Creating a sense of joy,relief,ease,community,encouragement

Storytelling Passport to the 21st Century

John Seely Brown, Steve Denning,
Katalina Groh, Larry Prusak:
Some of the world's leading thinkers explore the role of storytelling in the world

I Introduction to storytelling I John Seely Brown on science I Steve Denning on change I Katalina Groh on videoI
Larry Prusak on organization I Discussion I | Contact us | Bibliography on storytelling |

The film-maker as storyteller: Katalina Groh


	Giving everyone an A Ben Zander: So I give everybody an A in the class. Everybody gets an A. Ros Zander: Ben and I have a practice called, “Giving everyone an A” It started because Ben has a graduate class at the New England Conservatory and he had a lot of very anxious people in this class. And Ben said, “I don’t know how to get by it. So I said, “The only way to do that is to give them all an A, from the beginning of the year.” So what we developed was that every student got an A and had to write a letter, dated the following May, saying, “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…” So then these beautiful letters emerged. Just saying that, the person that was sort of hidden inside there, the person who the student would be, if there were no barriers, no fears, no little voices in the head, telling them what they couldn’t do.

Giving the A is a completely different paradigm. It is the paradigm of possibility. And we say that the A is a possibility to live into, not a standard to live up to.
Ben Zander: Rather like a fish swims in water, the environment of the class is an A Joy, relief, ease, community, non-competitiveness, encouragement, spontaneity, risk-taking: that is the environment of the A.
Ben Zander(conducting): Fine. Let’s stop. Wonderful playing. Wonderful playing.
Ros Zander: Everybody can make a difference. From any place that they are sitting in, from any role in an organization. They’ve been thirsting to feel about themselves that they can make a difference. All of us have encountered being stopped in something when we wanted to contribute in some way. And somebody stopped us. And then we were cautious about the next thing we said, and you know, we get a few of those, and it’s pretty ingrained. So now, people look out and say, “I have to really, really, really, get to know someone before I’ll trust them. Nonsense!

Books and videos on storytelling
*** In Good Company : How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work
by Don Cohen, Laurence Prusak (February 2001) Harvard Business School Press
*** The Social Life of Information, by John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid
(February 2000) Harvard Business School Press
*** The Springboard : How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations
by Stephen Denning (October 2000) Butterworth-Heinemann
*** The Art of Possibility, a video with Ben and Ros Zander : Groh Publications (February 2001)


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