‘How do you make a strategy a story? The best leaders and the best communicators do that. They turn something that’s functional and rational into something that’s a story.’
John Dore, head of London Business School’s Senior Executive Program and founder of Wave Your Arms, wants you to reimagine your idea of ‘glue’: as the magic ingredient that holds organizations together. Creating glue, he argues, is a core leadership capability: building real connection, delivering not just strategies but stories that resonate, that are galvanizing and engaging.
Storytelling is a key ingredient in glue, and as you might expect from someone with a side hustle in screenwriting, John is a genius at telling stories. You can see it in his book, Glue: Transforming leadership in a hybrid world, which was the winner of the 2024 Business Books Award Leadership Category.
In this week’s conversation, we get stuck in to the idea of glue in organizations, and also how as a writer you can create a different kind of glue, the kind that keeps a reader engaged with your book, and makes your ideas stick in their minds.
John’s site: https://www.waveyourarms.com/
John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndore/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: I’m here today with John Dore, who is the Director of London Business School’s Flagship Executive Course, the Senior Executive Program, and the founder of Wave Your Arms, a facilitation business with a cracking name, by the way, we’ll have to talk about that.
He’s also the author of Glue: Transforming leadership in a hybrid world, which was the winner of the 2024 Business Books Award Leadership Category.
So first of all, welcome John, and second of all, congratulations.
John Dore: It’s nice to see you. Thanks for giving me your time.
Alison Jones: No, it’s terrific to see you and let’s just talk about the winning bit, shall we? How was that for you?
John Dore: Yes, it was great fun. I hadn’t been to that sort of thing before, so the organizers sort of organized this rather, you know, fun dinner. And no one really has an idea what’s going on, including me. But there’s a nice clip online of lots of people on my table screaming, which I rather enjoyed, you know. So, yes, we’ve shared that a few times since.
But, yes it was a great, fun evening. I met a load other people as well which is great. People are pretty open, you know, in that sort of environment. So yes, I met a few other writers who’ve been shortlisted. It was great fun.
Alison Jones: Yes, it’s always a terrific evening, isn’t it? And the food is amazing as well. So really, really good fun. Lots of screaming, as you say, as tables go, which is, you know, I mean the whole kind of, I think we didn’t have it during COVID obviously. So the being back, I just, every time I’m just like this, we get to do this. This is so great.
John Dore: Yes, good.
Alison Jones: Talk to me about your titles, because Glue is such an interesting one. We’ll come on to the definition of that in a minute. Wave Your Arms, also brilliant. You don’t go for the sort of does what it says on the tin kind of title, do you?
John Dore: No, I mean, Wave Your Arms, I set that up in 2008. It’s actually based on, there’s a poem by Stevie Smith.
Alison Jones: Not Waving But Drowning
John Dore: Yes, I thought, you know, that sounds a little negative. So if you flip it round, it’s actually, the glass is half full and you think about it, what are the elements of ideas and inspiration and things people can hang on to? And that’s how sort of Wave Your Arms.
And then obviously, you know, I earn a living as a sort of facilitator and educator. So being with an audience, the analogy of wave your arms, it’s often the way I start a presentation. I’ll just check the people in the back of the room are still awake. You know, I’ll ask them to literally wave your arms.
I usually check in after 45 minutes to see whether they’re still awake. But the idea is there. So I’ve been, yes, so I set it up in 2008. I’ve been writing and blogging on there pretty consistently every month or two since then. So, when it came around to writing a book, I had this huge, you know, I suppose like stream of consciousness I’d shared on about 50 different topics over the past 15 years.
So when it came down to sitting down and actually writing a book that’s where I went back to.
Alison Jones: Yes, you had a lot and also, you had the material, but you also had the habit. And we’ll talk about your, actually I want to talk about Glue first, but I want to talk about your writing because it’s so interesting, the different varieties that you do.
John Dore: And that’s like, Glue was, I mean, I had this idea for a long time. It’s like one of those things, it’s like this itch you have, I have this idea, I used to talk about Glue at conferences and events that I would run and it was sort of hanging there. But the impetus, I guess, for like a lot of people was the pandemic 2020 2021.
So this strange thing happened where not only could I not do what I used to do to earn a living, which is bring people together in a room, get them to connect and collaborate closely and hopefully, you know, form bonds…
Alison Jones: …wave their arms…
John Dore: …well, it sort of not only became difficult to do, it was actually illegal for about 18 months in the UK to do that.
I spent a lot of time working at a business school, the campus was closed during that time, and suddenly you had this sort of, lack, this absence of something, which I thought was pretty profound, you know, this ability to connect, to collaborate, and to get close.
So it sort of prompted me to sort of knuckle down and write the book.
