Storytelling In The News: #135
Summary of storytelling in the news for April 2004
April 30, 2004
April 2004 furnished another rich and fascinating tapestry of the impact of storytelling in the news. Despite the intent here to focus mainly on business stories, the business news was significantly affected by both politics and the war in Iraq, and the interplay between them.
Explicit consideration of the role of organizational storytelling
One of the striking things about storytelling in the new in April 2004 was the number of explicit news about storytelling itself.
* On April 24, 2004, the Global Province noted the growing role of storytelling in business
129.
* On April 25, 2004: I gave a web interview on using PowerPoint to empower your story
130.
* On April 28, Investor's Business Daily featured a piece on organizational storytelling as a leadership tool: 133; with references to the The Smithsonian Associates
organizational storytelling weekend, which was also covered here in
122 and 123.
Knowledge sharing stories: the difficulty of learning from the past
Another theme of the month concerned the difficulty learning from stories about the past.
* On April 5, 2004, in the midst of the 9/11 commission debate about why the US didn't
respond to the threat of terrorism earlier, we looked at the widespread complacency in
the face of plausible stories US economy: disaster scenarios:
110
* On April 21, we looked at the claims of Eli Lilly & Co to be learning from mistakes and
failure
126
* On April 26, we looked at the exuberance of those who, having lost their
shirt when dot-com burst, may risk losing their trousers in the upcoming Google IPO:
131
* On April April 29, we looked at the great difficulty that human beings have in seeing
the likely evolution of events, when everyone else is telling "bad news" stories. When
Carl Icahn was able to do so in the case of ImClone, he made a profit of $250 million:
134
On April 6, we noted the important endorsement by the New England Journal of Medicine
of the role of narrative medicine
111
Future Stories
Future stories played a prominent role in the April 2004:
* On April 2, the publication of the March job data sparked positive storytelling
and a stock market market rally
107
* On April 3, we noted that competing storytelling at the National Australia Bank (NAB)
led to very different versions of the future story of that organization:
108
* On April 12, we looked at the increasingly positive future stories that economists were
telling each other:
117
* On April 23, we looked at the competing future stories of the impact of higher
interest rates
128
* On April 27, we examined WTO's preliminary decision against the US on cotton subsidies
and the $300 billion that this story has put in play:
132
Stories about values
Stories about values were also prominent, particularly stories about honesty:
* On April 7, 2004, we took a critical look at the implicit values in a
Harvard Business Review article praising hardball strategies (a.k.a. stories)
112
* On March 26, we had looked at the difference between personal honesty i.e.
telling the whole truth, including those elements that are perhaps less flattering
to the person or supporting arguments they may be making; and the more limited
organizational honesty i.e. being "factually accurate as far as the statement
goes," with the possibility, if not the probability, that elements less flattering
to the organization or not supporting the organization's. On April 9, we looked at
Dr. Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission from this perspective:
114
* On April 20, we looked at the issue of institutional spin in business
and the huge cost of lying
125
* On April 10, we looked at the crucial role of individual persistence in
successful innovation in biotech research:
115
Stories of identity
Stories of branding and identity are ever-present in the news:
* On April 4, we examined the differences between a linear vs a cyclical view of
storytelling and the implications of creating a new story involving personal or
organizational change
109
* In the story on April 6, about narrative medicine, we noted that it involved
doctors acquiring a new sense of identity:
111
* On April 22, we looked at the stories that customers have about two cell
phone companies, and the huge impact of the difference -- in April 2004 -- between
the story that "Samsung is hot" while "Nokia is not":
127
Humor and taming the grapevine
Our piece on April Fool's day was no joke: it looked a the huge impact of humor in politics
and leadership:
106
On April 15, we took time off from the unfunny subject of taxes to look at
the role of self-satirical narrative in politics and leadership:
120
Images and stories
On April 11, we looked briefly at the little-understood phenomenon that images
only have meaning when embedded in a story, and the growing recognition of this in
fashion photography:
116
Performing the story: form vs content
On April 8, we examined the contributions made by the form vs the content of a story,
in the context of Dr. Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission:
113
Unhelpful stories: blaming someone else
Although this website is mainly focused on high-value stories, we took time on April 13 to
examine the unhelpful practice of the Secretary of Treasury, John Snow, of blaming someone
else for problems that his own actions have caused:
118
All in all, a fascinating month of storytelling!
Learn more about leadership and business storytelling
Read
The Leader's Guide to Storytelling.