Archive for the ‘Narrative’ Category
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
This weekend, we will see billions of dollars in media time, politician time, Homeland Security time, Pentagon time, NFL time, and the cost of our collective attention, spent on remembering 9/11. Most of it will be the ‘Never Forget, Never Forgive’ kind of remembering. Politicians and Generals like Panetta and Petraeus will warn us that it’s still a dangerous world, that our enemies are still omnipresent, and bent on destroying us.
We jump at shadows. A weekend pilot who wanders into the airspace above Camp David (where the President was not staying at the time) is immediately characterized by the media as a possible terrorist; this followed by dire predictions from Homeland Security that the next wave of terrorist attacks will come in small planes.
A mentally ill person armed with an AK-47 shoots up an IHOP in Nevada. The media blend this and other sad events like it into a nonstop drumbeat of fear, marching us inevitably backward in time, toward the paralyzing events of 9/11. We go into hiding from one another. Gate our communities. Update our security systems. Buy more guns. And all this does is blind us to the reality that we live in a country where mentally ill people can get their hands on AK-47s. Instead, we are made to feel powerless that we can anything about it. Except burrow deeper into the darkness.
I’ve got an idea for this week, an antidote for the fear being foisted upon us by people who want to manipulate and profit from it. An idea that doesn’t involve chest thumping, flag waving, or the naming and elimination of our enemies: Do what the Amish do. Forgive.
When five young girls were executed in a schoolroom by a lunatic with a handgun in Nickel Mines, PA, in 2006, the Amish did the most difficult thing I can imagine. They forgave the gunman and his family. They bulldozed the schoolhouse where the massacre took place, and set about doing the unfathomably hard work of getting on with their lives.
When it comes to 9/11, we haven’t been allowed to forget, and we certainly have not been encouraged to forgive. Warmongers like Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz saw 9/11 as a business opportunity. And that, with Cheney’s abominably-timed book promotion, continues to this day.
The battles we must fight are not with our enemies but with ourselves. No matter how much we hurt, or how much harm has come our way, we can never find healing in bringing more hurt into the world, or in harming others as we have been harmed.
Forgiveness is the first step out of the shadow of our fear, into the light of a better world.
2006 Site of the Nickel Mines Schoolhouse, Today
Posted in Character, Environment, Issues, Leadership, Metaphor, Narrative, Networked World, Themes, story | 2 Comments »
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
I wasn’t going to write a blog post this morning, I have too much to do, flying to San Francisco later today for a workshop at Art.com with the miracle who is Ivy Ross and a small group of artists and storytellers from her amazing constellation of friends.
Then, as I was scanning my network, a pattern became too obvious to ignore:
Television news missed most of the Hurricane Irene story. Social networks did not. This may be the most visible, tightest-framed example I’ve ever seen of how narratives live differently, more dynamically, in networks than they do in the old inside-out media channels. And why improvisation trumps scripting.
From Wednesday on, the mainstream media beat the drum for a monolithic, fear-based narrative about Hurricane Irene. Don’t get me wrong. Precaution is good, and often necessary. “Worry,” William Inge said, “is the interest paid on trouble before it comes due.” The problem for the scripters of TV News is that this is the only narrative they had, and it became increasingly and visibly detached from most of the storm’s reality.
By Friday, CNN’s Wolf ‘Cry’ Blitzer was bouncing from correspondent to correspondent in search of bad news, and you could sense their desperation at not finding any. They were showing B-roll that could have been any Friday afternoon Raleigh-Durham traffic jam in the rain, and characterizing it as a panicking populace fleeing to higher ground. Politicians, camera whores that they are, played dutifully along.
By Saturday, kids were dancing around in their underwear behind your intrepid TV c0rrespondents who were doing their best to file Admiral Byrd’s dying words even as the dancing kids spoofed their phony narrative. 
Social and local networks, by contrast, were generating an entirely different portrait of the storm. It was not a picture of panic, but of ‘yes-anding’ the situation. Of neighbors connecting, and watching out for one another. Of helpful hyperlocal reporting about downed trees and street closures. Of beautiful photography from the beaches as Irene rolled in. Of friends gathering for a drink at their favorite martini bar, and bikers blazing through empty Manhattan streets.
Hurricane Irene Photo by Paige Minimi
When we play along with the fear-based narratives–be they our own or anyone else’s–there’s no opportunity, no expansion or growth. Irene is a scary bitch, stay inside, don’t answer a knock at the door, and whatever you do, don’t laugh at her or she will terrorize you like her sister, Katrina, did to New Orleans.
