Squirrel Inc.: A book review by Bob Morris
Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership through Storytelling
Stephen Denning
Josey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2004)
Nuts R Us
Think about it. Who are among the greatest storytellers throughout history? My own list includes Homer, Plato, Chaucer, Aesop, Jesus, Dante, Boccaccio, the Brothers Grimm, Confucius, Abraham Lincoln, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Joel Chandler Harris, L. Frank Baum, and most recently, E.B. White. Whatever the genre (epic, parable, fable, allegory, anecdote, etc.), each used exposition, description, and narration to illustrate what they considered to be fundamental truths about the human condition.
In his previous work, The Springboard, Denning focuses on “how storytelling ignites action in knowledge-led organizations” and does so with uncommon erudition, precision, and eloquence. His narrative covers a period of approximately three years during which he used what he calls “springboard” stories to “spark organizational change” at The World Bank. More specifically, to forge a consensus within that organization to support the design and then implementation of effective knowledge management, first for itself and then for its clients worldwide.
How he accomplished that objective is in and of itself a fascinating “story” but the book’s greater value lies in what he learned in process, lessons which are directly relevant to virtually all other organizations (regardless of size or nature) which struggle to “do more with less and do it faster” in the so-called Age of Information. Maximizing use of their collective intellectual capital is most often the single most effective way to do that.
In this volume, Denning uses many of the same devices which Orwell does in Animal Farm: He creates a stressful situation to which anthropomorphic animals respond; the lead characters discuss what to do; strategies are selected; conflicts and crises immediately develop; tension is increased by the perils the lead characters encounter; ultimately, the situation is resolved. In Animal Farm, the pigs prevail. In Squirrel Inc.,….
Whereas Orwell’s purpose is to dramatize the evils of totalitarianism, Denning’s purpose is to give “detailed advice on how to craft and perform a story that can spark transformational change in an organization” by examining six different kinds of storytelling “which illustrate the impact of storytelling on our work and our lives.” Although this is a fable of leadership, it is important to keep in mind that (a) everyone throughout any organization tells stories of various kinds each day; therefore (b) the value of the information which Denning provides and the recommendations he makes is by no means limited to senior-level executives.
Why a fable? When considering how he could best communicate the various kinds of stories (e.g. “springboard” stories that communicate complex ideas and spark action), their specific uses in modern organizations, and their relevant similarities and differences, Denning “quickly discovered that conveying an understanding of seven types of stories across four or five different dimensions represented a level of complexity not well adapted to text-book style presentation.”
I include that excerpt because many of those who read this book will also find themselves in situations in which they are preparing to make an especially important presentation and use of a traditional format is not appropriate. Their audience will not respond as well to the “textbook-style” as they will to a entertaining as well as informative narrative which seeks to achieve one or more of these objectives:
• To spark action
• To communicate who the speaker is
• To transmit values
• To get everyone working together
• To share knowledge
• To “tame the grapevine”
• To lead people into the future
Here’s the situation. Diana is a fast-track executive at Squirrel Inc. who is frustrated by her inability to convince senior-management to transform the company’s core business from helping squirrels to bury nuts to storing nuts for them. Why should it? Because approximately 50% of the nuts buried are lost, either because squirrels forget where they buried them or the nuts are dug up by human gardeners. Great opportunity for Squirrel Inc. She shares her frustrations with Bartender who is the owner/host of a nectar tavern located high in an oak tree near the Squirrel Inc. headquarters. (He is also this book’s narrator and thus, in several respects, a surrogate for Denning.) Throughout the remainder of the book, Denning focuses on Diana and Bartender’s joint efforts to use effective storytelling to mobilize the support needed to transform Squirrel Inc.
Because Denning is himself a master storyteller, never does his narrative become precious, cute, quaint, darling, etc. Credit him with wit, style, grace, and — yes — intellectual rigor. His characters may be squirrels but the relevance of his material to human experience is profound: “The underlying reason for the affinity between leadership and storytelling is simple: narrative — unlike abstraction and analysis — is inherently collaborative. Storytelling helps leaders work with other individuals as co-participants, not merely as objects or underlings. Storytelling helps strengthen leaders’ connectedness with the world. Isn’t this what all leaders need — a connectedness with the people they are seeking to lead?”
