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The power of organizational storytelling: A management development

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Article  in  Journal of Management Development · October 1997

DOI: 10.1108/02621719710169585

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The power of organizational storytelling: a management development perspective
Morgan, Sandra; Dennehy, Robert F. The Journal of Management Development 16.7 (1997): 494-
501.

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Abstract
Storytelling is a powerful tool that evokes visual images and heightened emotions. Business
leaders who can tell a good story have tremendous impact. A model and examples of
organizational storytelling are presented, the use of stories in management development
discussed, and ways to enhance managers' storytelling skills outlined. Additionally, using
stories makes learning more meaningful and even fun for both students and instructor. One
management development goal is to capture the participant's imagination and interest and
provide the stimulus to pursue continuous learning. Stories allow this, and teaching
storytelling skills to program participants lets them transfer the excitement to their peers and
subordinates. As familiar as storytelling is, managers and students need to use the
framework and practise in order to polish their natural skills. Stories can be used to illustrate
almost any key concept in an organization. Stories can be about customer service, rewards,
motivation, culture, norms, stereotyping, leadership, bureaucracy, power, diagnosis,
teamwork, decision making, job (dis)satisfaction, etc. Stories may be simple or complex and
comprehensive.
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Full Text
Sandra Morgan: Management Department, Barney School of Business and Public
Administration, University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA and
Robert F. Dennehy: Management Department, Pace University, Pleasantville, New York,
USA
"
Without air, our cells die. Without stories, ourselves die.
Neil Postman.
When Ray Kroc was running McDonald's from its Oakbrook, Illinois headquarters, he often
drove by Chicago area McDonald's restaurants. Usually he asked his driver to stop so he
could check things out. One sunny July afternoon, they were about to pass a McDonald's;
Kroc told the driver, "We need to stop at this one". As they pulled into a parking space, he
noticed that the flowering bushes were littered with shake cups, colourful Happy Meal boxes,
messy napkins and other trash. Inside, Kroc asked for the manager. Only the assistant
manager was there, so Kroc called the manager and waited for the anxious man to rush in
after a speedy drive from his nearby home. "What can I do for you, sir?" the manager asked
Kroc. Kroc led him to the parking lot, "Look! We don't want trash around our sites". So all
three - driver, manager, and Ray Kroc - worked together to pick the trash out of the bushes.
You'd better believe there was never again any trash in the parking lot of that location!"
What images and feelings does this story evoke for you? Can you picture the manager when
he heard Kroc's voice on his phone? Can you see them cleaning up the bushes together?
Have you been to a McDonald's and been appalled when there was a mess around the trash
cans or in the bathrooms? What have you learned from this story about your expectations of
a McDonald's? About Kroc's management style? Could you retell the story to a friend and
include the essential points?
Your answer to these questions helps illustrate the power of storytelling. When hearing or
reading a story, the listener/reader is pulled into the scene and feels the emotions the
characters feel. He or she is drawn back to a similar experience or setting that has personal
meaning. Because a story evokes both visual image and emotion, it is likely to be
remembered. Bell (1992, p. 53) says, "A good story can touch something familiar in each of
us and, yet, show us something new about our lives, our world, and ourselves". As business
faculty and management development consultants we have harnessed the power of
storytelling in our classrooms and training sessions. In this article we present a framework for
telling a story, a rationale for using stories in management development, and guidelines for
enhancing managers' ability to tell stories. Examples from both industrial and academic
settings illustrate our main points. Keeping in mind the globally interconnected world, we
have included examples from different countries.
Why use stories in developing managers?
Stories make information easier to remember and more believable. They are a powerful
means of communicating values, ideas, and norms. Stories usually are more powerful than
statistics. Each listener sees himself/herself in a story and unconsciously relates it to his/her
own experience, asking questions such as "When did something like that happen to me?"
We remember what happened to us because our own personal experience is more
memorable than an event that happened to someone else.
Stories serve a variety of purposes: in management development they entertain, evoke
emotion, trigger visual memories, and strengthen recall of the points illustrated. Bell (1992)
advocates stories for inspiring, instructing, and entertaining. Ritti (1994) describes employee
socialization and "learning the ropes" via stories.
