The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (KMCI Press),   ISBN:9780750673556

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Stephen Denning is the senior executive responsible for knowledge management at the World Bank. As the author of several well-received books on the power of corporate storytelling, Denning is a recognized guru and pretty much dominates the storytelling franchise among business writers. He believes that simple stories, told face-to-face, possess a remarkable ability to convey information so that people readily understand it. Just as important, stories can be extremely inspirational if you tell them the right way. Use this powerful narrative technique to introduce new organizational strategies or change plans, to detail a corporate vision, to motivate employees, and to communicate with customers and other key external audiences. If you handle corporate communication, this book shows you how to put storytelling to work to boost your performance. We regard Denning as an innovative thinker and communicator, and recommends his thoughtful, valuable book. In fact, this book is worthwhile for anyone who wants to learn how to communicate more effectively, regardless of the purpose or circumstances.

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I found Denning's book ponderous and self-indulgent. The central idea is fine, and the Appendices (17 pages total) have some excellent material. However, this would have been better presented as a 30-page handbook with the Appendices - not a rambling 196-page narrative that violates many of Denning's own story-telling rules. Heath & Heath's fine book, "Made to Stick", gives this book inexplicably effusive praise. Perhaps H&H read only the Appendices...

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I learned about this book after hearing author Steve Denning describe how he used story telling to inspire the World Bank to make knowledge management and sharing with clients a central part of its business model. Captivated by his powerful story, I wanted to learn more. I started by reading The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, which every leader should read and apply. That's a great book.

I noted at the back of the book that Mr. Denning offered to start conversations with his readers about storytelling. I quickly crafted a first attempt at a Springboard story and sent it to him by e-mail. I was delighted when Mr. Denning took the time to thoughtfully consider my story and raise questions to help me improve the story. From his questions, it was clear that I didn't really understand yet what a Springboard story is.

One of his suggestions was that I consider writing a book like The Springboard, so naturally I had to read this book next. Before completing the book, I found myself with a much more thorough understanding of Springboard stories and how to use stories to launch and achieve organizational change. If I had read The Springboard before crafting the first draft of my Springboard story, I could have avoided many of the errors he so kindly and gently pointed out to me. While The Leader's Guide to Storytelling has all of the elements about Springboard stories in it (along with many other types of essential stories that leaders need to tell), you need more context to appreciate what a Springboard story is. The Springboard gives you that context.

I highly recommend that you read The Springboard, and that you read it before you read The Leader's Guide to Storytelling. You'll make faster progress if you do.

The book has many valuable sides. You learn why stories work well both in terms of how listeners respond to them and the ways in which stories better capture reality than linear, abstract data. You also learn to craft a Springboard story and replace that story as your organization's performance improves in the Springboard subject area. That was one of the important lessons I had missed. My subject for the Springboard story is encouraging people to create 2,000 percent solutions. Yet that activity has gone so far that I need to describe it differently than I did when I first began talking about the subject in the 1990s. I need to build on where it is today as a mainstream activity creating billions in value and improving millions of lives around the world, rather than as the hope for the future based on limited experience that I originally used to describe it.

For most leaders, this book will teach you more about effective leadership than most MBA programs will. Don't miss it!

Here's why. In most organizations, the leader finds it hard to get anyone to do anything differently. The best method is for people to decide that they like the change and want to spearhead it themselves as though they thought of it first. A Springboard story is one of the very few methods for creating that psychological reality. Otherwise, you have to follow the advice of all those management theorists who tell you to hide innovation and change on the periphery and simply repeat yourself constantly hoping someone will eventually get the idea.

If you have to choose between reading Leading Change and The Springboard, take The Springboard.

If you are involved in knowledge management, this book has a second benefit. It describes successful ways of dealing with the many challenges of defining, creating interest in and delivering a helpful knowledge management process into a large organization.

As you read this book, realize that Mr. Denning is describing a special kind of story telling that isn't like what you are used to hearing around the campfire. Think of these stories as more like mini-cases in 50 words or less that point out an advantage that the hearer can quickly appreciate and seize. Once captured in the listener's mind, the listener then fills in the details in a way that makes the idea the listener's own. In this sense, storytelling isn't far removed from the psychology of subliminal suggestions . . . except that there's no subterfuge with these stories.

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Storytelling is an effective way to communicate ideas and gain buy-in, but the story has to be compelling enough to capture and hold attention. This book fails to capture and hold your attention because the author's writing style makes his story of discovering the positive impact of storytelling uninteresting.

There are some positives in the book. If you are involved in knowledge management, you may be able to follow the story a little better. Also, the appendix tells you the essential elements of a springboard story and takes stories in the book and dissects them into those elements. Finally, the book touches both on crafting the story and delivering the story, though neither is treated with a lot of depth.

If you already have experience with storytelling and want a reference on how to apply to business, this book could be useful. However, I would first look for a used copy to purchase.

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Stephen Denning describes in a more or less chronological way how he discovered the power of storytelling as a tool to change people's views and decisions. Of course, storytelling has been a (if not the) major means for transmitting wisdom and knowledge throughout the generations since the dawn of time. What Denning has done in this book, however, is both to popularize storytelling as a management technique suitable for contemporary change agents, but also to provide some analysis as to what constitutes a "springboard" story--one that is effective in effecting change. His appendices provide some matrixed data to support his analyses and guide the reader in implementation. Some of the factors making "springboard" stories effective are intuitive. A true story is more effective; a story involving one's own organization is more effective... This book is not a cookbook for devising/using these stories, rather it is more descriptive and represents more of an initial foray into the value and use of storytelling. It could use a sequel and, perhaps, a statistical analysis. Furthermore, it can be less than an exciting read. Indeed, one wonders if there is too much detail or too much autobiography in parts. Nonetheless, it is a fundamental classic of present-day Knowledge Management and provides an ingress into the fascinating world of applying human psychology in organization management.