Leadership and Management

Without storytelling, it would be difficult to imagine how an organization could pass on collective wisdom, teach new members how to behave and what it means to belong, and convey the knowledge needed to succeed in the corporate world.

Through our work, the International Storytelling Center helps corporations, non-profit institutions, and government agencies how to use storytelling to enhance leadership, strengthen management practices, and, in the end, increase productivity and profitability.

A Success Story...

When the World Bank realized a few years ago that sharing information was as important as loaning money, the 15,000 employees of the massive international agency were reluctant to embrace the concept.

Wanting to convince them of the wisdom of this shift in thinking, Stephen Denning, director of the World Bank's knowledge management program, tried charts and graphs, rational reports. Nothing worked. Then he told a simple story about how a health worker in a remote region of Zambia logged on to the website of the Center for Disease Control and obtained a treatment protocol for malaria.

The story, as Denning told it, took 29 words, and it made everyone at the World Bank sit up and take notice. Finally, knowledge management made sense to them. They could quickly understand how much the CDC valued accessibility to knowledge and what that meant to a people on the other side of the world. They were then ready to see the charts and graphs.

"A good story," says Denning, "efficiently and powerfully conveys knowledge that often cannot be communicated as effectively in other ways. Stories are powerful because they show us rather than tell us, dramatically enacting a truth that can move us and influence the way we see things."