I’d thought about it as being called Glue for about 15 years. There’s actually a fundamental principle behind it, which is one out of sociology called social capital. So a lot of your audience will be familiar with human capital and financial capital; the essential of any organization, really, particularly in terms of its productivity and its engagement is the amount of social capital it encompasses.
And everybody will recognize that, if you’re a member of a sports team or an organization or a theater group or a collaborative group, you’ll know that this something goes on, which isn’t, you know, about a strategy or a plan or whatever, it’s a sort of a cohesion that comes about when people sort of settle around an idea.
And there’s an amazing gentleman called Sumantra Ghoshal, beginning of this century, basically took that social capital idea from sociology and said, what if you could apply that to organizations? What if organizations could deepen the amount of connections, collaboration and beneficial relationships within an organization? What impact would that have?
And he did an amazing paper I think in 1999 called The Organisational Advantage, and he said that if you’ve got two firms, one with a greater depth and breadth of social capital and one with less, the one with the greater depth of social capital, i. e. a greater amount of Glue, would over time be more successful, more productive, and more profitable than the organization that didn’t.
And it’s just such a beautiful, simple idea that it’s, you sort of almost think it’s inherently true.
Alison Jones: It feels intuitively obvious, doesn’t it? But you’re right that it’s, when you articulate it, suddenly you can do something with it. I wrote it down because I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember it word for word. But this is your definition of Glue. And I just want to probe into it a little bit more: ‘the powerful dynamic of highly engaged, talented people enabling the organization to grow and thrive.’
It’s a great description. Every single word in there counts, doesn’t it? So, it just tells a little bit about the, there’s a sort of, there’s an individual thing, there’s an interpersonal thing, but there’s also an organisational dimension to that.
John Dore: There’s also a little controversy to it as well. I don’t know whether you can have a little bit of feedback around this. It does have this idea about your most valuable people or your most talented people.
And often in organizations there’s a sort of, you know, both a pride in that and also some reluctance or some negativity in that, because it’s very, very difficult to do in a way that’s broad and diverse.
You know, there’s often unusual
Alison Jones: So who are the people we don’t care about?
John Dore: Yes, but what it argues though, is that if you can, you know, if leaders work harder to find all of what a gentleman called Donald Sull used to call Distributed Leaders, if you can find all these people around the organization and connect them and get them to collaborate and help them to have more beneficial relationships, you create this really powerful thing called reciprocity, and it’s extraordinary.
You know, again, organizations get it for free. It’s not on your job description. You don’t get a bonus at the end of the month for being, you know, it’s a giving beneficial reciprocity, but it’s deeply powerful if you’ve got a new strategy or a new product or a new idea or a new thing that you’re going to market.
If you can harness people from across the organization that’s really, really powerful. I think.
Alison Jones: It’s powerful at the organisational level. It’s also powerful at the individual level, isn’t it? Building those key relationships. And I really, I was so interested in the way that you basically said, look, almost forget strategy. I mean, of course you can’t forget strategy, but strategy comes after that level of social capital, interpersonal stuff.
Your job as a leader is to get this stuff right.
John Dore: Yes I think, you know, there’s all sorts of views around where strategy sits and where sort of leadership sits. But the Glue between the two elements is people’s reactions and behaviour and people’s ownership of things. So I think that’s where it starts. I think the conclusion I had was given the experience in 2020 and 2021, where we’re all more disparate and separated from one another, was they almost said that, you know, leadership, the old mode of leadership didn’t work anymore and that we needed a new form of leadership for the way we now work and live our lives.
Because it was difficult before to create Glue and social capital, but when you have people working in a hybrid world, working in a remote world, increasingly separated from one another, the importance of those, that reciprocity in those relationships becomes immeasurably more important.
And there’s a lovely phrase. I think it’s included in the books of sociologist called Pierre Bourdieu . And forgive me if I pronounce his name wrong, but he said that, you know, these connections within our organizations are not a natural given. They only come about because of an endless effort of organizations.
And what struck me in 20, 21 and 22, you know, Zoom and Teams connects people, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as creating that collaborative intent amongst people where you get friends and relationships. And as I said, reciprocity, you get organizational politics and a frisson and you get all sorts of things that go on when you bring people together and that’s powerful and it’s not necessarily going to do over a 15 minute remote check in on a Zoom call, you know, once a month with your colleagues, you have to have that proximity.
So the punchline to it is that if you need a different type of leadership. It came up with this idea of Glue, and you know, what is Glue? It’s about a leader’s responsibility to galvanize. It’s about a leader not just to be in a broadcast mode, but to listen. It’s about a leader’s responsibility to engage deeply, broadly, and diversely within the organization.
And then the last element to it, so you’ve got the G, the L, and the E. The U is obviously you, but it’s also this sort of sense that, you know, it’s quite unusual to have leaders who are good at creating Glue. You know, in my experience, it’s rare.
