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The Real Oil On the Road

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I have some really insightful conversations with friends and family in the car. We are cocooned I guess and it’s surprising what comes up.

Last week I dropped my mother at the airport. She has heard me talk a little about my interest in story. She told me about her Christian discussion group and how they had been talking about how narrative and metaphor had been lost in Christianity and been replaced by doctrine. She found it sad that the magic and learnings from bible stories was often misinterpreted and turned into narrow sets of rules for living. There had even been emotional debate about Jesus and whether he was completely divine and a God, or a fallible human. We both agreed that these sorts of either/or conversations are really just academic, and that there is no right answer.

The synchronicity of this was fascinating as I have been looking at the same loss in the Maori world, where academia is for the elders stealing, and intellectualising their culture. The story, the meaning, and the soul is lost in translation.
I recall vividly the red pen markings and cynical margin comments on several university essays I wrote for using a journalistic writing style and the other for including unsourced references to Maori culture. So again as TS Elliot said, where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
I have some great philisophical conversations with other family members in the car, and then on other occasions I can be consumed by road rage, at the behaviour of another driver, often for a maneuver I may have well done myself even earlier the same day. Irrational completely.
In that little box on wheels that I spent more time in than I would like, a whole world can occur; stories profound, petty, or problematic, but stories non-the-less.

Stymied Stories

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I wonder if people are often frightened about whether stories are right or wrong. As a recovering journalist and PR Consultant, I now reflect on the years I traded in stories that were supposedly all about facts. The truth is they were always a perspective. I think we have shut down storytelling in many walks of life, opting for the so called rational and objective and pragmatic approach to information.
The truth as far as we can get it right is important, but it will always only be a perspective. It is time for us to look at what lies beneath a story, a communication, a narrative, a conversation, and listen to the intention of the speaker. The variations on facts and figures will often be there, but through conversation, collaboration and cooperation we can collectively gather facts and figures and the truth to go forward together.
We reinvent ourselves every morning, and the stories we tell ourselves, listen to, watch, and share will always be subjective, varied and flawed. We can find accuracy in the physics of nature, the elements and forces beyond our control.

Navigating Reinvention

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Where I live is a small island in the South Pacific. New Zealand Aotearoa has a small population, although our lifestyle often seems just like that of places such as Britain, Europe, the US or Australia.
It is a country of settlers of many cultures who found their way here by sea, all over long distances. Sea journeys and stories are rich throughout all our cultures from Maori, to Polynesia, to European and beyond.
Navigation in nature and in life is a powerful metaphor. How do we gain some wisdom about navigating pathways to take in life, on land and on the sea?
On the eve of the Reinvention Summit, I am thinking a lot about navigation and reinvention.
The ancient schools for Maori leaders were called wananga. Young men chosen as leaders were given a white stone, Hukatai, when they arrived and placed it in their mouth and symbolically swallowed it. This represented sea foam made by the bow of a canoe, and stood for knowledge as facts picked up along a sea journey, an unorganised set of ideas. When the student graduated, he would place a red stone, Rehutai in his mouth. This represented seaspray from a canoe heading into the sunrise. Seaspray throws up a prism of light where all the colours of the rainbow can be seen and represents knowledge being transferred into wisdom, and an integration of heart, mind and body.
The ancient navigators reinvented themselves daily with wisdom as every day nature would throw up a new set of circumstances to meet.
I think now through creating deeper stories, we can use our narratives to grow our wisdom, and reinvent ourselves ongoingly as we move through forever changing circumstances.

Stories of Reinvention

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Everyone I speak with, young and old, thinks the world is moving faster and faster every day.

