The story is the important part. The audience determines
the words. I write nonfiction. The stories are true; you may not believe it,
but they are. I lived them. They happened either to me or around me. I just
tell them the way they originally happened.
My best guess is that the current trend of the fictionalization
of nonfiction is my enemy. When I started to relate these stories to others, my
audience was made up of people for the most part very similar to me. With the
exception of a hand full of wives that might be temporarily in the immediate
area, those that were listening were my contemporaries in the Army.
There was no need to elaborate about the Cold—85 degrees below zero
was 85 degrees below zero—they
had all been there also. They knew and understood. I just had to say -85⁰F and keep moving along. When
I said I was responsible, I didn’t have to go into any more detail, they
understood and knew exactly why and how.
After departing the Army, I found that I was part of a
very small minority—5
to 10% of those I associated with had any idea, concept, or understanding of
the circumstances encountered in the stories I might tell. Nobody had even the
slightest concept of -85⁰F.
If I said -112⁰F, it
struck no chord in their brain at all. Their Cold existed at another level that
compared not one iota in relation to the Cold I spoke of. Very few had even the
slightest concept of a GI and the depth of situations that one could get into.
They had no idea of the hardships, troubles and responsibilities of conducting
their daily business one day in a brick and mortar facility and the next a
thousand or more miles away under canvas in an environment 180 degrees opposite
of yesterday’s and completely hostile to all they held dear to themselves.
To enable the use of my stories as teaching and learning
points, I had to find ways to enable their understanding. One of my first light
bulbs was the revelation that everybody had played army as a child and they truly
enjoyed hearing the stories as they were told—just as they were with zero explanation or altering.
My task was to make the story relevant to their situation—that association made it
real to my staff and co-workers. Once it became relevant to them, each anecdote
began to work as I intended them to—experiential
learning and problem solving solutions that they could learn from and use to
better their conditions in life.
The best feeling came to me when I might come upon a
direct report doing something that resembled a solution we had discovered through our discussions of a particular
anecdote and that guy or gal would, right out of the blue, say “Howard’s Law #3”
and just keep on working—it
would warm my heart and made it all worthwhile.
From the standpoint of Leadership and Management
anecdotes, I haven’t written a new story in the last ten years. Everyone I put
to paper has been locked away in memory since the day they took place and are
just as fresh in my mind when I begin to recall the facts and circumstances as
they were the first time I experienced or told them (or kept to myself
depending on the circumstances or need) as they were the day (or night) they
originally occurred. Oh, I have written new stories but not about Leadership
and Management—they’ve
been about my grandchildren, my travels, memories of my youth or just streams of
consciousness or thoughts on the everyday happenings occurring around us all.
Besides the foregoing, I have come across, maybe, more
than my share of interesting and crazy people that have shaped my present and
my future. My wife and kids, in addition to the community I now associate with,
have never heard or experienced any of that of which I write. I choose to get
down as many as possible before I can no longer remember the facts, the
situation and the circumstances that arose in the creation of the accounts I
have to share.
So, instead of applying all those fictionalization traits
to my stories, I will continue to write them just as I have always told them
and let the chips fall where they may.
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