Reductio Ad Absurdum?

This question has been playing on my mind:  If stories are the most effective tool of influence, but are an inefficient way to communicate facts, what kind of communication style is most effective in today’s “attention deficit” business world?  So for an experiment, let me try out a communication style:  The “reduced” story line.

 

Once upon a time, two super-bright and savvy business consultants found themselves investigating a project that had inexplicably failed, although all of the best practices were in place, and the project was neck deep in qualified talent.  This piqued their curiosity, so our heroes did a wider survey, from which they came up with this answer:

“Focus more on leading the project and less on managing the project.  More management won’t help, it just de-motivates.  Success comes through the people on the team; if they are:

• engaged and
• enthusiastic

they will become:

• aligned,
• creative,
• industrious,
• communicative, and
• diligent.

“And then your people will find ways to make ‘wow’ happen, even for ‘big ask’ projects.” (Be careful how you say “Big Ask” if you’re British).”

Or, more elegantly put:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Our heroes realised that this was easier-said-than-done, and being super-bright and savvy business consultants (and heroic) they set to work crafting solutions.   After ploughing their way through many thousands of tomes of bone-dry research, attending – and sometimes participating in – bizarre rites and rituals with ancient and secret cults, boldly experimenting on unwitting (but strangely grateful) “development” clients, and somehow keeping their sense of humour, they formulated their new…web site.  The web site told the world of their truly novel project leadership solutions, that use insights and techniques drawn from many fields, including:

• Performance psychology
• Advertising and corporate communications
• Therapeutic psychologies
• Strategy consulting
• Change management
• Decision Quality
• Lots of others…

To this day, the solutions that they offer are:

• Project workshops to support project leaders to get their team engaged and enthusiastic – and aligned, insightful, creative, industrious, communicative and diligent.
• A service to coach project managers in the fine arts of project leadership.
• A service to coach new project managers in project leadership and project management.
• Project Leadership (and, yes, Project Management) consulting services.

Their clients are pretty happy with them, and give them references like:

“We needed to explore the ‘art of the possible’ and then deliver a transformed business operating model quickly. It was always going to be uncomfortable for the team. It was Beaufortes’ steadfast and insightful project leadership that made it possible, and the results are well beyond anything we anticipated. They steered the project team skillfully through multiple internal perils and we have now won significant new business on the back of the project’s success.”

Or:

“There is absolutely no way you would mistake their workshop approach with a school sports day.”

And our heroes, by a fortuitous quirk of fate, are busily living happily-ever-after, doing some really fun work with their amazing clients.

— Philip Greenwood