I used to think only older people thought that, and when I was young, summers could seem to last forever and my sense of time was different. Who knows? There is undoubtedly some science and definitely some spirituality around about the world speeding up.
But the world has never been still. The planet turns, the moon pulls, and the sun rises and sets. And each day is unique and brand new. Each day is a reinvention.
I am excited to be part of the Reinvention Summit that has been set up out of New York as an international online conference of storytellers. Some of the world’s top experts on storytelling in business, in personal lives and society are speaking. There are a number of really cool things about this summit. One is that you can dip in and of it either live or recorded at any time for ten days from November 11. The second thing is it is being designed as I write by the speakers and the participants, and it is so accessible at $11.11 US for a basic registration. And lastly the greatest thing is the content and the theme, breathing life into building the practice of storytelling, to know and share oneself, and integrate and onlygoingly reinvent one self.
It makes total sense to me, in body mind and spirit that in this fast moving age, we turn to our most ancient form of communication, story. It is time to reinvent and reintegrate ourselves, to build stories that connect the whole of our selves with others.

Story Tricks and Treats

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The greatest stories are about journeys. Great journeys are about adventure, good times and bad.
Life is just the same. Fear and love, success and failure, beginnings and endings. Life and death.
I talk about the use of Juxtaposition to craft stories that stick. Juxtaposition is quite a word. It even sounds great when you say it. Some people worry about what it means. It means what you position next to what, a contrast if you like. I like juxtaposition because it’s flexible, more 3 D that the word contrast. Contrast is a bit more black and white.
A favourite and powerful example of juxtaposition is Obama’s winning speech, where he juxtaposed some of the most compelling stories of the 20th century into one; black people and women getting the vote, t he advance of technology, putting a man on the moon, new deal economics and a range of takes on the American dream.
There is a polarity in great stories, a beat, so they swing from happy to sad, sad to happy, breakdown to breakthrough. Today we have frequently lost the art of great storytelling, because we focus too much on one pole or the other, the world is all doom in gloom, or it is all gloss and tinsel. But we know, we really know that the real stories we engage with are the journeys through a range of good and bad experiences.
And just as electricity moves between poles, the energy and the movement between posiive and negative strikes a very powerful chord with us.
We have to put dreadful phrases such as “don’t go there’ and “too much information’ to death. We need to ‘go there’ about the good the bad and the ugly in our experience, to tell the Untold Stories because they are the ones that are remembered and acted upon.

Make it Short and Sweet

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I’ve just finished working on an organisation’s Annual Report and Annual Plan.

The journey has wound through philosophical and values debates and inspirations, use of metaphor to paint a picture of the organisation’s vision, and then grappling again and again with the challenge of welding the high level vision to an operation plan.
Yesterday we finished just in time for the monthly board meeting. And there was a sense of elation. Not simply because the job was complete, but that we had whittled the 2011 Plan down to essentially three pages.
It as if we had been distilling a great single malt whiskey; fabulous ingredients, taking our time, trusting the outcome, and rendering down many words, thoughts ideas, and actions into a simple but compelling plan.
I loved it when I heard Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe say he instructed his executives to keep their reports to him and his board very short and to the point, just a couple of pages.
I think the trick is giving up our addiction to thinking good work equals creating great quantities of stuff. We have to give up the attitude that justifying our existence through producing heaps of bits and pieces is effective or productive.
The best stories we hear and retell are short and sweet, but they have an embedded watermark that shows the thinking that has gone in to the them. Do the work, be thorough, produce the draft, then pare away till there is just the essence left.
As Einstein said: Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.


The Telling Stories

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In the game of Poker, knowing a player’s ‘tell’ is a critical element in winning.

A person’s tell potentially gives away what they have in their hand, and poker players work long and hard at ensuring they have a Poker Face, that gives nothing away.

The player’s tell, gives away the real story about what is going on, whether they have a good hand, whether they are bluffing, or whether they have a terrible hand.


Unless they have investigated it, people don’t realise how much they give away their tell in their body language, and what the say and do unconsciously.

When we talk of an incident or person’s actions that were ‘really telling’ we are talking about what ‘the real oil’ was as opposed to the ’manufactured’ version of the truth that was being offered.

In sport, there is the term ‘telegraphing’ where a player unintentionally informs an opponent of their intensions.

