Storytelling for Project Success - Coursework Example

Storytelling for Project Success Student’s Name Course Professor University Date Part 1 – argument: Words 2378 With the advent of globalization and advanced technology, change has become inevitable to all organizations. In turn, organizations leverage opportunities by initiating projects to promote the organization reflect the trends of technology and use the end products to increase the organizational competitive advantage. The project brings together various teams, and project managers have a tendency to regard formal communication as a more acceptable ways to communicate with project teams and the customer. However, storytelling can have more impact upon project success than formal communication. Storytelling is by no means comparable to formal communication, as it is comprehensive and interactive way to keep all the interested parties in touch. From my individual point of view, illustrating something through a story should be preferred due to the following reasons. According to Denning (2011), storytelling is a significant leadership technique as it is quick, natural and refreshing. Through the use of a story, a project manager can easily make sense of organizations. A project exists as a new environment where relationships have to be forged between the customer and the supplier. The primary focus when initiating a project is to promote a collaborative relationship. Storytelling is a powerful, entertaining and persuasive approach that can promote expected collaboration. Storytelling is moving and enables the audience to have an all-embracing knowledge of the other party’s idea. It is easier to notice the mood and emotion of a leader and figure out the attitude towards the emerging relationship. Moreover, even if the parties involved have some major differences such as language barrier, age gap, skills, and understanding, through storytelling, they can still get along and initiate health relationship. Storytelling is holistic, free and authentic (Reed & Knight 2010). As an experienced project manager or executive director, there is a mine of past experiences that can help illustrate a problem is a real manner through a story. Storytelling is an essential tool to communicate feelings, intentions and get things done as per the expectations. It is the utmost desire of a leader to embody the change they expect. In turn, rather than merely coming with complex or advocating for propositional arguments that can generate arguments in future, project leaders can establish credibility and authenticity by telling memorable stories. The audience or the other party believes deeply in stories, and that makes the stories to resonate, generate creativity, transformation and interaction. Storytelling is indispensable when focusing on forging project relationships (Gabriel & Connell 2010). The temporal nature of projects does not offer a lot of time for different parties to build rapport. Noting that the teams will have to work together and deliver to the expectations of the project, there must be a way of establishing confidence between them. In turn, they can converse directly and take good care of one another to avoid inflicting emotional injuries in the process. If the parties involved emphasizes on formal communication, project teams may perceive their counterparts as strangers throughout the whole duration of the project. The teams will tend to be isolated and at times they can possess extreme views making it hard to manage them and deliver the products on time. Storytelling help to break the boundaries and avoid the tendency of the various team to crave for those people whom they have a past relationship and with whom they feel smothered. Above all, working as separate teams in a project is not beneficial at all for any project (Ohara & Cherniss 2010). Storytelling is often a better way for project leaders to communicate with significant others and primarily those they are leading. Storytelling is inherently well adapted and can help to handle a number of intractable leadership challenges facing the project. First, project leaders’ sparks change and obviously, people tend to resist change or possess varying viewpoints that can distract the success of a project. Second, project leaders are as important part of the project and must communicate who they are. The subordinates or the other party eagerly seek to understand the personality of the leader to know how they will interact, communicate and how the leader will value them. In turn, storytelling makes it easy for a leader to transmit values, share knowledge; tame others create high-performing teams and compel the team to the future (Whyte & Classen 2012). In most cases, formal communication appears dry and abstract to many people and through storytelling, a leader can translate it into a compelling picture and goals. Although in projects the business cases are developed through numbers, it is possible to approve them by basing them on a story. A narrative easily links a various set of events and identify the causal sequence. Admittedly, some opponents may argue that it takes the time to translate formal ideas and instead it is easier just to go through the objectives (Freedman 2010). Nonetheless, such arguments ignore the fact that, it will also take a great deal of time for the teams to interpret the ideas in a clear and comprehensive manner. It can even be more time-consuming when the people who are expected to deliver the products misunderstood the project ideas. The project team can get lost due to differences in verbal ability, misuse of vocabularies and shortened ideas when composing the project plan and cases (Reed & Knight 2010). As Denning (2011) observes storytelling is a potential communication tool that inspires people and help them act in unfamiliar and unwelcome ways. Formal communication often uses mind-numbing numbers and power point slides that can induce the mind to switch off. In turn, the leader fails to hit the goal of communication. Unlike the logical arguments, storytelling can highly communicate the needed changes. Effective storytelling often