Copyright
(c) 2000 by Michael Finley
Asked to make a list of
desirable
managerial skills, you
might suggest persistence, analytical ability,
and financial
acumen.
But storytelling?
Yes, storytelling, says Bran
Ferren, a
designer who worked
for years for Disney and other creative entertainment giants, and now a
sought-after speaker on what is missing in today's corps of business
leader.
"Storytellers know what
other people don't,
that our
brains more easily comprehend information when it is part of a
meaningful
narrative -- a story whose outcome matters to us."
Every business has a story,
Ferren recently
told members of
The Masters Forum, an executive learning group that meets once a month,
usually
at the University of Minnesota. Our current projects are stories. Our careers
and our lives acquire meaning not through lines on our resume but
through the
intertwining themes of ambition and struggle.
"I never have met a good
leader who was not
also a good
storyteller," Ferren said. And leaders seeking to explain an
organizational vision, and have it hang in workers' minds for more than
a
moment, need to masters the storyteller's art.
Some people think that
because we live in
an age of
technology, the ancient art of narrative is no longer relevant. Untrue,
said
Ferren. In fact, he said, "The Internet is making possible the greatest
storytelling platform in the history of the species. It allows everyone
not
just to have a story -- we already had that -- but a box to stand on
and a
moment to lay it out for the whole world to hear."
At Disney, Ferren's job was
predicting the
future for his
mentor, Michael Eisner. It was always a challenge to know what to
invest in, he
said, as companies with wild products beat a path to his door to demand
bet-the-farm involvement.
There was only one moment,
however, when
Ferren championed
an idea to Eisner with no reservation at all. That idea was the
Internet
itself. "I told him it would be incredibly expensive, that we must
invest
a heck of a lot and do it very, very quickly, and there is no sensible,
existing business model for a company making money off this thing."
If Disney did not make the
jump, Ferren
promised, Disney
would be consigned to the ranks of rust belt entertainment companies.
Eisner agreed then to put a
foot in the
door of e-
entertainment, and is widely seen now as a major e-player. (Disney was
not
always so shrewd. Three times they passed up chances to buy America
Online
outright!)
We are only now coming to
grips with how
radical an
innovation the Internet is, Ferren said. He likened the development of
the Net,
in importance, to the development of language itself.
A while ago the Army asked
Ferren to help
learn what traits
led to strong leadership. They selected energy and intelligence, then
studied
their huge database of experiences.
They learned that Energetic,
Smart
officers, far from being
great leaders, tended to drive people crazy. They were like overly
zealous
beavers shouting out orders and never resting. Whereas, Lazy (well,
less energetic)
but still Smart officers took care to improve processes and teamwork,
so that
happy, efficient soldiers replaced the crazed beavers.
What's it mean? It means
that in our rush
to be professional
or conventional we're overlooking some very interesting explanations
for
things. New explanations means new stories. And stories, deep down, are
what
businesses are about.
[Michael Finley is head
writer for The
Masters Forum in
Minneapolis.]
