 We
had some friends over for dinner last night, and one couple brought
their 12-year-old daughter and her friend. Over dinner I listened to
the two girls recounting recent episodes of the TV program Ghost Whisperer.
At first I intervened only to ask if they were aware that the recurring
theme of the show was giving closure to those suffering from grief over
the loss of a loved one (and to some extent, closure to those who died
suddenly with 'unfinished business'). They didn't seem too interested
in this information. As one of the girls related another plotline from
the TV series, I told them that it sounded similar to the
children's story There's No Such Thing as a Dragon*.
I told them this story, rather badly I thought, but they listened
attentively (much more attentively than they did to my point about
closure). I wondered if, had I told them my own personal story about closure, they would have been both more interested and more understanding.
I concluded that that story was too 'old' for them, and instead
transitioned from the dragon story to its predecessor, the ancient HC
Andersen story of The Emperor's New Clothes.
Once again, I was amazed at their attentiveness, as this time I drew
out the story a bit. When I finished, they expressed no interest in the
common tie-in or moral of the two stories but instead said to me:
Tell us another story.
I was dumbfounded. I didn't know any more stories. I didn't know how to tell stories (despite having taken a course in it by Dave Snowden and having read Steve Denning's book on the subject The Springboard).
I had been told, and thought, that the power of stories lay in the personal joy of discovering and learning their meaning.
In fact, I had just delivered a presentation at KMWorld that argued
that stories add meaning and value to information by adding context and
allowing people to become engaged by filling in the details from their
own experience and 'making the story their own'. Yet here the pleasure
of listening to stories seemed to lay in just listening and imagining
and visualizing the events and details of the stories themselves, and
their lessons and moral were unimportant. Was this unique to children,
or did adults also not care about what stories meant, as long as they
found them entertaining?
I thought back to a memorable story Dave Snowden had recounted at
KMWorld, about his experience walking unawares at night through an
extremely dangerous part of New York City after attending the opera in
a tuxedo, having been informed by Google Maps that this was the fastest
route to make his connection to his next scheduled appointment. The
message, which Dave stated explicitly near the end of the story, was
that Google Maps software was unable to manage the complex arc of
information that would have allowed it to suggest a better (safer but
slower) route. But what delighted the audience (me included) was the
image of Dave being stopped, scolded and escorted to safety by the
police. I could even imagine listeners retelling the story, perhaps
with embellishments or even in the first person, appropriating the
story as their own, and omitting the message or even the reference to
Google Maps. Would the omission of the lesson about complexity diminish
the story's power and value? Would this omission actually enrich the
story, by making it accessible to people who didn't care about
complexity or know what Google Maps was? Is the truth, including
essential information and learnings, often and easily sacrificed in the
interest of making a story more entertaining?
When we tell stories, are we in fact giving them away?
Can we presume to trust that what we consider their essential details
and veracity will be retained in their retelling, or do we immediately
give up all rights to such presumption, much as we do when we gift
anything else, like a piece of jewelry or a book? Even if we authored
that book?
The truth about stories is that that's all we are.
If that's the case, when we 'give away' stories, are we giving away a
part of ourselves? Do we dare, then, get attached to our stories? Do we
owe it, to the truth, to learn to tell true stories carefully,
memorably, completely, so that those who 'take them' from us will be
more inclined to recall and retell the truth when they pass them on?
Conversation has two purposes -- to inform or to entertain. There are
ways to inform without entertaining (I'm reasonably good at this -- in
presentations and dialogues I give people a lot of ideas, links,
reading suggestions and other 'useful' stuff). There are ways to
entertain without informing (ask a stand-up comedian how -- I'm
terrible at this). Stories allow you to do both, separately or at the same time. But they run the risk that the information will be lost in the entertainment.
I've resolved, once again, more than ever, to learn to be a better story-teller, mostly by practicing.
But I'm asking myself why. Do
I want to tell better stories to convey information better, with more
context, more memorably? Or do I want to tell better stories to be more
entertaining, more popular, even if it may mean being less informative?
* In the business world, the metaphor substitutes an elephant ('in the room') for the dragon. |
12:08:41 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
