Had a great lunch last week in North Melbourne with Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. We met at the Auction Room which is a relatively new neighbourhood restaurant in the area where Anecdote’s offices are now located. I was able to walk from the Spot Building (where my office has been for the last two weeks — in the Faculty of Business and Economics — more on that later) and continue to be fascinated by my inability to look the right way when I cross the street. So far so good.
There seems to be an interesting connection between design thinking and story telling in the sense that they share caring about being human-centred. Both also use white boards a lot!
Shawn explains story-telling as a way of really getting clear about and communicating strategy. We tend to be insulated from our authentic way of being through years of formal education and over-used communication tools like power-point.
Shawn and his colleagues at Anecdote http://www.anecdote.com “…help leaders create and communicate strategic clarity by turning their business strategy into a story that can be told and understood by everyone in the company.” As their web-site says — recent “cool” projects involve IBM Australia and their technical sales force and Fuji Xerox around leadership development. Their list of clients span government, business and ngos.
There are some great testimonials on the web site — here is an example…
“When we all operate in a world dominated by technological interaction, it is easy to overlook to power of personal interaction. Stories have always played an important role in human interaction allowing us all to find insights and shared meaning. Anecdote helped us to rediscover the power of stories in a contemporary setting.”
Graham Johnson, HR Director, Australia Post
I could imagine Shawn being very successful in the story-telling business — easy to talk with and a good listener. Also a good coach and teacher. I said that I wasn’t sure I could identify what was a story and what wasn’t. Well — he said — glad you asked. Anecdote has develop a story test.
Here is it is: http://www.thestorytest.com/
It is fun and a good lesson in what makes a story useful — in life — not just in business.