In our era of growing transparency and access to information, the days of trying to cover up your tell, and offer a thin veneer of the truth no longer cuts it.

Great communicators speak from their ‘tell’, or ‘telegraph’ a story from a place of authenticity. They convey what is really going on; nothing is hidden.

To know one self is to communicate without hesitation from one’s tell; there is then nothing left to hide and the recipient of the story has no need to doubt.

The best comedians, the best actors, the best musicians, communicate from the place where their ‘tell’ exists.

Traditional stories have always been about transformations, where the bad times as well as the good times are part of the journey.

Stories that tell it all, make a point and take a journey through challenges and breakthroughs will be the ones people listen to.

Smart Stories Smash Silos

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The concept of the silo in organisations has certainly done the rounds for a long time.

It is a metaphor that has stuck with people for so long few would know its origins. But silos paint a clear picture of people working in isolation from one another.
And as much as we know the term well, silos continue to exist in many organisations. Marketing departments tell one story, executives another, and those out in the field, in sales, product development or where ever all talk a different story. Often there’s a fair about of cynicism about the ‘official’ story or brand of an organisation.
And when it comes to a vision statement or mission, they are not something that people tell great stories about.
Developing a culture where people share real and untold stories is a powerful way to build a high performing organisation.
Having people sing from the same songsheet’ is hugely desirable. It is not about everyone singing exactly the same note in some robotic way. The trick is allowing people to articulate things the way they are most comfortable with.
So a songsheet can have quite a few parts for different voices and instruments. Harmony, melody, and lyrics come together to make a sum greater than the parts.
And so do great stories of great organisations.
Great stories are about people being heard, recognised and acknowledged for their value and contribution and getting a clear sense that they are contributing to a great song, whether they are the triangle player or the piano soloist. And to be honest, music would sound pretty hollow and go unheard in a real silo.

When Good News Goes Bad

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There’s a big temptation for many people at work and in relationships to put a ‘positive’ spin on things.
A lot of both professional and personal development work runs the risk of being ‘happy-clappy’ and of a ‘fist pumping in the air’ nature. Anyone that runs against the flow is ‘letting down’ the team.
A good news culture can be very dangerous. Realities can be glossed over and before we know it a business or a relationship is in trouble because no one wanted to speak out about what was really going on.
I have two Thought Leader colleagues in Australia, Rowdy McLean and Helen MacDonald who tell us we have to Get Real and be Optimists and not resort to dreamily and simply ‘looking on the bright side.’
The greatest stories canvas both the good times and the bad times, rags to riches stories, sad to happy, failure to success. They don’t edit the ups and downs out of the journey.
As great songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen says in his song Anthem, “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
News media and the advertising industry create some of the biggest stories on the planet through working the angles of good and bad, happy and sad, success and failure. They play with our flaws as humans, and we remember this because it strikes a chord of reality for us all.
It is the story of our flaws, our vulnerabilities, our mistakes as well as our successes that will inspire, be remembered and acted upon.

Getting on the Same Page

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I often say that cliches exist because they represent the truth.

One that has been doing the rounds for a few years is: Are we on the same page? It is a very simple concept. The fact I hear it so often shows how common it is that people are on a different page from one another altogether, suffering communication breakdowns.
So to flip the idea, what if everyone could ‘read you like a book’ ? I love the idea. It drips with the possibility of powerful connections. It intimates transparency, another popular cliche of our times. It suggests authenticity. It implies clarity. What is even more exciting is that I start to think about the potential of high performing teams where people ‘read’ each other, anticipate each other and work together with a powerful synergy. We see that most obviously sometimes in sport, where a player anticipates another to create some magic. They’ve read their mate like a book.
So to completely state the obvious, the way to get to be on the same page starts with stories. The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we share about ourselves, as individuals, as teams as organisations. New York storytelling expert, Michael Margolis says to know a culture, listen to the stories, to change a culture, change the stories.