I especially appreciate Denning’s provision of a chart (“Seven High-Value Forms of Organizational Storytelling,” pages 150-153) that clearly and cleverly summarizes all of his core concepts and specific suggestions. It serves as a useful reminder that the most effective story is one that has a crystal clear objective and includes the appropriate elements (e.g. problem to be solved, situation to be explained, value of the information provided). The story must also meet certain requirements of the given purpose. For example, provision of relevant background information and an analysis of current situation before proposing a future course of action, especially one that may seem bold and threatening to others.
For whatever reasons, only in recent years has there been an awareness and appreciation of the importance of the business narrative. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor, Doug Lipman’s Improving Your Storytelling, and Storytelling in Organizations co-authored by John Seely Brown, Denning, Katarina Groh, and Laurence Prusak.
Why do civilizations die?
Steve Denning is one of my intellectual heroes. There is no one else who knows more about the business narrative as an art form, nor anyone who knows more about how to formulate a high-impact business narrative that will help to achieve strategic objectives, whatever they may be.
Here is an excerpt from a recent blog. To read the complete article, check out a wealth of other resources (including an audio recording of a recent Smithsonian symposium on effectuve communication, and/or sign up for a free subscription, please visit http://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx.
* * *
Kenneth Clark asks this interesting question in his marvelous book, Civilization (Harper & Row, 1969) and supplies the answer: Civilizations are not defeated. They generally are destroyed by boredom. A sense of exhaustion, a loss of confidence that problems can be solved, a feeling of hopelessness can overtake a people, even with a high degree of material prosperity.
That’s what I see in organizations today: the way they are organized and managed is terminally boring. Only one in five people is fully engaged in their job—the statistics vary slightly from country to country, but the bottom line is the same. Most people are bored. They often find themselves living in the world of Dilbert cartoons.
Yet there is another way. Some organizations have figured out a way to move the firm to a new level of productivity and innovation, not just as a short-term initiative, but on a permanent basis. They have discovered how to subvert the world of Dilbert cartoons. They have found out how to get continuous innovation, AND deep job satisfaction AND delighted customers, all at the same time. And they are doing this sustainably, as the permanent way in which the organization runs.
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To read the complete article, check out a wealth of other resources (including an audio recording of a recent Smithsonian symposium on effectuve communication, and/or sign up for a free subscription, please visit http://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx.
I urge you to check out Steve Denning’s books, notably The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, The Springboard, Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership & Storytelling, and The Secret Language of Leadership. His next book, The Leader’s Guide to RADICAL MANAGEMENT, will be published in November (2010). Here is a lnk to information about it:
Steve Denning on how to create a culture of storytelling
Steve Denning
Here is an excerpt from a recent blog. To read the complete article, check out a wealth of other resources (including an audio recording of a recent Smithsonian symposium on effective communication, and/or sign up for a free subscription, please visit http://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx.
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I am sometimes asked: what’s involved in creating a culture of storytelling in an organization? How do you create an organization in which authentic storytelling is the natural and normal way of communicating? How do you do this in a way that is highly productive for the organization as well as deeply satisfying for the participants?
I believe that six steps are needed.
[Here are the first two.]
1. The first step is to recognize that establishing a storytelling culture must not only encourage good storytelling: it must meet other goals as well. Thus a storytelling culture in which people sat around all day telling stories to each other and got nothing done would not be sustainable. We must not only have good storytelling: it must also contribute to getting things done in the organization. Otherwise it will be seen as an encumbrance to the organization and will not survive.
We also need to recognize that storytelling is not an end in itself. This was recognized in the question that Paul Costello raised at the close of the Smithsonian session last month: He asked: What would be involved in creating an analytic framework to ensure that positive storytelling was encouraged and the de-humanizing storytelling was identified and discouraged?
Paul’s question implies that there is a good storytelling (life-enhancing) and bad storytelling (de-humanizing). In promoting a culture of storytelling, we are interested in promoting the former rather than the latter. This in turn recognizes that storytelling is not an end in itself. It is a tool that can be used for good (life-enhancing) purposes or for bad (de-humanizing) purposes.
When we say life-enhancing, we have in mind interactions that enrich human relationships, that lift up the human spirit, and that appeal to the highest qualities of mind, heart and soul, that may even foster truth, beauty and love.
