Steve Denning best keynote speaker on leadership innovation business narrative storytelling


The knowledge-based organization: 
    Using stories to embody and transfer knowledge


   In The Secret Language of Leadership and his other books , Steve Denning explains how a simple story could communicate a complex multi-dimensioned idea, not simply by transmitting information as a message, but by actively involving the listeners in co-creating the reality of the idea in the context of the particular organization where the story was being told. Their active participation as listeners helps reinvent the organization and create new identities for the organization and themselves. In this way, the story embodied the concept of knowledge management, and was able to transfer knowledge.

   The experience of using the oral culture of a modern organization to embody and transfer knoweldge has antecedents in the past:  

   "Stories hold, in their narrative layers, the sedimented knowledge accumulated by our progenitors. To hear a story told and retold in one's childhood, and to recount that tale in turn when one has earned the right to do so (now inflected by th patterns of one's own experience and the rhythms of one's own voice), is to actively preserve the coherence of one's culture. The practical knowledge, the moral patterns and social taboos, and indeed the very language or manner of speech of any nonwriting culture maintain themselves primarily through narrative chants, myths, legends, and trickster tales - that is, through the telling of stories. 
                  David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: page 181


 

References:
     David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997, page 181

“Steve Denning is the Warren Buffett of business communication. He sees things others don't and is able to explain them so the rest of us can understand.” Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick. “This book offers a genuinely refreshing perspective and an uncommon insight into the narrative life of leadership. I highly recommend you get it today and read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different kind of day if you do.” Jim Kouzes. Co-author of The Leadership Challenge

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art & Discipline of Business Narrative
A book by Steve Denning (Jossey-Bass, 2005)

Squirrel Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling, 
A book by Steve Denning (Jossey-Bass, June 2004)

Storytelling in Organizations
a book by Steve Denning with John Seely Brown,
Larry Prusak & Katalina Groh (Elsevier, June 2004)

The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations 
a book by Steve Denning (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000)

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Steve Denning consults and gives workshops and keynote presentations on topics that include: leadership, innovation, organizational storytelling, business storytelling, springboard storytelling, knowledge management, branding, marketing, values, communication, communities of practice, business performance, collective intelligence, tacit knowledge, business collaboration, knowledge, learning, community, performance improvement, visionary leadership, social potential, institutional community building, and internal communications. You can contact Steve at steve@stevedenning.com

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