The reality of Irene is that she is a Hurricane With a Thousand Faces, and many of those faces are smiling. Find yourself a smiling Irene and dance.
Tags: Fear, Fear-based narratives, Hurricane Irene, Hurricane With a Thousand Faces, Irene, Journalism, Katrina, Manhattan, Narrative, opportunity, story, TV News, Wolf Blitzer, Yes And
Posted in Environment, Issues, Metaphor, Narrative, Social Media, story | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Before yesterday, I’d never, to my recollection, heard the phrase ‘burning platform’ used in a business conversation. Yesterday I heard it used multiple times in two different conversations, with teams in two different businesses, in two different parts of the U.S., to refer to issues they are addressing.
A pattern defines a game.
This is what a burning platform looks like:
What’s the story here? Well, let’s see…it’s an environmental disaster…lives are no doubt endangered (many have already escaped in lifeboats, jumped or been killed (e.g. ‘fired’)…the focus is on containment instead of productivity…the PR spinning is beginning…a hundred lawyers are circling…Wall Street is manipulating markets based on shareholder emotions…the media is fanning the fear…the government is organizing committees that will haunt and impede productivity for years to come…cities, states and municipalities are seeking reparations. Whatever good can emerge from this mess will be years, maybe a generation, in coming.
Metaphors like ‘burning platform’ represent a level of meaning that accompanies all communication, the Meta level. (The other two are Cosmetic and Emotional). The Meta level contains metaphor, symbolism, allegory, parable, analogies, etc. Meta meaning is powerful stuff and should be chosen with great care. It’s why brands work so hard, at such great expense, on their identity. Those symbols mean a lot.
At GameChangers, we practice what I call the science of narrative. This science requires specific, deliberate and objective choices about what metaphors we put into play.
The Center for Public Policy and Administration defined the phrase ‘burning platform’ in 2005. ‘Burning platform’ according to the CPPA, came into meaning when a driller on a burning offshore oil-drilling platform calculated that his best chance of survival was a 150-foot jump that he’d never make under normal conditions. A burning platform came to mean an ‘urgent condition requiring bold choices.’ All good, and useful. Context is huge, however, and after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the context for this phrase changed and, along with it, its meaning. Now it means ‘unmitigated disaster.’
Look at the photo again. That’s the image of a burning platform most of your audience will conjure when this phrase is used. Whatever changes come about because of the pictured scenario promise to be painful, litigious, lengthy and costly. This is not what we want when we change the game. We want change that is productive, agreeable, fast and inexpensive to implement.
Clearly, we need a new metaphor to capture this meaning.
It’s like that old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon intro, where Bullwinkle pulls a monster out of a hat and says “No doubt about it, I’ve gotta get another hat.”
We’ve gotta get another hat.
Tags: BP, Burning Platforms, Change, Cosmetic, Deepwater Horizon, Emotional, Meaning, Meta, Metaphor, Rocky and Bullwinkle
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Environment, Levels of Meaning, Metaphor, Narrative, Photos & Videos, Problem Solving, Scenes, Speed, story | 2 Comments »
Sunday, July 31st, 2011
@davidgadarian called out the pattern on his Twitter feed this morning: “#pleasestop I seem to be attracting a run of new followers who are young attractive and who have no profile descriptions…” Me too.
A pattern defines a game. And while this game is more sophisticated than flat-out spamming, and probably gets a higher click-though because of it, it’s worse in a way, because it wastes the time it takes to actually see that it’s spam. I saw the same kinds of ‘Follows’ Gardarian no doubt did. The fictional females in question had reasonably believable names. They were following more than a thousand people, so it wasn’t one of the totally ‘empty’ profiles that often characterize Twitter spams. But when Yolande and Aura both have the same profile photo, you know the ‘un-game’ is on.
The tweets from these fictions had a kind of personality to them, touchpoints to popular culture.
A quick look reveals the commercial objective of selling new technology. Not that there’s anything wrong with selling technology, but to do it using fictions like these only calls the authenticity of the merchandise itself into question. Can I count on the reliability of a product when I’ve been tricked into it by a bot? Spam by any other name is still spamming. 
I’d dig deeper into this to find out what agency is behind this faux cleverness, but I’ve already spent enough of my time and intelligence on it, and can only echo David Gadarian. #pleasestop! Brands who play inauthentic games like these are wasting time–their possible customers’ and their own. Deceitful narratives always come with a cost, and the biggest problem is that the deceivers have no way of knowing or controlling what that cost is going to be.
