Stephen Denning, author of The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations and the head of knowledge management at the World Bank, maintains that stories engage listeners as participants, rather than spectators. The story invites them to join the experience, and to grow from it. Mr. Denning argues that listeners co-create the story. They actually visualize themselves acting on the mental stage the storyteller has set up.

Mr. Denning’s goal was ambitious. He wanted the anecdotes he told to stir fresh ideas among the staff about how, placed in analogous situations, they would triumph over problems similar to those described in the stories. Yet Mr. Denning says the story he used in 1996 to launch his change effort was based on the slimmest material. It didn’t even come from the World Bank. A colleague told Mr. Denning how a health worker in Kamana, Zambia, was struggling to find a solution for treating malaria. In this tiny and remote rural town, the health worker logged on to the Web site of the U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and got an answer.

“This true story happened, not, as if in a fantasy, in 2015, but in June 1995,” Mr. Denning recounted. “This is not a rich country: It is Zambia, one of the least developed countries in the world. But the most striking aspect of the picture is this: [The World Bank] doesn’t have its know-how and expertise organized so that someone like the health worker in Zambia can have access to it. But just imagine if it did!”

Mr. Denning knew he didn’t have to spell out his entire message. World Bank employees, who work in the most impoverished locales on earth, could picture themselves elbow to elbow with poor professionals like that health worker. They knew what it was like to be asked a question by a local worker and not be able to give the kind of answers expected from a World Bank employee. By helping employees paint this scene in their minds, Mr. Denning made them realize that the status quo was untenable, which encouraged them to take action.

See the full article in strategy+business:  http://www.strategy-business.com/magazine/

You have to go through a simple (but free) registration process to get in.
Once you're registered, you can go direct to the article by clicking here:

The review covers:

 Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up
(HarperCollins Publishers, HarperBusiness, 2002)

 Stephen Denning, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in
Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000)

 Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass
Culture (Broadway Books, 2001)

 Yiannis Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and
Fantasies (Oxford University Press, 2000)

 Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in
Your Work and in Your Life (Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998)

 Doug Lipman, Improving Your Storytelling: Beyond the Basics for All Who
Tell Stories in Work or Play (August House, 1999).

 Jack Maguire, The Power of Personal Storytelling: Spinning Tales to Connect
with Others (Penguin Putnam Inc./Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1998)

 Bill Mooney and David Holt, The Storyteller’s Guide: Storytellers Share
Advice for the Classroom, Boardroom, Showroom, Podium, Pulpit and Central
Stage (August House, 1996).

 Peg C. Neuhauser, Corporate Legends & Lore: The Power of Storytelling as a
Management Tool (McGraw-Hill, 1993)

 Annette Simmons, The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of
Storytelling(Perseus Publishing, 2000).

Worth a look.