The limited research on storytelling as an educational medium has resulted in several
conclusions (Zemke, 1990):
A story told aloud, compared with the same story presented as a television programme,
resulted in better retention of vocabulary and concepts. The TV version showed superior
results only in recall of specific story actions.
Stories told with words of high visual imagery stimulated better long-term retention of content
than did repetition or rote and drill.
Students instructed to try to visualize the action and content of a story were better able to
remember its key ideas and better able to tell it to others accurately than were students who
were instructed to memorize sentences from the story.
Humorous stories spurred recall of the content of both live lectures and video dramatizations.
Specifically, when a key teaching point was followed by a related joke or humorous
anecdote, retention and understanding were enhanced.
When students were taught principles through storytelling rather than straight exposition,
they were more creative in applying them.
Adults learned a foreign language more quickly when they were taught through folk stories.
The most effective stories were simple and direct, used colourful imagery and natural
dialogue, and contained some redundant story elements (p. 48).
Additionally, using stories makes learning more meaningful and even fun for both students
and instructor. One of our management development goals is to capture the participant's
imagination and interest and provide the stimulus to pursue continuous learning. Stories
allow us to do this, and teaching storytelling skills to programme participants lets them
transfer the excitement to their peers and subordinates.
Characteristics of a good story
What are the characteristics of good organizational stories that have powerful impact and are
remembered? The four key characteristics are covered in detail by Wilkins (1984) and
summarized by Zemke (1990). Of course, the storytelling literature provides a variety of
models and components, but the Wilkins-Zemke approach works well in management
training and in the business classroom:
- (1) The organizational stories must be concrete and tell about real people, describe real
events and actions, be set in a time and place which the listener can recognize and with
which he or she can identify, and must be connected to the organization's philosophy and/or
culture.
- (2) Stories must also be common knowledge in the organization or unit. To be effective in
conveying culture, people must not only know the story, but know that others know it as well
and follow its guidance.
- (3) The story must be believed by the listeners. To have impact and make its point, a story
must be believed to be true of the organization.
- (4) The powerful organizational story describes a social contract, how things are done or
not done in the organization. Stories allow the listener to learn about organization norms,
rewards, and punishments without trial-and-error experience.
Martin, Feldman, Hutch and Sitkin (1983) claim that a "good" story must also be unique and
demonstrate that the institution is unlike any other. Objectively, this is rarely true, but stories
have the most power when organizational members feel their experience is unique.
Framework of a story
Before we lay out our framework, we have a story about Hans and Franz[1]:
The Hans and Franz story"
Hans had recently graduated from college and eagerly started his first job as a trainee in a
Deutsche Bank branch in Hamburg, Germany. On his first day of work he introduced himself
to Klaus, the Branch Manager. Klaus, a very strict man in his early 30s, would be Hans' boss
for the next seven months. In the initial conversation Klaus told Hans that he believed college
graduates were overly ambitious and always tried to change existing rules and systems.
Klaus wanted Hans to stick to the rules and do as he was told - at least during the next seven
months.
One of Hans' first assignments was to accompany a colleague, Franz, who had to transport a
large sum of money to a client for a house purchase. For security reasons, bank policy
required that money transports had to be carried out by at least two employees. In reality,
however, this policy was not always enforced because a second employee was often not
available. In this particular case, however, Klaus wanted Hans to join Franz because he was
considered an alcoholic and no one wanted him to walk alone through the streets with a bag
full of money. On this autumn day Hans accompanied Franz on the tree-lined street toward
the client's house. While they were walking, Franz told Hans that the client may change his
mind and they would then take the money back to the bank. As they approached the house,
Hans noticed the city park on the opposite side of the street. When they were about to go up
the stairs to the house, Franz waved his hand in the direction of the park and said, "Go to the
park bench". Franz entered the house and Hans retreated to the park bench as he was
directed. Hans thought that he might need to accompany Franz back to the bank in case the
transaction was cancelled.
