Story-Telling Reforms the Project
October 15th, 2002 by HalI've made a number of references to story-telling as necessary on projects. Yesterday, I spoke of the importance of story-telling to producing alignment. Today, I have another twist to offer. As author Dr. Matthew Budd puts it in the title of his book, You Are What You Say. Dr. Budd wrote about health, well-being, and living a life. Little did he know (or did he?) that he was writing a guide for project leaders.
How is his message pertinent to project leaders? Each of us walks around in an everyday-always conversation about ourselves in our world. We talk to ourselves. We say all kinds of things — mostly assessments, some positive, many not so positive. We find ourselves saying, "I can do that. I'm good at those things." Or, "That will never work. Those things never do."
Projects are challenging. Projects are uncertain. People add to the challenge and the uncertainty with their own private unspoken conversations about themselves and each other. Story-telling is the project leader's opportunity for intervening in the already present mixture of stories on the team. Through story-telling the team begins to acquire a new perspective about themselves and each other. Instead of "This or that won't work" team members see what can be done and where they can take action.
I am not promoting happy talk. Nor am I suggesting a kind of pop-psychology. Try this out: catch yourself in your private story about you and your project. Then inquire what others are thinking about themselves in the same situation. You are bound to find a mismatch, often one that will get in the way of the two of you pulling together.
John Udell proposed in Telling A Story that there is a place on projects at the "intersection of the messaging and publishing mediums" for the story-teller. He suggests that the story-teller keeps the team together and focussed on the promises of the project.
What is there to tell? Tell the stories of ambition, achievement, satisfaction, worthwhileness, and determination. Tell the stories of cooperation, collaboration, learning, and resilience. Tell the stories that unite, bond, and build trust. Tell the stories that dispel, focus, invite, and encourage. Tell the up-coming story of accomplishment. Just tell stories. It is the one avenue available everyday for reshaping the collection of individual realities into a collective reality.
Related Posts
- (Re)Tell the Project Story I am advising some university students on their senior project. They've decided to create some project tools for manag...
- Produce Alignment and Trust in the Stories You Tell One last comment (for now) on story-telling...There is a 'richness' that comes from the diversity of project participant...
- Story-Telling Prepares for Uncertainty Just give me the facts. Have you said that? I have. What is this about? We operate with the illusion that we can be ...
- Project Klogs: Changing Paradigms In my post of Sept 22, I speculated about new verbs for project managers. Seems I’m quite behind the times. John Udell...
- Tell New Stories to Make the Lean Change What must we do to open our organizations to change? Whether it's pursuing lean or any other transformational change it...