When we say bad or de-humanizing, we may have mind interactions that crush the human spirit, that foster fear, hate, meanness, selfishness and back-stabbing, that create environments that are boring, stifling, dishonest, ugly and systematically dispiriting. Eventually such cultures lead to repression, discrimination and even wars.
Once we recognize that storytelling is not an end itself, we need to be clear on what is the end for which storytelling should be deployed. Why do we like storytelling? Why do we want a storytelling culture? A short answer is that goal for which storytelling should be deployed is to foster high-quality interactive human relationships.
2. The next step is to recognize that storytelling is not the only way to create high-quality, interactive human relationships. Storytelling is a big part of accomplishing this, but it’s not the only part: open-ended questions are often a more powerful and appropriate way of fostering high-quality human relationships: instead of telling people stories, one listens to what other people have to contribute. The goal is not to tell stories, but rather to have open-minded conversations, by stories, questions or whatever way of communicating that enables this.
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I urge you to check out Steve Denning’s books, notably The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, The Springboard, Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership & Storytelling, and The Secret Language of Leadership. His next book, The Leader’s Guide to RADICAL MANAGEMENT, will be published in November (2010). Here is a link to information about it:
http://www.stevedenning.com/Books/radical-management.aspx.
Steve Denning on “two streams of thought in management today”
Steve Denning
Here is an excerpt from a recent blog. To read the complete article, check out a wealth of other resources (including an audio recording of a recent Smithsonian symposium on effective communication, and/or sign up for a free subscription, please visit http://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx.
* * *
In a recent discussion about finding a suitable synonym for “human capital,” my friend and colleague, Madelyn Blair, put her finger on the key issue: ” human capital would be – ah – people.”
There are thus two deep streams in management today.
They are like oil and water. We can pretend that they are just evolutions or developments or nuances or verbal nitpicks and that it would be divisive to draw sharp distinctions between them.
But the reality is that these two ways of interacting with the world are incompatible and don’t have much to say to each other.
One stream is about turning into people into things–human resources, human capital, social capital–which can be manipulated as things to produce goods and services (MORE THINGS) or profits (MONEY) for the organization and its shareholders. A dispiriting activity for all involved.
The other stream is about inspiring people (i.e (PEOPLE) doing work to generate continuing delight for clients and customers (also known as PEOPLE).
One is a simple linear activity under the control of management. And if it isn’t under their control, the object is to get it under their control, as soon as possible.
The other is a complex undertaking in which only successive approximations can make progress to the goal. No one is in control. It is an interaction, a conversation, a joint voyage of discovery. The aim is delight. Generating that is more fun than fun.
The first stream is dying. Its day is done.
The second stream is the future.
* * *
I urge you to check out Steve Denning’s books, notably The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, The Springboard, Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership & Storytelling, and The Secret Language of Leadership. His next book, The Leader’s Guide to RADICAL MANAGEMENT, will be published in November (2010). Here is a lnk to information about it:
Stephen Denning: An interview by Bob Morris
Denning is the author or co-author of several acclaimed books which include The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge Era Organizationsw, Squirrel, Inc.: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling, Storytelling in Organizations: How Narrative and Storytelling Are Transforming Twenty-first Century Management that he co-authored with John Seely Brown, Katalina Groh, and Larry Prusak, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, and most recently The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative.
Morris: Storytelling has been a popular activity for centuries. How do you explain the fact that, only in recent years have executives begun to understand and appreciate the potential value and, more importantly, the impact of the business narrative?
Denning: We are entering an era with a rapidly growing need for leadership. This is caused by the convergence of irresistible socioeconomic forces. Accelerating economic and social change in the global economy, the consequent imperative for ever faster innovation, the emergence of global networks of partners, the rapidly growing role of intangibles, which can’t be controlled like physical goods, the increasing ownership of the means of production by knowledge workers, the escalating power of customers in the marketplace, and the burgeoning diversity in both the workplace and marketplace—all these forces imply a vastly more important role for transformational leadership in the future. The ability to get results in the face of these challenges will depend at least as much on leadership as on management. It will depend on a capacity to inspire enduring enthusiasm in people over whom we have no hierarchical control.
