Issue No. 368 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting oozes over a powerful book detailing when to use speeches, stories, ceremonies, or symbols. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and read recent book reviews on this blog page. Plus, what’s the Bible Incubator? Visit the webpage from CrossSection.
Movements Follow a Story Structure
I’ve waited all year to launch this fall series of reviews on one phenomenal book. Today’s the day. Meet my new best friend, Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols.
Really. Start with the 10 case studies—compelling/memorable—guaranteed to keep you off your $1,000 iPhone. Next, the gorgeous fold-out book summary—bound between pages 58 and 59. And the big idea: “Movements follow a story structure.”
And here’s the structure—five actions:
• Dream (the moment of inspiration)
• Leap (the moment of decision)
• Fight (the moment of bravery)
• Climb (the moment of endurance)
• Arrive (the moment of reflection)
The authors, Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez, have shared their firm’s trade secrets and they didn’t hold back: 321 pages of inspiration, how-to, more inspiration, more how-to, and practical detail and head-nodding context—with dozens and dozens of delicious aha! moments.
Here’s what struck me—immediately. My old school approach (30 years as a CEO):
• Identify a problem, crisis, or opportunity.
• Leverage my intuition and best practices portfolio.
• I like to write—so leverage my writing tools. (Others, I noticed, like to speak—so they leveraged their oratory to warn or inspire the troops.)
• Apply my preferred tools to the situation.
• Done!
Guess what? It didn’t work that often.
But there’s still hope for you. The book’s “Communication Toolkit” tutors leaders and managers across a fascinating array of tools and action steps. Much like Ecclesiastes 3, there is a season for everything. “There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth…” (MSG).
Example: Picture a five-column grid and column headings of Dream, Leap, Fight, Climb, and Arrive. Then visualize four horizontal rows: Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols.
When should leaders use stories versus ceremonies? When you’re in “Fight” mode, you have two options: “Overcome the Enemy Story” or pull out your “Come From Behind Story.” But maybe…a speech would be more appropriate—like the “Underdog Speech.”
Whew! It’s all here—a toolkit, the science, the nuances, and the rich non-technical content. I’ve never, ever read a book like it. You may already employ some of these methodologies, but perhaps driven more by the coolness factor rather than a 30,000-foot intentionality.
The case studies (and mini-stories) are stunning. Example:
Illuminate highlights Airbnb’s beginnings, when cofounders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky responded to a hotel room shortage in San Francisco:
“Brian and I both quit our jobs to become entrepreneurs…[but just then] our rent went up and suddenly we found ourselves unable to afford our apartment…. That same weekend a design conference was coming to San Francisco that was so big all the hotels had sold out in the city…. We started to think creatively: What if we were able to blow up an air mattress, put it in our living room, and rent it out to designers who need a place to stay for the conference? We could go so far as to cook them breakfast, and by the end of the night we had this concept called Airbed and Breakfast…. Within 24 hours…we had people who started writing us from all over the world who wanted to stay in our living room. We made a thousand dollars and they saved our apartment.”
In the Executive Summary (available here), the authors warn: “Change Is Critical.” They add, “Businesses can choose to embrace change or ignore it—but they cannot stop it. When a company chooses not to change, the industry simply evolves past it. To thrive, organizations must continually reinvent themselves by imagining and implementing new initiatives.”
Then this:
• “40% of newly created companies last less than 10 years.”
• “50% of Fortune 500 companies will be replaced by new companies in 59 years or less.”
Is your mission/movement/cause stalled, plateaued, or declining? This book will help.
Next Week: I've asked Jason Pearson to share his color commentary on the first of five transformational phases for effective movements.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols, by Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez. (And thanks to David Russell at MANAGEtoWIN for recommending this book!)
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Did you know that when Meg Whitman was CEO at HP, she removed the “Executives Only” entrance? Did you know that Starbucks uses lower case letters for all employee titles, including the “ceo” title? What culture missteps are obstacles to your organization’s health and growth?
2) The Illuminate authors recommend using “warning” communiques to help people get unstuck. “This is no time for spin—be honest. Fight inertia by tackling the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that easily saps your travelers’ courage.” How do you move team members from stuck to unstuck?
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Trumpet Tribal Stories! Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
The Hoopla! Bucket in Mastering the Management Buckets challenges leaders to “harness the power of hoopla! for celebration, recreation, intentional food and fellowship gatherings, and just plain fun.”
Max De Pree (1924-2017) wrote this in his business classic, Leadership Is an Art:
“One of the important things leaders need to learn is to recognize the signals of impending deterioration.” He kept a list and observed that leaders, especially in large organizations, fail to see the signs of entropy, including: 1) a tendency toward superficiality; 2) no longer having time for celebration and ritual; 3) a growing feeling that rewards and goals are the same thing; 4) when people stop telling tribal stories or cannot understand them; and 5) when problem-makers outnumber problem-solvers. His list was longer—but you get the idea.
For more resources on hoopla!, including a link to Dennis Bakke's “Water Cooler Wisdom Posters,” visit the Hoopla! Bucket webpage.
P.S. Read John’s recent blog on board governance, "The Error of Leadership Indifference," from his 2017 series on Max De Pree's book, Called to Serve.
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