create common ground to pass information up and still keep the decisions where they need to be? Where in the organization is the leverage? If an organization is reticent to change, how do we get them to change? All four of us agreed on the fact that working with each other to field these questions was our favorite thing about the conference. We have a lot of respect for each other and each of us brought a different perspective to the subject of story in organizations. Madelyn, Karen, Paula and I focused on Knowledge Management, Change Management, Leadership Development, and Corporate Culture, respectively. The change of format for the panel actually gave the researchers a new model for presenting information by stimulating participation rather than reading the material. We agreed that this was a compact, well organized conference featuring a high level of quality, intelligence, and insight in the understanding and application of story. There was a wonderful sense of warmth about the people which fostered a safe environment for sharing and learning. The results of the SSS Conference will be featured in a journal http://courses.unt.edu/efiga/SSS/SSS_Journal.htm , providing a publishing opportunity for our work. It will also provide a central home for research activities in storytelling across disciplines. So, get out your APA Guidebook and start writing! We encourage you to mark this on your calendar for next year! It was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate across disciplines and to broaden our own knowledge of story and all the possibilities for the powerful use of it to change our world for the better.

	SIO SIG Pre-Conference Update
Mary Alice Arthur from New Zealand writes that, "Things are moving along for the Storytelling in Organizations Pre-Conference!" And, it is just sounding more interesting as we move toward July. On the evening of Tuesday, July 6th, we will experience the cutting edge theory and practical business applications for stories from Dave Snowden, head of IBM's Cynefin Center for Complexity. But that will just be the beginning of our adventure. In the morning of July 7th we will start our interactive day of learning, thinking, investigating and sharing with "The Great Exchange" - which will feature facilitated small group meetings where participants will exchange business cards and talk about their areas of interest. This will be followed by the "World Café - the Field of Organizational Storytelling" where during discussion groups, we will discuss all aspects of the emerging field. Richard Stone of StoryWorks will present The Future of Storytelling in Organizational Life. Read all about his impressive involvement with organizational storytelling in the following newsletter article. We will wind up the morning session with a "Storytelling and Technology" panel discussion - which will be continued into the first session after lunch. Kevin Brooks writes, "I think the panel will be fascinating, as all three panelists come from industry and are concerned with different applications and methods of story creation." The panel will include Jack Park who creates software algorithms for complex gaming systems, particularly in multi-user virtual reality environments. Dave Snowden, our knowledgeable Tuesday night speaker, will also take part. And, the third panelist will be Po Chi Wu, who is a California based venture capitalist currently co-directing a software company called StoryManager, that produces story generation assistance software for business execs to help them clarify vision, improve market position and manage communications implementation. The rest of the afternoon will consist of a choice of intensive workshops. We will highlight the presenters and their topics in the next SIO SIG Newsletter (May/June 2004). Keep tuned! Just remember that this is the pre-conference for the rest of the National Storytelling Network Conference that starts the Wednesday evening of July 7th and ends at noon on Sunday, July 11th. Mark your calendars now for this special week in Bellingham, Washington, this summer. You will be glad you did! National Storytelling Network 2004 Conference Information »

