Today I had the privilege of attending a seminar with Stephen Denning , renowned for his work in the area of knowledge management and story telling as an effective tool for leaders to use in bringing about organisational change (among other things).
Stephen reinforced the notion that much of the real value of knowledge within organisations is shared in the form of stories anyway, and that his approach to using story telling to spark change is simply an extension of this.
This links well with the reading I’m doing at present (still) from Carl Davidson and Dr Philip Voss’s Knowledge Management book. The section I read on the train this morning dealt with formal and informal knowledge, and identified (like Denning) that it is in the tearoom discussions and casual conversations (ie informal storytelling) that some of the most valuable knowledge in an organisation is shared and developed. You can read more of their work on their No Doubt website.
For more on Stephen Denning, take a look at his recent article titled Telling Tales published recently in the Harvard Business Review (available here from his site as a PDF)
Steve also maintains a blog on which he is currently publishing the draft chapters for his next book.