Storytelling : The curse of loyalty to experiences

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Storytelling : The curse of loyalty to experiences
“A leader supports her people during an organisational change” says a leader I am working with on building an organisational change narrative. When I hear this, I say to the leader, ” The fact that you make this assertion with confidence in your voice, tells me that there are sediments of experiences layered in your memory forming this assertion.” We are loyal…
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Corporate Communication Mistakes Brought Down a Company

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Corporate Communication Mistakes Brought Down a Company
It was meant to be normal hectic day at work where I would go about managing my responsibilities in distribution and inventory management , working mostly on demands coming from seven retail locations and corporate orders for information technology products. However, as I walked through the main entrance of the modern building with nice big glass doors, something looked different. Local police…
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Hyper-targeted Stories

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Hyper-targeted Stories
You decide, you are going to create a PDF document with all the information American’s would need to holiday in India. You will research, combine it with your experience and put it online for anyone who needs it. So what will be in the document? A logical mind would develop the document keeping the traveller’s experience in mind, VISA, flights, accommodation etc.…
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Storytelling with Shared Emotions

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Storytelling with Shared Emotions
I advocate using a word of emotion in organisational storytelling. For example, notice the difference when I say Statement 1 : ” I ran a project in India and the project failed.”  Statement 2: ” I ran a project in India, the project failed and I am devastated.”  Just because I have added the word devastated, you will now think that I…
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Chance

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Chance
“Anjali, our incident report is filled with information on small accidents that happen everyday. People only pay attention to big accidents .As a result, small accidents occur in high frequency. It’s this low consequence nature of small accidents that prohibit people from paying attention but these small accidents put together create high consequences.”⁣ ⁣ This is what a factory safety officer shared.…
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Storytelling Beats Objectivity

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Storytelling Beats Objectivity
In a meeting, a leader who is a leading a company that sells baby food says, “we have a pressing agenda item, we have to educate our distribution on the right use of our products. Hence, we will be rolling out a training programme for our staff on how to do that.” Now the statement made by the leader aims at immense…
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My Boss Won’t Like Me Storytelling

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My Boss Won’t Like Me Storytelling
“Anjali, I love the storytelling work we are doing here today. I will definitely use storytelling skills to inspire my team and engage my customers but I will never use it in front of my boss.” Now, that is a statement I often hear. If you feel this way too, this blog is for you. What kind of stories do bosses want …
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Story or Survey?

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Story or Survey?
You have received employee opinion survey results which reveal to you that people are not very happy in your team. You are frustrated because as a leader you have been doing plenty to make sure people are happy. You now have a number from the survey that gives you information on the levels of happiness in the team but measuring it doesn’t…
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