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HARVARD MANAGEMENT UPDATE FEBRUARY 2001 Parables of the Future The power of "brief and textureless" stories to communicate complex ideas-and to involve people in the process of change It’s April 1996. Stephen Denning is making a 10-minute presentation at a meeting of senior managers of the World Bank Denning an operations manager for the bank for several decades, has been asked to make recommendations for improving the bank's information systems. But his investigation has led him to believe that something more fundamental needs to change. Instead of seeing itself as a player in the financial transfer business, the World Bank must learn to see itself as a coordinator and catalyst of the knowledge that makes large-scale development projects successful. Denning doesn't try to summarize the details of such a massive shift in mission – he can barely begin to imagine the ramifications of what he's proposing. Instead, He tells the following story - "In June 1995. a health worker in Kamana, Zambia, logged on io the Center for Disease Control Web site and got the answer to a question on how to treat malaria. "This story happened, not in June 2015, but in June 1995,” Denning continues, drawing out the implications. 'This is not a rich country, it is Zambia, one of the least developed countries in the world. It is not even the capital of the country; it is six hundred kilometers away. But the most striking aspect of the picture is this: Our organization isn't in it. Our organization doesn't have its know-how and expertise organized in such a way that someone like the health worker in Zambia can have access to it. Bui just imagine if it had! We could get ourselves organized so that professionals have access to the resources needed. Just in time and just enough." After Denning's presentation, two vice presidents rush up to him with questions about the next steps: Why isn't the World Bank already implementing this approach? Where is the blockage? “They are speaking to me as if they have discovered the idea of sharing knowledge as an organizational strategy and that I am the one holding back progress." Denning writes in The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000). That October, the president announces that knowledge sharing will be the bank's strategy for the future. What's the secret? When you need io engage people emotionally, so that they are willing to work toward a future that is only dimly understood, detailed analyses of what needs to happen lend to backfire. Instead, you have to allow people to make the idea change their own. A minimalist approach to oral storytelling "Change ideas in large organizations tend to be so complicated (that full communication of the ideas in their entirety is not even theoretically possible,” Denning explains. “The ideas themselves are not precise and are generally still evolving, so that they cannot be captured or even fully understood at any one point.” Consequently, what he calls a "springboard story” doesn't attempt stimulate careful debate. It is not even very fascinating in itself — rather it is brief and textureless.” But such stories do have these vital characteristics: · connectedness: They "link the audience with a positive controlling idea and a protagonist with whom the audience empathizes.”Current thinking about communities of practice emphasizes that knowledge is social and distributed. Denning’s approach reflects this understanding. "Effective communication is not about downloading multiple dimensions of an idea into empty brains,” he says. "The necessary understanding is already in the listeners. You just need to enable them light that knowledge in new and different patterns.” A successful springboard story accomplishes this by creating a “big picture idea” that strikes the listener "not only as fresh but self-generated.” By making use of a delivery system that is as old as civilization itself – the spare evocative story – Denning has recovered a technique for inviting people into the process of change. Rather than spell out the answers the springboard encourages employees to co-create them. Visit
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