Hans sat on the bench and watched the entrance of the client's house for Franz's departure.
Time passed and Hans noticed that he had spent an hour on the bench. He believed that the
conversation with the client was taking a little longer than planned. He also thought that his
alcoholic colleague was probably having a drink with the client. Another hour passedand
Hans wondered about the time he was wasting on the bench. He felt conflict between staying
on the bench or going to the client's house to check on Franz, and thus causinghim
embarrassment. Hans was faced with the first decision of his work life. As he pondered this
decision, Klaus's words rang in his ears: "Always do as you are told". He continued to wait.
After another hour rain began to fall and Hans was getting soaked. He noticed a public
telephone at the end of the block. He decided to risk missing Franz and raced to the phone.
He called Karl, another colleague at the bank, to seek his advice. To Hans' surprise Karl told
him that Franz returned to the bank almost three hours ago. Karl also said that Klaus was
concerned that something might have happened to Hans during this three-hour period. As
Hans quickly walked back to the bank he wondered how Franz could have returned to the
bank. He had not seen him leave the building. On arriving at the bank, Klaus called Hans into
his office and asked him where he had been all this time. Hans told him that he did as he was
told and sat on the park bench. Klaus admired his patience and responsibility but Klaus was
also annoyed that an adult would sit on a park bench for three hours rather than return to the
bank. Hans replied that this is not what he had been told to do and he only stuck to the rules
that Klaus had set up. Klaus did not reply. Hans also checked with Franz. He learned that
Franz had left via a back door which was out of Hans' sight. But Franz asked incredulously,
"Why did you go to the park bench, I told you to go to the bank?" Unfortunately, the German
expression for a park bench is also bank. When Franz said go to the bank, he meant the
branch bank. Hans mistakenly went to the park bench on the other side of the street!
Hans felt he did the right thing by waiting three hours on that park bench on that autumn
afternoon. He did as he was told. As a newcomer in the bank he only obeyed the rules. With
more work experience he would react differently. He recognized that he would check with
Franz after ten minutes, even at the risk of embarrassing Franz. Hans recognizes the
importance of communication from that incident. Checking for understanding has new
meaning. Messages sent and received must be clear to avert misinterpretations and
misunderstandings. A bank is not a park bench.
Hans still feels squeamish about that incident. But he sees his development of knowledge,
self-confidence and experience. He knows he would decide faster and differently today. No
more park benches in the rain."
This story illustrates the traditional framework of universal steps displayed in myths, hero
stories, classic fairy tales, ethnic stories, and many of our own family stories. Organizational
stories can be defined as "a tale about a person caught in one situation unfolding from start
to climax to resolution" (Boje, 1991). The five sequential components, or steps, in a good
story are:
- (1) setting;
- (2) build-up ("trouble's coming!");
- (3) crisis or climax;
- (4) learning; and
- (5) new behaviour or awareness (Davis, 1993).
Essentially, the final steps ask and answer "What did you learn?" and "How did you change?'
Let us look at the Hans and Franz story as well as the Ray Kroc anecdote retold on the first
page to illustrate the steps in the model:
- (1) Setting: time, place, players, context. In describing the setting, a storyteller paints a
picture the listener can step into. We are introduced to Hans, Franz and Klaus in Hamburg,
Germany. Klaus's rules and bank policies are mentioned.
In the Kroc anecdote, the setting is the parking lot at a Chicago-area McDonald's where the
"flowering bushes were littered with shake cups, colourful Happy Meal boxes, messy
napkins, and other trash". Descriptive, active, precise words help transport the listener into
the scene, ready for the action to begin.
- (2) Build-up: a sequence of events that warns the listener that "trouble's coming!" Hans
accompanies Franz to the client's house. Hans waits and waits, and even waits in the rain
because he thinks Franz might be having a drink or two with the client. In the Ray Kroc story,
we hear the assistant manager calling the manager to see Mr Kroc, we imagine the terror in
the manager's mind as he rushes to his store for an anticipated "chewing-out" or worse.