These irresistible forces will drive organizations to develop genuine leadership capability as a necessary competence. Leadership—the ability to connect people to meaningful goals without hierarchical power to compel compliance—will become a requirement for organizational survival. Management won’t disappear. We’ll continue to have much to thank management for. It has helped us achieve the wonders of the modern global economy—its stunning scientific accomplishments and the massive improvements in the physical standard of living of most people, at least in the developed countries—and it will go on doing so.
But the challenges now facing the human race won’t be solved by better management alone. Management will still be needed, but it will be less pivotal. In fact, it will be mostly taken for granted. Our capacity to manage will give us the technical means to solve our most intractable problems. What is needed now is the will to solve them. So goals, ends, purposes—what we are trying to accomplish—move to center stage. In the world of management, the goals are largely given. Management is about finding the quickest, cheapest, and best way to reach those goals. The language of management is naturally abstract. Human goals are naturally absent from its discourse. Once the emphasis shifts toward goals, ends, and purposes, then it is natural for the language to shift from abstractions to narratives, which have goals built into them.
Please click here to read the complete interview.
Q #169: Why do some teams achieve high performance but most teams don’t?
In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.
In this Q&A, I defer to Steve Denning and a recent issue of his newsletter in which he responds to the question posed. Then in Q&A #171, I share Denning’s five suggestions as to how to use storytelling to ”kindle the spirit of high performance teams.”
So, “Why do some self-organizing teams evolve into high-performance teams, while others flounder around for months, even years? Getting the context right is a big part of it. But even when the context is right, it still doesn’t happen. Why?
“Ultimately the evolution of self-organizing teams evolve into high-performance teams depends on mutual respect and trust of the members of the team. When people have this kind of respect, they feel they have the support of others, they view the group’s resources, knowledge, perspectives, and identities to some extent as their own, they feel as though they have new capabilities, and begin to include others in their concepts of themselves. They feel a sense of exhilaration as they learn new things from and about their partners. In a sense, their sense of self expands. They become a larger person.
“We are beginning to learn some of the neuroscience of the phenomenon. It has much to do with a hormone called oxytocin that is produced naturally in the brain during supportive social interactions. It causes deliciously exhilarating floods of feeling in the brain. It curbs fear and increases trust. It is strongly present in young mothers, and in love affairs. It also appears to be an element in the feeling we find in high-performance teams…Can it be generated? How does this trust and respect arise? Can it be generated? In order for the team members to reach this level of respect, they have to know each other more deeply than the superficial relations of the modern bureaucracy. They have to get to know who are these people they are working with.”
Key Points
1. Storytelling celebrates what people share in common while respecting their differences. Members of high performance teams feel a common bond, mutual respect and affection, and an obligation to be cordial as well as productive and supportive in collaboration with others.
2. Storytellers are the most effective communicators. However different Socrates, Jesus, and Abraham Lincoln were in most other respects, all of them anchored their most important ideas in human experience. The most valuable high performers are people, not machines.
3. Storytellers are more likeable. Members of high-performance teams enjoy each other’s company. Because of mutual respect and trust, they share confidences and speak frankly, at times candidly, but never n a hurtful way. They look forward to being together.
With regard to low-performance teams, communication, cooperation, and collaboration between and among members are generally ineffective because of a lack of mutual trust and respect. They continue to ask (albeit silently), “What’s in it for me?” The human implications and consequences of decisions under consideration are either ignored or at least treated with indifference. Members of LPTs tend to avoid contact with each other except when it is required by meetings or shared tasks.
Over the years, I have chaired a number of what proved to be low-performance teams. Attempting to develop teamwork resembled trying to give a bubble bath to a tub full of tomcats. Only after I read Dennings’ books and began to apply his strategies and tactics for storytelling did I begin to see at least some progress.
As Denning points out, “Clearly, conventional management techniques are at best impotent, and more likely, counterproductive when it comes to creating respect and trust. Leadership storytelling, by contrast, is well adapted to meet the challenge.” He suggests five ways, the subject of Q&A #171.
These are Denning’s books:
The Springboard (2000)
Storytelling in Organizations, with John Seely Brown, Katalina Groh, and Larry Prusak (2004)
Squirrel, Inc. (2004)
The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005)
The Secret Language of Leadership (2007)
You can read the entire article, sign up for a free subscription, and check out an abundance of resources at Denning’s Web site:
http://www.stevedenning.com/High-Performance-Teams/spirit-of-high-performance-teams.aspx
Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob
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