Tags: Authenticity, Branding, David Gadarian, Deceit, Faux Narratives, Games, Narrative, Spam, Spamming, Twitter, Twitter Girls Game
Posted in Branding, Communication, Dialogue, Games, Narrative, Sales, Social Media, story | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Over the past three and a half years at GameChangers, we have gone through Cirque du Soleil-like contortions to explain improvsiation and its value to business in the Networked World.
We have defined it as “A process for producing consistently positive outcomes from unforeseen circumstances.” We call it “serendipity by design.” “A game, a theme, and an exploration.” “Collaborative problem solving.” “Acting on environment and letting environment act on you.” Listening, Learning and Transformation.” “Agility + Ability.” “Freedom within Structure.” “Creating a cosmos out of chaos.” “Openness to opportunity.” “The Big Yes-And.” “Flexible Vision.” “How Tina and Amy Got Their Grooves,” and “Not comedy.” Among others.
Leave it to Steve Jobs, interviewed in The Pixar Story, Leslie Iwerks’ 2007 feature documentary, to phrase it with the assured elegance of an Apple design.”Unplanned collaboration” is the phrase he uses.
“We wanted a place that would encourage unplanned collaboration,” said Jobs in describing the design of Pixar’s new studio. He repeatedly cites this this as the architecture’s objective.
He didn’t connect this phrase to improvisation, per se, but it’s as good a definition as we’ve heard. Improvisation is unplanned collaboration. And even though it’s unplanned, it’s all part of the design. In the architecture of improvisation, you fully expect to run into someone unexpectedly. When you do, you are prepared to exchange information, find an agreement, and build a scene together or continue one that had begun earlier. You expect that others might jump into this scene with you, and you are prepared for anything they might add. Through this process, in thousands upon thousands of such unplanned increments, each filled with its own unique potential to be productive, you move your narrative forward.
It’s hard to imagine a better case study for the value of improvisational design than Pixar’s studio, or a better model of what it means to be a GameChanger than Steve Jobs.
Jobs also said it took ten years for Pixar to make any money. We’re just going to ignore that one. Play on.
Tags: Animation, Architecture, Improvisation, John Lasseter, Pixar, Pixar Studios, Preparation, Serendipity, Steve Jobs, Unplanned Collaboration
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Environment, Listening, Narrative, Networked World, Objectives, Problem Solving, Scenes, Social Media | No Comments »
Monday, July 11th, 2011
Last week GameChangers got hired to conduct a ‘thematic exploration’ of a client’s brand. Most of us, at one time or another in our educational lives, if not our working lives, have had to wrestle with themes. What are they? And, when it comes to business, what purpose do they serve?
Themes are Big Ideas. That’s part of it, but only part of it–because ideas can get too big, and, like a balloon so large it cannot be inflated, they will never find their definition, nor serve their purpose.
‘Stardom’ is a Big Idea. So is ‘Food.’ They are not themes. They are un-inflatable balloons, weighted down with so much meaning we can never get them off the ground. What makes a Big Idea buoyant? What gives it definition and gets it off the ground? Explorability.
The Big Idea must be Explorable (by at least two people at any one time). When a theme is Explorable, we can map to it. It can help guide us, and give us our bearings. At any given time, we can assess our position with regards to it. Themes, by virtue of their Explorability, suggest action. We can do something about them, through them, with them.
‘Reality Show Stardom’ is a theme. ‘Food of Love’ is a theme. (’Love of Food’ is another theme altogether.) When a Big Idea is Explorable, we can tell, and others can tell, objectively, whether we are engaged with the Big Idea or not. If we are studying dance at Sarah Lawrence, we are, in all probability, not exploring the theme of ‘Reality Show Stardom.’ It’s easy, by contrast, to imagine a hundred moves that do explore that theme. If we propose marriage over dinner, we’re sailing in the ‘Food of Love’ balloon. If we’re eating Cheerios and checking the box scores from last night’s game, we’re in a different balloon. Explorability gives Big Idea shape and definition, and carries us into new territory.
Which brings us to the business purpose of a theme:
The exploration of a Theme transports us. That, by itself, would be enough to make the exploration of a theme a valuable exercise. The buoyancy inherent in a Big Explorable Idea gives wings to our actions and adds to our sense of purpose. If a theme is strong, rather than get lost in the exploration of an idea,we have the potential to discover ourselves it it.
There’s a second big reason that Themes are important to business and brands: Themes are the glue that bind your brand to your customers. They are common ground that you explore together. Social media are the mechanisms, a garage full of vehicles, so to speak. Themes define the conceptual, physical and virtual territory you and your customers can explore together.