- (3) Crisis: the climax or high point of the story. This is the key event which the plot leads up
to - something happens! It may be expected, but often it is a surprise if the story takes a twist
or turn. Sometimes a new element is introduced into the action. Hans learns that Franz has
returned to the bank. Klaus chastises Hans for waiting for three hours. Hans discovers that
Franz meant bank and not park bench. The McDonald's manager arrives and is surprised to
be asked to help clean up the bushes in the parking lot. In a movie or radio play, this is when
the music accelerates and dramatically finishes in a climax.
- (4) Learning: what the central character learned. In this part of the story, we infer or
explicitly share what the hero/heroine has learned from the episode. Hans thought that he
was justified in following the rules. But following the rules for three hours was probably not
justified. He also learned to clarify a message. Banks do differ from park benches. The
McDonald's manager learned that Ray Kroc cared more about fixing a problem (cleaning up)
than assigning blame and punishing the offender.
- (5) How the world changed: the central character's new behaviours and/or awareness as a
result of the action, the moral of the story. In this final step, the focus is on retained learning.
Hans learned to close the communication loop. Do not assume you understand. What the
listener understood is not always what the speaker intended. A rain-soaked three-hour wait is
an effective teacher. The McDonald's manager also is likely to behave differently with his
own employees; he probably will collaborate with them more in solving problems. He is less
likely to only punish them for mistakes. The Hans and Franz story and the McDonald's story
provide clear examples of the five-step storytelling model.
Stories as a clue to understanding organizations
One of the goals of management development is to encourage participants in training and
academic programmes not only to tell their own stories but to collect stories that help them
understand their organization. Here is an example of a story that a graduate student heard
when doing an organization development project in a university. We have labelled the steps
of the framework.
The registrar's office
SettingA chaotic, just-before-closing scene at a university registrar's office on Friday during
registration. Long lines, harried staff. Sue finally gets to the head of the line ...
Build-upOffice staff recently attended customer service training and are trying to "delight the
customer". The older woman greets Sue, "How can I help you?" Sue: "I have to get a
transcript to give to a company that wants to hire me". Employee, "Just fill out this form
(handing Sue a Transcript Request Form), give me $2 and we'll mail it to you in four weeks".
Sue: "Oh, no! I have to have it for a meeting on Tuesday".
Employee: "I'll see what I can do". She then goes off for several minutes and returns with an
official copy of Sue's transcript. "I had to bend the rules to give this to you - good luck on the
job interview". Sue, greatly relieved, departs with transcript in hand and the employee,
pleased with her excellent customer service, tells several colleagues, and closes up for the
day.
Crisis/climaxOn Monday, the employee still feels pleased that she was able to put her
customer service training into practice, so, when she is called into her boss's office, she
expects a commendation. However, the boss has a frown: "Why did you give that student a
transcript on Friday? You know our procedure and you didn't follow it". The employee was
taken aback, "But, but ... we are supposed to put the customer first". Boss: "You will receive
a demerit for not following procedure".
LearningHidden messages tell the truth about rewards. The "old" behaviour is rewarded.
How world changedThe employee no longer believed messages about change or doing
things a new way but stuck to the traditional responses.
By using the framework explicitly, students and managers can improve their storytelling as
well as encourage others to tell stories that help them understand organizations. To develop
storytelling skills, students must attend to stories they read, be aware of the framework and
its steps, and know the attributes of a good story. Storytelling is an effective and memorable
way of conveying information.
How to become a better storyteller
As familiar as storytelling is, managers and students need to use the framework and practise
in order to polish their natural skills. Stories can be used to illustrate almost any key concept
in an organization. Stories can be about customer service, rewards, motivation, culture,
norms, stereotyping, leadership, bureaucracy, power, diagnosis, teamwork, decision making,
job (dis)satisfaction, etc. Stories may be simple or complex and comprehensive. The
registrar's office story provides insight into interpersonal relationships, customer service,
supervision, norms, rewards and culture. The Hans and Franz story illustrates learning the
ropes, using good judgement, and testing assumptions.
