words Beyond F inding exciting and thought-provoking ways to teach business topics can be difficult. I teach strategy at the University of Sussex and in my first session I typically introduce the concept itself. Instead of confronting students with textbook definitions of strategy, however, I tell them a story I’ve Stephan Manning from the University of Sussex Business School weaves a compelling tale as he explains how to incorporate the magic of storytelling into management education programmes
not the perfection of planning. This is what Weick’s story is really about and it is where the power of all good stories lies – in conveying fundamental insights through engaging characters and plots with twists and turns. Weick’s story was perhaps my first attempt many years ago to make teaching strategy more interesting. At that time, the typical way of bringing strategy to life was through textbook cases. While certainly educational, most cases were rather sanitised and devoid of the complexities and ambiguities of human interaction. In recent years, there has been a growing appetite for more vivid and memorable teaching methods. For example, business schools increasingly use protagonist-driven case debates, leveraging a flipped classroom approach and students’ own work experiences. But this approach requires new ways of teaching and learning and not every school and professor is equipped to make that transition. Luckily, there are other ways to make teaching more exciting – such as the power of storytelling. Using film to facilitate understanding Motivated to further develop my own storytelling skills, I decided in 2021, after 15 years of teaching at business schools, to enrol on a documentary film-making course to explore film as a new way of expressing myself alongside my academic work. Through filmmaking I have also learned how
borrowed from famous strategy scholar Karl Weick. This story is about a young lieutenant who sends one of his units into the Alps during a military manoeuvre. The unit gets hit by a snowstorm and is unable to return for two days. Feeling lost they almost give up, but luckily one member of the unit comes across a map in his pocket that calms everyone down and eventually enables them to find their way back. After they return, the lieutenant looks at the map and discovers to his astonishment that it is not a map of the Alps after all, but a map of the Pyrenees. This story uses a popular technique – a twist – to get the reader’s attention. But the twist is not just for entertainment. The lieutenant’s surprising discovery is anchored in the realisation that in some situations a map does not need to be super-accurate to be useful. It simply gives orientation and allows people to co-ordinate and act. As Weick notes, maps are a lot like strategic plans: they help companies accomplish goals, but it’s ultimately an organisation’s ability to act and adapt that matters and
14 | Ambition | JUNE 2024
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online