I visited Amsterdam in early April and met Paul Joosten and Ronald van Domberg. Both fabulous facilitators and both working in the story field. Within a few months they had become Partners in delivering the Storytelling for Leaders program and had completed their accreditation. While many programs in The Netherlands are delivered in English, there […]

We judge stories we hear at work in three ways. First, is it plausible, did this really happen? Second, is this relevant, can it help me? Third, is it interesting, am I going to enjoy this? Therefore when we tell a business story it’s important to make clear its relevance at the outset. We need […]

It seems everyone is offering business storytelling training these days. It was certainly rare when we started working with stories 10 years ago but all that’s changed. Everyone is calling themselves a storyteller, every company, product and services ‘must’ have a story and every man and his dog is offering business storytelling training. If you’re […]

At Anecdote, much of our work is focused on making strategies stick by converting them into understandable, memorable and influential stories. We often discover entrenched views that worked against the new strategy. These ‘anti-stories’ must be identified and tackled to give your strategy a chance of succeeding. This is our second post in a series […]

Influence without relying on authority. Build fast rapport. Change minds and inspire action. Anecdote’s Storytelling for Leaders program will teach you the techniques you need to better influence, engage and inspire others – just as hundreds of leaders already have, from Melbourne to New York, London to Singapore. This is the last business storytelling training […]

Philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi, said that “we can know more than we can tell.” When you start to look around for examples of this ineffable or tacit knowledge it’s everywhere: our uncanny ability to recognise faces, how we ride a bike, how an expert judges whether an ancient statue is fake or real. We […]

It’s hard to imagine a more embarrassing situation for a teenager. And that teenager was me. Cast your mind back to the 1970s: flared jeans, platform shoes, silk shirts, and skin-tight pants. It was the weekend and my Mum took my dear friend, Mark, and I to the War Memorial in Canberra. I’ve never seen […]

In 2009, three Queensland government departments were merged into one mega-department. Anecdote was working with the senior leadership team to communicate their new strategy and help make it stick. A key aspect of the new strategy was to integrate the previously separate departments into a single, unified team. When we spoke to staff about integration, […]

“The biggest improvements come from small things done consistently over time in strategic places.” — David Allen A company was all travelling together to their yearly retreat in Queensland. The company had grown over the years and was now quite a large number so the management team decided that everyone will travel economy class. They were all booked on […]

When we started Anecdote back in 2004 we mainly did culture change projects where we collected stories in an organisation then took people from the company through a facilitated process to help them see the patterns embedded in the anecdotes. Our work was based on the idea that an organisation’s culture is reflected in the […]