keeps people glued to the leader and anticipates hearing the next thing to connect the how the whole story makes sense in the existing project. A leader can debunk myths about the complexity of projects, positively criticize inappropriate behavior among the teams by alluding to a past real-life happening. As Ohara & Cherniss (2010) points out, storytelling works better when compared to informative communication approaches used in most leadership situations. Storytelling is a natural phenomenon and fundamentally applicable to all cultures, societies and nations. It has been part of all cultures since time immemorial. The applicability of storytelling can promote project leaders to work in any environment despite the psychic distance. Cultural differences have been pointed out in various studies and primarily with the globalization trends. Project leaders experienced in getting a story can overcome the barriers of power distance and uncertainty avoidance that may complicate and undermine project success. Auvinen, Lämsä, Sintonen & Takala (2013) argues that, the narrative is a critical instrument for continued creativity. Project leaders can ignite ideas and apply them in the project. The power of narrative inexorably propels the teams forward. For instance, a project manager can use past experience to indicate a thing that went on well and what was extremely bad. The teams can utilize the experience to cope up with a challenging work move to the future. Additionally, narratives reveal the unknown and can be a potential foundation to build new structures and products. A project leader who uses narrative to illustrate a point taps into other events and help the team to compare themselves with others and correct their attitudes to approach the project in a creative way. For instance, when most organizations are focusing on sustainable ideas and utilizing projects to realize them. The project leaders can use narratives to illustrate how sustainable ideas functioned to past cultures or how various civilizations presently apply them. It is not always that the project teams are all competent and particularly when the project is carried out by an internal team. The leader in an organization that is carrying out a project can use narrative to transform a large organization through promoting the power of imagination. The project leader can create conceptual scenarios for project participants to deliver the concrete idea. The teams can change mere thoughts into tangible and realities. As Ready (2012) observes, narrative promote freedom, forge interaction and in turn lead to organization growth. A project leader using stories to demonstrate the future of an organization operates beyond the simple and linear logic. Once the people identify multiple ways of a looking at project problem, they get interested to incorporate the known and unknown. Unlike the formal communication that just highlight the problem, the process and resources required to achieve a product, narrative extend the capacity to think of various approaches that can be used to achieve the same or better results. Storytelling allows the project teams to make sense of a project as an environment that rapidly mutate. Opponents can argue against the use of storytelling due to a common view that a project should be stable as planned, predictable and linear. The leaders who emphasize on formal communication sternly focus on completing the project on time and budget (Daim 2012). However, storytelling helps to incorporate a wider view where both the supplier and customer teams can consider incorporating changes in the project. As much as the changes affect the project scope, several suggestions can extend the product functionality. Strangely, formal communication attempts to communicate features proposed in a paper and in most cases, the project teams can act as puppet that do not have to consider the options or propose alternatives during the process of developing products. However, the use of narrative can promote the teams to propose actively features to include when developing the product. Storytelling can help suggest ideas by stepping back from a problem to understand how various issues are interrelated. Even the proficient planner may leave some important details and information and in an attempt to make short presentations formal communication can leave a lot of details for actual activities. However, storytelling will allow the leader to regularly communicate with team members and generate feedback that can help develop passionate ideas and typical ways to carry out a project or get buy-in from team members who owns the ideas. Project teams also seek to understand how the project can work when they realize that there are multiple ways to look handling and tackle the project needs. In turn, they can share a couple of ideas and deliver a more sophisticated product and promote the end product to function beyond its basic functional purpose (Whyte & Classen 2012). As opposed to conventional management approaches, storytelling is a creative effort that generates new products in a project. The leader of the team can search for virtual certainties by anchoring in the experiences of yesterday. The leader can use it as a tool to liberate innovation and generate the required energy in the team for a change. Projects teams want a confirmation that their struggles in dealing with the project are not new, and they are part of experience somewhere else. The project organization comprises of people who are affected emotionally when they do not meet the objectives or face barriers in their efforts to change. The organization then required to be encouraged, nurtured and tended to thrive and become effective. For project team to deal with the technicalities of the project, they require more inspiration rather than just formal approach to administration. The leader must focus on fostering change by incorporating storytelling tools (Auvinen, Lämsä, Sintonen & Takala 2013). According to Dima & Vladutescu (2013), formal communication in projects may be limited to respond to a future that evolves unpredictably. It is hard to measure the