Nov 022005
Book Short: Allegory of Allegories
Book Short: Allegory of Allegories
Squirrel, Inc., by Stephen Denning, is a good quick read for leaders who want a refreshing look at effective ways to motivate and communicate to their teams. The book focuses on storytelling as a method of communication, and Denning employs the storytelling method fairly successfully as a framework for the book.
The specific kinds of messages he focuses on, where he says storytelling can have the biggest impact, are: communicating a complex idea and sparking action; communicating identity – who YOU as leader are; transmitting values; getting a group or team to work together more effectively; neutralizing gossip or taming the grapevine; knowledge-sharing; and painting a vision of the future that a team can hang onto. The book even has a nice summary “how to” table at the end of it.
Thanks to email guru David Baker at Agency.com for giving me the book.
It's funny because I started Flicker Gaming (my little business experiment) partly to skip business school, and I'm learning that experience teaches well but if I want to get things right I'm going to have to sit down and read some books anyways.
I'm also amazed at how much "running a blog" encompasses all sorts of business skills – I'm sure I'll find things in a book on sales as useful as things in a book on accounting. I'll check these out.
All true!