The Sweeney Agency

About Stephen Denning - Leadership and Management Speaker:

Stephen Denning, organizational storyteller extraordinaire, is the author of the acclaimed books, The Secret Language of Leadership and The Leader's Guide to Storytelling. He was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he spearheaded the organizational knowledge sharing program.

Currently working with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on knowledge management and organizational storytelling, Steve's clients include scores of Fortune 500 companies. In April 2003, Steve was ranked as one of the world's Top Two Hundred Business Gurus by Davenport & Prusak, What's The Big Idea?

Steve's other book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations describes how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management. His other books include Squirrel Inc. and Storytelling in Organizations.

Born and educated in Sydney, Australia, Steve studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. Steve then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities and held various management positions, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank.

What Steve Denning Talks About:

Eight High-Value Patterns of Business Narrative
Participants explore the eight high-value patterns of narrative for leaders, including communicating complex ideas so as to be easily understood and spark action even from skeptical audiences, building trust by communicating who you are, enhancing your brand authentically from within the organization, understanding values and how to transmit them authentically, creating high performance teams and communities of practice, transmitting knowledge, both explicit and tacit, taming the grapevine, and leading people into the future.

What Leaders Actually Do: The Secret Language of Leadership
Leaders behave differently from managers. Whereas managers control, leaders enroll in a vision. While managers obligate, leaders liberate. Whereas managers inform, leaders transform. While managers require, leaders inspire. Whereas managers seek obedience, leaders generate meaning. Whereas managers get convergence by containment and establishing boundaries, leaders get convergence by establishing expansive goals.

Here participants explore the full array of narrative tools that can help handle the challenge, including springboard stories, stories of the audience’s problems, common memory stories, identity stories, and branding stories, while also discovering the relationship of narrative tools to non-narrative techniques, including facts, data, analyses, questions, images, frames, offers, surprises, activities, challenges, and metaphors.

Managing Transformational Change
In the fast-paced world of global competition in the 21st Century, change is not an option, it’s a requirement for survival. But change isn’t just a matter of getting shifts in the way people behave, with time-bound programs and initiatives. The challenge of change is not so much one of action as one of assimilation. Ultimately a transformation is successful, not just because people behave differently, but rather because they begin to create new roles and identities. The value of the transformation is located not in an action plan but in an identity shift. Until people shift identity, the change doesn’t really take root in a lasting, sustainable way.

Other Topics Include:

• Using Storytelling to Ignite Change
• Narrative Inmarketing and Branding
• Narrative Techniques for Selling
• Innovation and Knowledge Management
• What's New in Knowledge Management?
• Getting Top Management Support For KM