Made to Stick

it’s a Challenge plot. Challenge plots inspire people to take on
challenges and work harder. If that feeling is consistent with the goal
you want to achieve, run with the story; don’t tack it on the bulletin
board.
If you’re running the Grinder Team, and you’re trying to reinvent
the company culture, then you need to be on the lookout for Creativ-
ity plots. When you hear that some of your men dragged metal
around a parking lot, you’ve found something.
Know what you’re looking for. You don’t need to make stuff up,
you don’t need to exaggerate or be as melodramatic as the Chicken
Soup tales. (The Drag Test isn’t melodramatic.) You just need to rec-
ognize when life is giving you a gift.
S t o r i e s   a t   t h e   Wo r l d   B a n k
In 1996, Stephen Denning was working for the World Bank, the in-
ternational institution that lends money to developing countries for
infrastructure projects such as building schools, roads, and water-
treatment facilities. At the time, he managed the bank’s work in
Africa—the third-largest area of the bank—and seemed to be on a fast
track to the top of the organization.
Then one of his two main mentors retired and the second left.
Shortly thereafter he was asked to step down from his Africa position
and “look into the issue of information.” His superiors asked him to
explore the area of knowledge management. Denning said, “Now
this was a bank which cared about flows of money, not information.
The new assignment was the equivalent of being sent to corporate
Siberia.”
The task was not just organizationally unattractive, it was daunt-
ing. The World Bank knew a lot about how to achieve results in de-
veloping nations, but that information was scattered about the
S T O R I E S
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organization. The World Bank conducted projects in dozens of coun-
tries all over the world—and while there was a central bureaucracy,
much of the operational know-how was naturally at the local level.
Each project was, in a sense, its own universe. A water-treatment guru
in Zambia might have figured out a great way to handle local politi-
cal negotiations, but he was unlikely to have the opportunity to share
it with a highway-construction guru in Bangladesh. Neither manager
would know the other existed, unless they happened to be in the
same circle of friends or former colleagues.
A month after accepting his assignment, Denning had lunch with
a colleague who had just returned from Zambia. This colleague was
working on a project to improve health care, particularly for mothers
and children. While he was in Zambia he had met a health-care
worker in Kamana—a small town 360 miles from Zambia’s capital—
who was struggling to fight malaria in the community and was trying
to find information on how to combat the disease. The worker had
found a way to log on to the Internet and had discovered the answers
he needed on the website of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
in Atlanta. (Keep in mind that this was in 1996, when the Internet
would not have been the obvious first stop for someone in search of
information, especially in Africa.)
Denning says that he didn’t give the story much thought at the
time; it was just an interesting anecdote about the resourcefulness of 
a colleague. Later, it dawned on him that the Zambia story was a per-
fect example of the power of knowledge management. Someone in
charge of a vital operation needed information. He went looking for it,
found it, and, as a result, was able to act more effectively. That’s the 
vision of knowledge management—except that the health-care worker
shouldn’t have been forced to conduct a trial-and-error search, ending
at the CDC’s website, to get the right information. He should have
been able to tap the knowledge of the World Bank.
Denning began to incorporate the story into conversations with
colleagues, stressing why the World Bank ought to make knowledge
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management a serious priority. Weeks later, he had an opportunity to
speak to a committee of senior management. He’d have only ten to
twelve minutes on the agenda. In that time he’d have to introduce a
new organizational strategy and win the group’s endorsement. A tall
order.
First, Denning set up the problem: the difficulties that the World
Bank had experienced in pooling its knowledge and the sorry state of
its information systems. Then, rather than doing what most people
would have done—i.e., rehashing the discipline of knowledge man-
agement and quoting some authorities about the importance of
knowledge management for the twenty-first century—Denning did
something different. He told the Zambia story.
Immediately after the presentation, two executives raced up to
Denning and began to bombard him with all the things he should be
doing to get the program off the ground. Denning thought, “This is a
very strange conversation. Up till ten minutes ago, these people
weren’t willing to give me the time of day, and now I’m not doing
enough to implement their idea. This is horrible! They’ve stolen my
idea!” And then he had a happier thought. “How wonderful! They’ve
stolen my idea. It’s become their idea!”
A
few years later, after Denning had left the World Bank, he de-
voted himself to spreading the lessons he’d learned about 
storytelling. In 2001, he wrote a very insightful book called The