Ric Holland is the CEO of Melbourne City Mission. MCM has a long history in Melbourne being established at the time of the gold rush in the 1800s. The enormous influx of people to Melbourne back then created unprecedented homelessness and MCM was created to help people find a place to live. Fighting homelessness is […]

Yesterday my sister called and said, “I have an idea for a book you should write. Why don’t you collect a bunch of stories that illustrate different leadership challenges and publish them for leaders to retell.” Good idea sis. We all need a repertoire of stories to tell and they are never easy to find […]

In September 2011, Gary Klein, Patrick Lambe and I ran a workshop in Singapore exploring how insight and story work together to release insight in an organisation. This was part of a process Gary was taking to help develop his new book which is all about insight, which was published this month. Highly recommended. As […]

It seems that everyone is giving advice about stories and storytelling these days. And it irks me every time I hear a story ‘expert’ say that a story must have conflict and resolution. Really? Take this morning’s offering from Copyblogger.com, which lists 5 reasons to use stories. Number 2 says, Stories have conflict and resolution. […]

What do your organisational values actually mean? Do you have a list of 4, 5, 6 one-word, abstract concepts such as integrity, responsive and agile that represent your values? You might even have a few paragraphs describing each value. Most organisations I’ve worked with have something similar and it hasn’t helped them that much. These […]

Have you ever had that feeling that your executive team is all saying they understand and support the strategy but you sense that they are not really on the same page? This is a common occurrence and it becomes starkly apparent when we are helping a company translate their strategy to a story everyone can […]

I’ve recently had the pleasure working with World Vision Australia. In case you don’t know them, they’re Australia’s largest charity and they focus on child and community well-being across the world. You might have sponsored a child through World Vision. A few weeks ago I caught up with their CEO, Tim Costello, and I was […]

Smart people hate to be told what to do or say. Yet way too often leaders are given a standard set of powerpoint slides or even a script and are asked to share these pearls with their colleagues. Enthusiasm, and authenticity, plummets. There’s definitely a better way. A few months ago I was teaching 150 […]

When you see a poem you know it’s a poem. When you see a screenplay you know it’s a screenplay. Most people, however, have never seen an oral story written down. Probably because it’s an oxymoron. Yet there are times when it’s useful to write an oral story down. For example, when you’re helping a […]

Earlier this week Shawn sent me an email. “You must see Steve Jobs: The Lost interview. It’s available on iTunes” (its the movie, not the radio show). So, naturally I downloaded it and am halfway through it. It’s riveting. Jobs answers nearly every question with a story. When the interviewer talks about developing the first […]