{"id":1077,"date":"2007-09-28T08:56:25","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T15:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2007\/09\/strategy_as_storytelling\/"},"modified":"2007-09-28T08:56:25","modified_gmt":"2007-09-28T15:56:25","slug":"strategy_as_storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/strategy_as_storytelling.php","title":{"rendered":"Strategy as storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A web discussion at SocialEdge, a program of Skoll Foundation, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialedge.org\/discussions\/marketing-communication\/strategic-storytelling-and-social-innovation\">exploring the idea of strategic storytelling<\/a> &#8212; or the promise and challenge of creating more compelling narratives about our work. While all agree that narrative is a powerful force in conveying purpose and meaning, it also has a controlling side that should lead us to be cautious and thoughtful in our telling. Says one participant:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/p>\n<p>Stories are the prima materia of identity, culture, and social order. Every relationship, every experience, and every object &#8211; is stored in the mind with a story attached to it. Cognitive science supports this with extensive research on the mechanisms of narrative and sense-making.<\/p>\n<p>So, on the one hand we are completely lost and direction-less without our ability to construct, organize, and remember stories. We need stories in order to know who we are and where we are going.<\/p>\n<p>Yet on the other hand, consider how quickly we can become enslaved to the stories that we inherit from our parents, school, religion, society, and our organizational peers&#8230;.These same stories also impose limits on what is ultimately possible, leading to a self-defeating pattern that keeps individuals and organizations stuck from moving forward.<\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Many arts organizations I&#8217;ve seen aren&#8217;t even aware of the many stories they already tell &#8212; to their customers, their audiences, their artists, their boards. Every spreadsheet they present is a story, as is every policy they draft, and every description they give of an upcoming event or an event gone by.<\/p>\n<p>If even these little stories were told with intent, with purpose, and with clarity, imagine how much more compelling an organization would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A web discussion at SocialEdge, a program of Skoll Foundation, is exploring the idea of strategic storytelling &#8212; or the promise and challenge of creating more compelling narratives about our work. While all agree that narrative is a powerful force in conveying purpose and meaning, it also has a controlling side that should lead us [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}