	Meet Pre-Conference Presenter Richard Stone
Richard Stone is the president and founder of the Storywork Institute, and has been a pioneer in the development of story-based programming experiences for organizations around the country, as well as team building, leadership development, and strategic planning programs for corporate clients such as Kaiser Permanente, Walt Disney Imagineering, Kraft Foods, and Lucent Technologies. Richard has also been a nationally recognized presenter. His talks focus on the power of storytelling to transform healthcare, healing relationships, and enhance a culture of caring. He is the author of two books: Stories: The Family Legacy, a guide for sharing and recollection, and The Healing Art of Storytelling. Most recently, Richard founded the Imagine This! Company, an organization that is developing television, educational curricula, and home based games and activities based on using storytelling as a tool to enhance the literacy and imaginative skills of children ages 8 to 15. In addition, Richard developed the Disney Institute's initial StoryArts curricula, as well as taught at the Institute once the facility opened in 1996; instructed parents through his program Healing the Family Circle Through the Art of Storytelling; has served as an adjunct professor at both the University of Central Florida and Valencia Community College teaching courses on storytelling and its applications in community life; developed an innovative curriculum for the YMCA of the USA to teach the art of storytelling to staff and volunteers responsible for financial development; taught narrative approaches to strategic planning at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, VA for clients such as the U.S. Agency for International Development; assisted one of the nation's largest pediatric practices, Nightime Pediatrics, in Salt Lake City in the development of a book entitled Nightime Stories that contains stories reflective of their core values and principles, and consulted with the Fetzer Institute in the development of a collection of stories that exemplify Relationship-Centered Care. Richard serves on the National Boards of Directors of the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN, and the Spiritual Eldering Institute in Boulder, CO. In a previous career, Richard was the president of Stone/Golabuk Marketing & Advertising in Orlando, Florida. The Storywork Institute »

	Use of Story in Business and/or Organizations
In each issue, we plan to profile a SIO SIG member or members so that we can share the unique ways others in our group have used and are using the power of story in business/organizations. My Approach A Live Profile of Consultant, Author and Storyteller, Annette Simmons I decided seven years ago that I would not do any "marketing." I have a degree in marketing and if I did all the stuff I know how to do to "sell" my services, I'd have precious little time to do useful research, write books, or design and test interventions. I decided to operate on faith - a "build it and they will come" faith that if I created exceptional experiences (written and oral) people would seek me out. I was 36 at the time and I decided I'd test this theory out and if I failed, I was still young enough to start over again. I made $7000 my first year out. Thank goodness the next few years were dramatically better. What this means on a daily basis is that I do not contact potential customers. I don't have a customer database. I don't do follow up calls. It is a rigorous discipline that I began in 1997 when my services centered on helping decrease turf wars and facilitating dialogue. My thought was that if my book was good enough - they would call me. If my course was good enough someone would pass along the information. If my speech was good enough people would talk. Contrary to what I was taught as a new consultant - I also do NOT spend too much time tailoring proposals to "customer outcomes." "Customer outcomes" are often part of the problem and lasting solutions rarely have much to do with the presenting problem. For instance, the flailing IT implementation that was "solved" by a dialogue dominated by stories of people who didn't say hello in the morning. This was their metaphor for lack of respect and revealed the real reason people weren't cooperating with the IT implementation. They weren't going to cooperate with anyone who didn't respect them enough to say hello in the morning. After the dialogue people started saying hello and viola' the IT system implementation ran much smoother. The core problem for most organizations seeking our help is a lack of trust - trust in self, trust in the organization and/or trust in peers, boss, subordinates. All of my research has been focused on questioning the varieties of "you aren't trustworthy" assumptions people have about themselves, the organization and each other. Story is a great way to walk people away from what they think is wrong and find the real problem. My storytelling workshop attacks specific faulty assumptions about influence. For instance: The assumption that if you were "good enough" you could influence anyone to do anything - like "sell ice water to Eskimos." That is a lie. People who believe that are in danger of following false prophets (and coming across as insincere). The story of King Midas helps us see that 100% influence is 100% isolation. King Midas can't eat and he kills his daughter when he goes to pick her up. I use other stories to debunk other faulty assumptions like that one and then help people find sustaining stories of hope that reframe frustrations as "small stuff" not to be sweated. We use story to examine the psychology of influence. When I have "free" time I use that time to donate my services. This has the double benefit of helping me test my theories AND giving more people an experience of who I am and what I do. I'm working with homeless using PhotoStory (on my website), on a steering committee that will use storytelling training for women in Afghanistan, and on Saturday I flew in a professional storyteller to run a workshop at my church. To learn more about Annette's approach, be sure to read her book, The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of Storytelling. Editor's note: We want your profiles! Let us know how you use storytelling in business and/or organizations. Just e-mail me at [email protected]

Quick Links to Useful Storytelling Sites

International Storytelling Center National Storytelling Network