Managing by Storying Around : A New Method of Leadership

Rating:
Summary: First-rate
Review: I read David Armstrongs book when it first came out. It convinced me to put lots of stories in my own book: Local Government Dollars & Sense. I recently reread Armstrongs book for a training seminar. Managing by Storing Around, is still relevent. Armstrong comes across as privileged, but competent and insightful. As a former City Manager and practicing trainer and author, I find his message about storytelling timeless. It is a shame that this powerful book is relegated to the 2 to 5 week used bookstore market. Len Wood.

Rating:
Summary: Is this good business?
Review: Much as I value the use of storytelling as a business tool, the value of this particular book was summed up by a story very near the back of the book.

The story is called "The $1.2-Million Maintenance Man."
The moral at the end of the story says that a $30,000-a-year maintenance man will cost your company $1.2 million dollars over 40 years (because he never gets a pay rise?) so you could save all that money by firing the maintenance man and doing all the work yourselves.

Duh!
Excuse me, boss, but who is going to be paying our salaries whilst we are doing the maintenance man's work?
Now you have $40,000/year, $60,000/year, $100,000/year or more, maintenance men and women all across the company doing jobs you could have got done by just one person for $30,000/year! Not to mention that any half way decent maintenance man does a whole lot more than just change a light bulb from time to time, water the plants and move bits of furniture.

And where do we go from here? Get rid of the secretaries and do all your own typing and filing? Get rid of the computer operators and do your own data entry? Get rid of the PAs and make your own appointments?
This makes about as much sense as buying ten items in a sale, even though you only want one, just so you can save more money!

When the author wrote this book he was vice president of his family's international company. Pity he didn't make his way up from the ranks, this MIGHT have been a much better book.
And then again, maybe not.

Rating:
Summary: First-rate
Review: This is a wonderful and original management book. I happened upon it in my library by chance, and am really glad I did. I think it should have been a best-seller. It's better than many management books that became best-sellers. One thing about it not having sold well, is you can be sure a lot of your competitors won't be familiar with what's between these pages...and you can use what is against THEM!

Rating:
Summary: What a self-defeating let down
Review: Why are you thinking of buying this book?

If it's because you want a book that will teach you how to use stories in a business setting, forget it. Out 249 pages in the main text, just 21 pages are given over to "how", and several pages of that are scene setting. Hardly surprising, then, that the actual text of the chapter entitled "How to Story Around" takes up a little less than two full sides of a page!

The rest of the book consists of 75 stories from the author's own repetoire, each one of which ends with an explanation and moral(s) that the author thinks each story teaches.

So, at least you have a set of 75 short stories to get your own collection started. Right?
Wrong!
The problem is that, by the author's own yardstick, readers from any company other than his own (Armstrong International and its subsidiaries) cannot use these particular stories because the stories you tell should be true, or very very nearly so; and they should be about your own company, or why should your listeners accept them as relevant.

What does that leave?
Seventy-five snack-size sets of instructions on how to run a company a la Armstrong International (the "morals" that follow each story).

So, if you're looking for a book of one man's views on management practice, circa 1992, this may be the book you're looking for.
If you were looking for anything else, like guidance on developing your own story writing/telling skills, this very likely is NOT the book you were after.

Rating:
Summary: What a self-defeating let down
Review: Why are you thinking of buying this book?

If it's because you want a book that will teach you how to use stories in a business setting, forget it. Out 249 pages in the main text, just 21 pages are given over to "how", and several pages of that are scene setting. Hardly surprising, then, that the actual text of the chapter entitled "How to Story Around" takes up a little less than two full sides of a page!

The rest of the book consists of 75 stories from the author's own repetoire, each one of which ends with an explanation and moral(s) that the author thinks each story teaches.

So, at least you have a set of 75 short stories to get your own collection started. Right?
Wrong!
The problem is that, by the author's own yardstick, readers from any company other than his own (Armstrong International and its subsidiaries) cannot use these particular stories because the stories you tell should be true, or very very nearly so; and they should be about your own company, or why should your listeners accept them as relevant.

What does that leave?
Seventy-five snack-size sets of instructions on how to run a company a la Armstrong International (the "morals" that follow each story).

So, if you're looking for a book of one man's views on management practice, circa 1992, this may be the book you're looking for.
If you were looking for anything else, like guidance on developing your own story writing/telling skills, this very likely is NOT the book you were after.