Storytelling in Organization (SIO)

Nobody MOVED your Cheese.
Someone ATE your Cheese.

Every new tool in business has a life cycle.  Remember vision and values?
In the beginning the tool is good.  It retains the gold of inclusivity, personal connection and just rewards.  THEN...the tool is broken down into a recipe of objectives and steps.  Consultants seek to brand their vision of the tool (exclusivity) and lock in measures for results (there goes personal connection).  Finally, one person (there is always one) with an exploitative bent learns how to use the tool to mask their true intentions.  And the reverse alchemy of turning a golden tool into lead is complete.  The market moves on to the next fad.

However, storytelling is one tool that will never die.

Storytelling has a long history of preserving justice, equity, and moral conscience, as well as passion, enthusiasm, and innovation – precisely because it is has a built in mechanism that forces those who wish to tell a story to live that story.  If you choose to use storytelling to build a culture of values like integrity, respect and justice - watch out – because storytelling goes both ways.  If you make the cut as a true storyteller in business then you can move mountains and make as much new cheese as you and your group might need or want.

Come join us and learn about:

• Reliable methods for finding true stories
• How to expose denial, hypocrisy and apathy without bad feelings
• Methods for weaving storytelling into organizational culture
• Using stories to guide decisions in an uncertain future
• Balancing Structure and Freedom for optimum creativity

Annette Simmons, M. Ed. President, Group Process Consulting

Annette Simmons is a successful public speaker, consultant and author of four books: Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate With Power and Impact, The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling (January, 2001), A Safe Place for Dangerous Truth: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear & Distrust (AMACOM, May/1999) and Territorial Games: Understanding and Ending Turf Wars at Work (AMACOM, 1997).

Annette has been president of Group Process Consulting (Greensboro, NC) since 1997 and has over twenty years working with businesses in marketing and economics.  She has worked both nationally and internationally with companies including Ericsson, J. Walter Thompson, Farr Associates, Best Buy, Microsoft, NASA, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.  Annette has been featured on CNBC’s Power Lunch, NPR’s Market Watch, talk radio programs, and quoted in Fortune, Working Woman, Harvard Business Review, The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and dozens of other respected publications. In addition to English her books have been published in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish. Norwegian and German.