Story telling: an old skill in a new context

Story telling is a uniting and defining component of all communities. The quality of story telling and its conformity or otherwise with desired corporate values is one measure of the overall health of an organization. Stories exist in all organizations; managed and purposeful story telling provides a powerful mechanism for the disclosure of intellectual or knowledge assets in companies. It can also provide a non-intrusive, organic means of producing sustainable cultural change; conveying brands and values; transferring complex tacit knowledge. Too many management theories are based on mechanical models of the organization, which fail to recognize that success is best achieved by treating the organization as a complex ecology, whose workings cannot be fully predicted. In this article the use of story telling will be explored in respect of different business purposes. This will provide a pragmatic approach to the use of the age old ability of communities to convey complex knowledge through story telling which will provide readers with tools and concepts that can be readily applied in their own organizations.