future without the knowledge of what is involved. One distinct aspect of storytelling is that it cannot be limited in time and space. It can help develop project teams and free people by allowing them to move beyond their immediate experiences. Every sector develops, and that is a fact for the project too. Storytelling can create abstract ideas into concrete products as they become cumulative. Formal communication is limited in providing social and psychological fulfillment that changes people’s outlook. Some aspects of a project are untranslatable into formal communication as a certain aspect may never have existed in the mind of people. For instance, Bill Gates ideas of software were not easily translated into what customers could understand as people knew about tangible products and hardware. In one culture, some ideas may be hard to be understood if highlighted in formal communication as they might not be applicable to the way those people lives. The narrative is a natural tool that can promote change as it draws an active and lively participation of individuals (Von Stackelberg & Jones 2014). The choice of its use in projects is the fact that it dwells in the experiences of project teams who carry out actions. In turn, they get involved in thinking, talking, discussing, complaining, chatting, joking and dreaming of ideas before, during and after the project. All the ideas from the project team collectively make an organization. By contrast, formal communication focuses on mission statements, formal programs, strategies, systems, budgets, procedures and assets that are always lifeless elements. A project should be a lively activity and narrative can elicit decisions and promote a desire to transmit knowledge and connect abstract ideas with the universe (Ohara & Cherniss 2010). Through storytelling, project leaders can let go of the common urge to control teams and the fear that come with control. They should learn that the universe has its capacity to organize itself and recognize that managing includes catalyzing human capacity, as well as focus to spark, energize, create, unify, generate emergent facts and celebrate complexity (Denning, 2011). All things considered, storytelling is still an effective way of expressing project ideas. Even in the current age where the technology promote the need to be formal, no other tool can replace an intricate human need to keep on living happily, share with others joyfully and overcome the day-to-day challenges faced by projects like storytelling. Additionally, with the pervasiveness of projects in most organizations today, it is hard for project leaders to ascertain that their teams grasp every point carefully or take the ideas as seriously as they would deserve. Fortunately, storytelling is a solution to project communication problems and enable the leaders to identify whether the teams are attentive, get immediate feedback, and clarify any confusion among individuals. Part 2 – standardized and simplified argument A). Denning (2011) claims that, storytelling is a significant leadership technique as it is quick, natural and refreshing. Noting the nature of projects including: The temporal nature of projects does not offer a lot of time for different parties to build rapport, Need for project leaders to communicate who they are to the project teams, Storytelling is thus indispensable when focusing on forging project relationships (Gabriel & Connell 2010). B). Opponents may argue that: In projects the business cases are developed through numbers, and Due to the common view that a project should be stable as planned, predictable and linear Counter-arguments show that: Project teams can take a great deal of time interpreting the ideas in a clear and comprehensive manner. It is hard for project leaders to ascertain that their teams grasp every point carefully or take the ideas as seriously as they would deserve. C). As Denning (2011) observes storytelling is a potential communication tool that inspires people and helps them act in unfamiliar and unwelcome ways as: Storytelling is a natural phenomenon and fundamentally applicable to all cultures, societies and nations. Storytelling allows the project teams to make sense of a project as an environment that rapidly mutate. Storytelling can help suggest ideas by stepping back from a problem to understand how various issues are interrelated. D). Therefore, all things considered, storytelling is still an effective way of expressing project ideas. References Auvinen, T P, Lämsä, A M, Sintonen, T, & Takala, T 2013 Leadership manipulation and ethics in storytelling Journal of business ethics, 1162, 415-431. Daim, T U, Ha, A, Reutiman, S, Hughes, B, Pathak, U, Bynum, W, & Bhatla, A 2012, ‘Exploring the communication breakdown in global virtual teams’, International Journal of Project Management, 302, 199-212. Denning, S 2011 Why Leadership Storytelling Is Important Forbes Accessed [29 April 2015] from http://wwwforbescom/sites/stevedenning/2011/06/08/. Dima, I C, & Vladutescu, S 2013, ‘Certain Current Considerations on the Managerial Communication in Organizations’, Jokull Journal, 638, 24-44. Freedman, R, March, 2010, ‘Communication plans are key to project success’, CBS Interactive. Accessed [30 April 2015] from http://www.techrepublic.com/. Gabriel, Y, & Connell, N C 2010 Co-creating stories: Collaborative experiments in storytelling Management Learning. Ohara, S C, & Cherniss, M 2010 Storytelling at Juniper networks connects a global organization to the values and behaviors of success Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 295, 31-39. Ready, D A 2012 How storytelling builds next generation leaders Image. Reed, A H, & Knight, L V 2010 Effect of a virtual project team environment on communication-related project risk International Journal of Project Management, 285, 422-427. Von Stackelberg, P, & Jones, R E 2014, ‘Tales of Our Tomorrows: Transmedia Storytelling and Communicating About the Future’, Journal of Futures Studies, 183, 57-76. Whyte, G, & Classen, S 2012 Using storytelling to elicit tacit knowledge from SMEs Journal of Knowledge Management, 166, 950-962. Read More