The seven guidelines below present suggestions to help you and the managers you are
training to become better storytellers:
- (1) Listen to stories and try storytelling yourself. As you hear stories at storytelling
performances and conferences and from colleagues, try to apply the five-step framework.
Ask people to help you improve your own stories by using the framework.
- (2) Tell stories to others. Find stories in the press, books, novels, personal experience.
Neuhauser (1993) has excellent examples. First read a story to build your comfort level, then
retell a story that you've read using the five-step storytelling framework. You may find telling
your own story easier after practising telling others' stories.
- (3) Pair work. Let participants in management development programmes tell personal
stories in pairs. Be sure to role model a few of your own stories in front of the group, so they
can see the development, crisis, learning. Ask participants to share success stories from
work settings.
- (4) Field work. Participants can use the framework to gather, write up, and retell stories
from organizational members from different levels.
- (5) Encourage journals. Participants might write stories that illustrate the integration of
theory and practice in organizational settings.
- (6) Postmodern focus. Have participants find different perspectives on the same story. They
can retell the registrar's story from at least four perspectives or with four different "voices" -
the student, the employee, her co-workers, and the boss. The Hans story could be told from
the perspective of the bank manager, Franz, Hans, the client, and bank colleagues.
- (7) Practice. Encourage them to practise with peers, subordinates, family. Only active
practice and feedback will provide continuous improvement in storytelling skills.
Summary and conclusions
In this paper, we have provided a rationale for adopting organizational storytelling as a
powerful technique in training managers. Storytelling is an emotion-capturing tool managers
can use to learn more about their organizations, interpret behaviours they observe, and
understand the organization's culture. Suggestions were made to help managers develop the
useful skills of both gathering and telling organizational stories to understand the complexity
of organizational life (culture). We presented a five-step storytelling framework of setting,
build-up, crisis/climax, learning and how the world changed, illustrated by specific examples.
Note
1. This true story was recounted by a Pace University MBA student in a 1994 Organization
Behaviour course. It is used with his permission. Bank and employee names have been
changed to protect privacy.
References
1. Armstrong, D. (1992, Managing by Storying Around: A New Method of Leadership,
Doubleday, New York, NY.
2. Bell, C.R. (1992, "The trainer as storyteller", Training and Development, September, pp.
53-6.
3. Boje, D.M. (1991, "Learning storytelling: storytelling to learn management skills", Journal
of Management Education, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 279-94.
4. Davis, D. (1993, Telling Your Own Stories, August House Publishers, Little Rock, AR.
5. Martin, J., Feldman, M.S., Hatch, M.J. and Sitkin, S.B. (1993, "The uniqueness paradox in
organizational stories", Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28, pp. 438-53.
6. Neuhauser, P.C. (1993, Corporate Legends &Lore, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
7. Pike, L. (1992, "When stories mean business", Storytelling Magazine, Summer, pp. 10-13.
8. Ritti, R.R. (1994, The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know, 4th ed., John Wiley &Sons,
New York, NY.
9. Wilkins, A. (1984, "The creation of company cultures: the role of stories and human
resource system", Human Resource Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 41-60.
10. Zemke, R. (1990, "Storytelling: back to basics", Training Magazine, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 44-
50.
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Indexing (details)

Subject Storytelling;Skills;Leadership;Management development

Classification 9130: Experimental/theoretical, 2200: Managerial skills
Title The power of organizational storytelling: a management development
perspective
Author Morgan, Sandra; Dennehy, Robert F
Publication title The Journal of Management Development
Volume 16
Issue 7
Pages 494-501
Number of pages 0
Publication year 1997
Publication date 1997
Year 1997
Publisher Emerald Group Publishing, Limited
Place of publication Bradford
Country of publication United Kingdom
Journal subject Business And Economics--Management
ISSN 02621711
Source type Scholarly Journals
Language of publication English
Document type Feature
Subfile Storytelling, Leadership, Management development, Skills
ProQuest document ID 216355906
Document URL http://search.proquest.com/docview/216355906?accountid=13044
Copyright Copyright MCB UP Limited (MCB) 1997
Last updated 2010-06-09
Database ProQuest Central

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