“How do you get a crew to want to get off of a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off of a *nuclear* submarine?” – Jack Ryan in Hunt for Red October, the movie.  

So if we believe that what we know is learned through stories, some boring, some riveting, how do we get people to share what they know through a good story?

It’s difficult in corporations to share stories and then to store them so that other people can find and reference the information to do even better things.  Here’s why I think that’s the case (at least for us):

• Knowledge is power, so sharing knowledge means sharing your power, so who, in their right mind, in a traditional corporate setting would want to do that?
• Power Point is the devil. Unless used properly, Power Point is the key instrument of torture used in boardrooms and conference rooms across the world.  25 bullets crammed on a single slide lead audience members to squint rather than listen.  Then, frustration builds as the speaker rereads bullets because he has lost his place while peering at the slide, back to the audience.  Here’s a tip from an audience member:  no more than three short bullets per slide, no black text on blue backgrounds, nothing under 18 points in size, 24 points is better, and, if possible, please, please, PLEASE wow me by giving me a rehearsed, memorized, and fun pitch while you look me in the eye and engage me.  But I digress…
• Reinventing the wheel is FUN.  I can do it (whatever ‘it’ is) better right here, why do I need your past experience to kludge up my nifty new project?
• I have to use a blog?  What’s a blog?  What are the new technologies?  What if our competitors get a hold of our information (on the blog)?  What if I look like an idiot? Technology anxiety is a common disorder in the workplace.   My personal remedy?  Let’s all use Macs, but since that isn’t going to happen, let’s all take a deep breath and remember:  technology is our friend, it is a tool and we have opposable thumbs.

So, in the immortal words of Jack Ryan, CIA man of mystery extraordinaire, how do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear submarine?  Put into communications terms, how do you get 130,000 employees, give or take, to WANT to share knowledge through stories?  Then, how do you make it easy for them to do so? 

What are your thoughts?  Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some of the ways we are making this fun and compelling enough here to get people to actively participate.  For a preview, here’s a great site.