The Power of the Tale

Using Narratives for Organizational Success

Wiley, 2001

15 min read

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Once upon a time, a company built trust, improved communications and envisioned the future, just by telling stories.

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If you think story-telling is just for little kids, three experts - psychologist Julie Allan, biochemist Gerard Fairtlough and consultant Barbara Heinzen - disagree. They have discovered significant value in story-telling within organizations. After briefly describing the multi-cultural history of stories and oral traditions, they dissect the purposes of story-telling, such as increasing rapport, appealing to the emotions and explaining situations. They use seven composite company case studies to demonstrate how stories can build truth and trust, promote learning, develop skills, break new ground and create scenarios you can use in planning the future. These well-intended examples tend to meander confusingly, but you’ll get the point. The last section of the book is devoted to thinking about stories and their uses, an innovative subject that gets little general attention and is the real meat of the text. While the book is very informative and useful, it is not always clear about the purposes of particular stories. getAbstract.com found many helpful lessons about story-telling here, including, unfortunately, a demonstration of the need for sharp editing.

Summary

The Importance of Story-telling

Human culture has included story-telling since the development of speech. Even before reading and writing developed, human beings passed along stories as part of an oral tradition. As society evolved, this tradition continued and became more complex. From children’s rhymes to Aesop’s fables, people have long sought to explain the world in stories.

Individuals and organizations tend to resist telling stories in a corporate context, even though story-telling has many practical uses, such as making situations clearer and evoking emotion. Corporate managers tend to believe that arguments should be objective and factual, not couched in metaphor and character. Executives often perceive story-telling as extraneous and may even fear its power to engage the emotions. They are avoiding a valuable tool. Story-telling has many practical advantages, such as:

Providing perspective on an issue, beyond the strictly factual.
Quickly grabbing attention.
Stimulating learning.
Exciting the imagination and producing increased organizational creativity.
Safely bringing suppressed emotions to the surface, before ...

About the Authors

Julie Allen, a former BBC writer and publisher, is now a chartered occupational psychologist who focuses on sustainable individual and organizational development. Former Shell biochemist Gerard Fairtlough is founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Celltech. He helped establish several other biotechnology and information technology firms. Geographer Barbara Heinzen, a consultant in planning and policy analysis, has worked with a variety of major multinational organizations in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Julie Allan, Gerard Fairtlough and Barbara Heinzen

The Power of the Tale

Using Narratives for Organizational Success

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The Importance of Story-telling

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