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- Fruit Vendors Help Kids Eat Better After School, Researchers Report http://t.co/0ZlCscZs
- @LivProof @SwaranSoftIndia @HernanPorrasM @novelspot @JGardnerPhoto @kevmfos @mlwakefield Welcome, all, nice to have you following!
- Good stories - & good scientific theories - are always startling. http://t.co/Wzya4Vu2 #Gopnik #story
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The Benefits of Building a Narrative Organization
“In every organization, there is the big story—the organizational narrative—and the smaller stories that support, reiterate, and personalize the larger narrative. Your organization’s narrative is at the core of its values, mission, and actions. Your brand is strengthened when the smaller stories are consistently refreshed and shared.”
Why Story Matters, Stanford Social Innovation Review
“Businesses are starting to understand that in a complex market, dealing with complex topics and complex people, story elicitation results in greater and deeper insights. Whether you are working to communicate a message to customers or the needs of customers to your future bosses, consider applying story as a tool for conveying complex emotions and truth.”
The Trouble with Values
Another problem with values is that they are non-hierarchical. We like to think that our lives are neatly ordered, and that we, as emotionally intelligent adults, have formed clear moral frameworks that guide our decision-making. We will always value family over work, for instance, or community over autonomy. But even if we believe that some values exist on parallel tracks, complex situations can cause them to collide, requiring us to make decisions about which value or values should win out.”
Stories Matter: How to Power Up Your Activism
“I remember my first feminist act. It was Spring of 1974, and I was nine years old. My mother, Sheila Thaler Pekar, had gone to a car dealer earlier in the day, prepared to purchase a car. When it came time to sign the contract, however, the dealer required that she obtain my father’s signature. Sheila had the deposit, the credit and the bank account. But, the salesman insisted, the dealership would not sell a car to a married woman without the consent of her husband.”
Thaler Pekar’s Ethical StorySharing RoundUp
“Because stories are powerful, and because they are wholly owned by the person who shares them, we have an ethical obligation to use story in ways that do no harm. Whether we are asking for stories to better understand an organizational challenge, to use in our organizational communications, or for an advocacy campaign, our goal should be to empower, not exploit…”
Emotion and the Search for Meaning at SXSW
I went to SXSW looking to explore my contention that, in an increasingly loud, complex, and data-saturated world, a smart leader’s role is not to add more information but to communicate meaning. That certainly was the subtext of a fascinating discussion I sat in on titled “Maps of Time: Data as Narrative.”
Making Sense of Occupy Wall Street
“Occupy Wall Street is an international sensemaking exercise. From my frame of reference of working in applied narrative, I see people coming together, sharing stories, examining them, gleaning insight, and extracting meaning. The problems are profoundly complex and any solutions (“demands”) that may emerge will require collaboration, careful analysis, and shared understanding.”