Story Thinking

This book is about the major organizational challenges related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and ways for visionary leaders to begin addressing them now by rethinking traditional views of change, learning, and leadership. This is not another book about the gloom and doom associated with predicted job losses due to robots and artificial intelligence (AI). Instead, this is a solutions-based book that provides a new way of thinking about the organization, called Story Thinking. The first industrial revolution was based on steam and mechanical production. The second revolution was based on electricity and assembly lines. The third revolution was based on computing and online workflow. All three of these technological advancements completely changed the underlying approaches towards business. But the next revolution will be even more profound. The fourth revolution is primarily based on intelligence and digital connectivity. This will move us beyond building a workforce around the technology-the workforce will also be competing with the technology. Successful organizations will need to do more than just adopt smarter tools-they will need to adopt smarter ways of thinking beyond current memorized prescriptive change models. Within the second industrial revolution, we became accustomed to saying that everything happens within a process-and the framework of "process" became our mental model of work. Now, in the fourth industrial revolution, we will need to understand that the framework of "story" must become our mental model of work. Storytelling is based on a sensemaking pattern for how we should talk-but Story Thinking is based on this sensemaking pattern for how we should work.