Our mind is full of beliefs, assumptions and values which affect what we do and how we do it. Much of what we assume comes from our experiences, especially if we’ve told ourselves and others the story of what happen and what it means for us. Our stories help us remember and embed our assumptions.1 […]

Dave Bruebeck, the jazz virtuoso, once said “there is no mistake if you can resolve it.” I was reminded of this quote when Steve Hopkins told me this story about what happened at World Vision around the time of the Haiti earthquakes.

Every company wants to tell a compelling strategic story that conveys the essence of what they’re about. If it’s a success their customers and employees will know where they have come from and where they are going and what makes them unique and worthwhile. And with this knowledge they become attracted to what they are […]

I’ve just found Garr Reynold’s recent post on stories and experience. He makes the good point that people remember stories because they convey emotions, which is very true. We remember what we feel. In this post I would like to briefly explore another reason why we remember stories and touch on the types of stories […]

The second Tuesday of every second month the Strathmore Unicorns Junior Basketball Club’s committee meets. I’m the club Secretary and last Tuesday we were discussing the perennial topic of how to encourage our players (and their parents) to pay their registration fees on time. Each year the Treasurer send a letter to laggards warning them […]

Congratulations on doing TheStoryTest—and if you haven’t done it, reading this blog post now is tantamount to cheating—shame on you 🙂 Here are the quick answers. Below we will explain why each example is or is not a story. Pizza innovation – no Basement flood at Tree Hill – yes Hewlett Packard’s European operations – […]

Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioural economics and winner of the Nobel prize in Economics, tell this story in a recent TED talk. A friend was recently listening to a recording of a beautiful symphony and then at the end of the recording there was a terrible screeching noise. “It ruined the whole experience for […]

Since we started Anecdote in 2004 our local Kwik Kopy in Coburg has printed most of our posters and workshop materials. Kelvin does a great job. Always high quality, delivered when we need it despite the outrageous time frames we sometimes impose. That was the case up until this Wednesday. We’d created a high quality […]

In late May 2009 I was invited to advise on change management on a big project in Sydney. The client was a medium size logistics organisation with a history of poor performance, low staff engagement and sub-standard customer service. They were in the midst of something of a crisis. They had been directed to substantially […]

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–73) was a Swiss-born American zoologist and geologist who taught at Harvard. Imagine that you went to Louis Agassiz’s laboratory at Harvard as a student. Agassiz would place a small tin pan in front of you with a small fish and utter the stern requirement that you “should study it, but […]