The narrative belongs to the customer. By exploring Themes that are authentic to your brand and relevant to your customers, you increase the probability that your product will play a meaningful role in their lives.
All photos in this post are from http://www.slc.edu/graduate/programs/dance/
Tags: Big Ideas, Branding, Co-creation, Conceptual, Convergence, Customers, Explorability, Glue, Narrative, participation, Physical, Products, Sales, Social Media, story, Theme, Virtual
Posted in Branding, Communication, Creativity, Fundamentals, Narrative, Networked World, Social Media, story | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Riffing on yesterday’s theme of ‘Complex vs. Simple Process,’ take a look at the COIN (Counter-Insurgency) Plan drawn up by the U.S. Military command for its Afghanistan campaign…
Looks like the narrative for Prince Harry’s outfit at the Royal Wedding, doesn’t it?
Now take a look at the plan Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, drew up for how Southwest was going to enter the airline business 40 years ago, in 1971…
Looks like the design for Pippa Middleton’s outfit at the Royal Wedding. Simple. Elegant. Easy to understand. Ultimately, appreciated by all. Beneath this design, of course, was a lot of complexity–but the business problem, as Herb Kelleher saw it, was as simple as how to build a triangle.
Kelleher continued this tradition of drawing up Southwest’s year-to-year strategies on a napkin over a lunch with his key executives. This structure allowed the company’s employees to improvise solutions to every problem they encountered.
The U.S. Military command, by comparison, finds itself in the business of trying to tie a bow–or create any recognizable design for that matter–out of all those threads.
Tags: COIN, Complexity, Organizational Design, Pippa, Prince Harry, Problem Solving, Royal Wedding, Simplicity, Southwest Airlines, Triangle
Posted in Communication, Issues, Leadership, Narrative, Problem Solving | No Comments »
Monday, June 27th, 2011
As a former drum major for the Jasper (Indiana) High School Marching Wildcats, and a former member of Notre Dame’s famed Irish Guard, I am a more-than-casual observer of ceremonial garb. Been there. Wore that. It was impossible to avoid images from the recent Brit Royal Wedding, and with my background, it was hard to ignore Prince Harry’s deal that day. There haven’t been so many knots and braids in one outfit since the Throne kept a hangman on the payroll. Check it:
We are always looking for metaphors that convey the value of improvisation in business, and this is a biggie, because Prince Harry’s outfit is the exact opposite of improvisation. It is the result of centuries of scripting, hierarchical thinking and deeply coded institutional memory. And it prompts a good question: In what ways do yours and your organization’s communication practices resemble Prince Harry’s outfit? (And what are you going to do about it?)
Are your epaulets–whatever you ‘carry on your shoulders’–tied so heavily to obligations that it causes you to bend over in your carriage with eyes down instead of keeping your spine straight, and your vision up the road? Look at those braids and ropes latticed into Harry’s epaulets! They used to pay Houdini big money to escape from messes like like that.
What kind of collar do you wear? Is it stiff and tight like Harry’s ? Does it restrict your range to the ‘Voice of the Monarchy’ that His Hankness has been taught to repeat? Or is it loose and open, so that your voice can express all the colors and range of the voice of an opera star like Juan Diego Flórez?
Does your outfit sport ribbons and medals that require a degree in Heraldry to interpret? Or do you walk into scenarios unadorned, prepared to adapt to whatever best suits the situation and the problem at hand?
And speaking of hand…does your outfit give everything and everyone the white glove treatment–no dirt, and no skin except for a penny-sized patch in the fat of your palm? Or is your sense of touch free to achieve its full potential? In a digitally-mediated world, touch is a hugely appreciated experience.
If you put a lid on your outfit, do you do it in an old-school marching band style like the unfortunate Harry, who presumably had no choice in the matter? Or do you make it a lid that people might actually choose to wear themselves? Can you imagine a non-Halloween event where you’d want to wear a lid like Harry’s?
Now..in contrast with the Best Man’s outfit, take a look at what Pippa Middleton, the Maid of Honor, is wearing:
Everything about Pippa’s outfit contrasts with Hank’s. It is open, subtle, simple, and elegant. For such a momentous occasion, it is surprisingly casual. Most of all, what comes through is the personality of the wearer. There’s nothing in its design to distract us from her Pippa-ness, which is downright lovely, even the tension around her mouth, which says she’s putting up with the pomp, maybe she’s even amused by it, but she’s not reveling in it.
