I had a meeting on Friday with a senior leader facing a common problem. There are many changes going on and his people have developed the view that ‘head office doesn’t know anything about what we do and their restructures don’t make sense’ along other related non-productive views. He wants his team on the front […]

Kevin shared this story with me the other day. It’s too good not to retell. > A few years back, there was an ad agency called Allen Brady and Marsh (ABM). It was a very showbiz agency, and not very fashionable. They were pitching for the British Rail account against some very good agencies and […]

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A particular type of story that gets retold in organisations is the story about when ‘power’ was challenged and the result. We collected the following story from a client about how challenge, or more accurately, a perceived challenge, was handled by their former chief executive: Keith just asked a question during one of John’s Chief […]

I was asked last week about the practical application of things we cover in our Storytelling for Leaders workshop. Fortunately, we had a very recent example to relate. We ran a session in late November with the senior HR team for a large company and one of the participants called me in December to give […]

People judge their leaders by how their actions align with their words. And how aligned these two things are then triggers stories that get told, and retold, across the organisation. People are looking to see how the messages they hear from their leaders in corporate communications, presentations, and in the organisation’s espoused values actually align […]

As a manager, I have always had a lot of time for people who might not be overly talented but who always try their hardest. Highly talented people who won’t ‘put in’ don’t get much time or attention from me. This afternoon a workshop participant told me a story he heard last week that makes […]

Last Thursday, I met an executive encountering some significant challenges in a major culture change underway in his organisation. He had been inspired to use a story-based approach to help get traction. He was keen to meet as he had some questions around the components of the story he was preparing to write. He had […]

Joseph Jiminez joined Novartis in 2007 as Head of Consumer Health, in charge of the over the counter business. He had a background in consumer packaged goods was a complete novice to the pharmaceuticals industry. Six months later he was appointed to lead the pharmaceuticals division. He was an unlikely choice, neither a scientist nor […]

Cynthia A. Montgomery is the Timken Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. One of the programs she teaches is for accomplished executives and entrepreneurs at one of Harvard’s flagship programs. Very early on in the program she asks these senior business people to list three words that come to mind when they hear […]