Who’s playing a role and who is showing character? Who is trapped in the past and who is living in the moment? Who is free to move, and who is tied down by an institution? Who’s going to look good in shoes or barefoot? Who could go for a swim without drowning? Whose attire wouldn’t damage you physically you if you slow dance together?
Improvisation results in an outfit like Pippa’s, one that best suits the occasion, and shows you in your best light. A totally-scripted outfit like Harry’s sits around in the closet, waiting for an occasion to suit it. That’s a lot of overhead. Unless you’re His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, you probably can’t carry it. And even if you can, why would you want to?
It was like this, see...
Tags: design, Dogma, Epaulets, Heraldry, Improvisation, Institutional Memory, Irish Guard, Openness, Outfit, Pippa Middleton, Prince Harry, Royal Wedding, Scripting, senses, Touch, Voice
Posted in Branding, Character, Communication, Issues, Leadership, Movement, Narrative | No Comments »
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
Jason Terry
Interviewed after his Dallas Mavericks’ victory tonight over the Miami Heat for the NBA championship, their star shooting guard Jason Terry was asked how they did it, and he said (I’m paraphrasing)…
“We found a home for everybody’s stories. Everybody’s story came together here. Dirk (Nowitzki’s), Jason (Kidd’s), mine, Shawn Marion’s, Stojakovich, Berea, Tyson Chandler, Deshawn Stevenson’s–all our stories, together, made this happen.”
This is a really great expression of a team concept, especially, for a pro athlete in the wake of a big victory, when the cliche is to spout cliches, thank God and sponsors, credit the opponent for a hard-fought game, and then say something about going to Disneyland. A quote about the secret to the Dallas Mavericks’ success that they that they built a narrative consisting of all their individual stories? That’s an athlete’s voicing fresh thought. And it’s an idea that can benefit any organization.
We saw this theme again seconds later when the Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, deferred to the team’s previous owner and founder, Fred Carter, by asking Mr. Carter to accept the championship trophy. When Cuban was interviewed by the TV announcer, he couldn’t get the team’s coach, Rick Carlisle, to the mike quick enough. For someone known to love the sound of his own sound bites, this ‘best supporting actor’ role is a new one for Cuban, and he wears it well.
The Miami Heat, by contrast, are a team of individual stories that have not yet found a way to co-create a championship narrative. In the wake of the season, the stories about them will be all about divisiveness, disappointment and unfulfilled promise, about who was responsible and who should take the fall. The team’s stories, in other words, will continue to exist independently of one another, without really benefitting the franchise brand.
Your company, your brand, your team, isn’t a single story, it is a narrative composed of all your stories, and your customers’ stories, too. Evolved leaders like Jason Terry and Mark Cuban don’t inflict their story on the organization, but rather, create an environment in which individual stories can flourish in the shared pursuit of the business objectives.
Well-said, Mr. Terry! Well-played, Mavs!
Tags: Dallas Mavericks, Environment, Jason Terry, Leadership, Mark Cuban, Narrative, NBA Championship, Objective, story, Storytelling
Posted in Agreement Principle, Casting, Coaching, Environment, Leadership, Narrative, Objectives, story | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
Recently, Reyne Rice of Toy Trends gave me this wonderful gift, a game created in Ireland called Rory’s Story Cubes. It’s super simple to play and endlessly complex in terms of its outcomes. I don’t know what makes a better game than that. And at $7.30 a set, how can you NOT?
The game consists of nine dice, each die with six different icons, 54 in all. Players roll the dice, line up the nine icons they’ve rolled, and tell a story the icons inspire. There are of course all sorts of variations on this version of the game. When Reyne gave me the Story Cubes at lunch she rolled her dice and told a story that involved her background in improvisation and theater. When my turn came, we changed the rule to be: one person rolls the dice, we take turns putting them in order, and then take turns telling the story, with our turn telling the story coming on the dice the other person has placed in the queue.
A couple of days after Reyne gave the gift, I was with a friend who was working through some difficult career choices. I still had the Story Cubes in my bag. I handed them to the friend, and suggested he roll the dice and tell a story about the next year of his professional life. The story he told was amazing and inspiring. What was muddled in his mind became suddenly very clear. What was clear was not the story itself. What was clear is that no matter what kind of roll of the dice he gets, he will have ability to author his own story. And it can be a good one.
Games are a device for exploring narratives. Good games yield good stories like Ireland grows shamrocks. Thank you, Reyne! Roll on!
Tags: Games, Ireland, Narrative, Reyne Rice, Rory's Story Cubes, story, Toys
Posted in Games, Gifts, Narrative, Problem Solving, story | No Comments »