There’s about 70 different stories in the book trying to identify these leaders and these leadership behaviors which are there, but they are sort of rare and unique and if you do find them, they’re enormously attractive people to work for, you want to work for these Glue creating leaders, there’s something about them.
There’s something unusual, which I think people find compelling.
Alison Jones: I was really interested in that, actually. I mean, and you do make the point that you don’t have to kind of, you know, be gimmicky. You don’t have to cartwheel in wearing a wetsuit and be singing the Marseillaise, which is, you know, a relief to all of us, I think. But the idea that you kind of, you find what is distinctive about you and lean into it. There’s an authenticity about that. There’s a distinctiveness.
And I think one of the stories you tell that really stuck with me, and I can’t remember who it is, forgive me, was the leader who went around, he’d had a little book printed with the sort of the new strategy and he individually hand delivered it to everybody.
And there’s a sort of, I mean, that’s a real commitment, isn’t it, to social capital and relational capital. But it’s also that sense of being visible, standing behind what you say and doing something that people will never forget.
John Dore: Yes this visibility thing is really important, I think. I like that story because I saw it happening as well. And lots of people saw this happening. It wasn’t just posted online and the CEO owns the delivery of this message you know, which I think was important.
So I think there’s that story. I think there’s some other stories in there which are more around the way leaders ensure their visibility is normalized. I know that sounds sort of crazy, but you know, less set pieces, less on a platform, less broadcast, less monthly town hall where it’s one way, but accessibility and openness.
I mean, it’s not in the book, but one of the things that I’ve noticed since 2022, the greatest explosion in sort of home improvement was the cabin office, people buying an office at home, you know, where you’re in the garden with underfloor heating and broadband Wi Fi and so leaders. I mean, it’s often the leaders who could afford that sort of investment, but in a way, the corner office that used to be in the building will suddenly becomes this remote place in a garden. Now, that might benefit the productivity of the leader, but it does reduce her or his visibility, you know, seeing them around, seeing how they act, seeing how they behave.
So one of the tips that’s in the book, is if you are working in a hybrid environment and you’re a leader, when you’re in the office, make yourself visible. Don’t work from a meeting room, work open plan. If you’re having a call, make sure people can hear you having the call. If you walk through the office, take a moment, you know, just take a moment just to be Alison or John or Sarah or Tim or whoever, just be whoever you are, rather than be the person who’s purposely marching off to another Zoom call.
Alison Jones: Yes and there’s some vulnerability involved in that and there’s some, I was going to say self confidence, that’s the wrong word, but that you have to be kind of happy in your own skin and able to accept incoming questions, conversation, fire. There’s a sort of level of willingness to engage with hard conversations that that involves.
John Dore: and yes and there’s a leader who gets caught out by exactly what you say, Alison. And so, you know, there’s a leader in there where, you know, he used to just walk around and say, Oh, how are you? How are you? And someone stops him and they’re not feeling great, and they want to have a moment on that. It completely catches him offside.
You know, so if you are genuinely interested in how people are, it helps to be genuinely interested rather than just doing it and he gets caught up by that. And, I think he had a sort of profound learning from that and changed a lot of the ways he led afterwards.
Alison Jones: I think you make the point that he did that in public, that he owned that, that he went. Oh, this…
John Dore: in front of his whole leadership team, which again is your nice point about authenticity. You know, it’s quite a profound message to the other leaders that you can own up to these things.
Alison Jones: Yes, really interesting. And we teased at the beginning, the writing thing. So you have written a business book, which is an award winning business book, which is always terrific. But you’ve also, you’re a screenwriter. I think you’re writing a novel at the moment. Tell us about all of that. How does it all fit together?
How does all the different kinds inform each other?
John Dore: Yes, I think well, the business book was sort of a little bit more serious. So, there was a particular intent there and also I was quite business-like in the way I did it, so obviously, you know, I have the benefit of working for a business school, so there are lots of very smart people around.
And it also has a culture where people are very good at giving feedback. In fact, the whole nature of academia, if you think about it, is peer review. So if you write something and you want somebody to read it, then, you know, A, you’re sort of taking your ego and your life in their hands, when they look at these things. But I did that, so I think that was the difference with the business book was really getting people to give you some feedback before you thought it was ready to go out and I think that was a sort of process I went through, which I thought was rigorous for me, but I think made the book a better book rather me thinking it’s a great idea.
The other stuff I’ve written, I’ve written as a sort of outlet for years. I mean, literally, maybe 20 years. I spent a good couple of years trying to do it as a sort of, what do you call it, a side hustle or a different string to your bow, as it were. I spent three years down at the Cannes Film Festival trying to pitch ideas, running around the backs of boats and joining the film market there.
Though my realization there, I don’t know if you know this, Alison, but first time I got credentialized to go to the Cannes Film Market, I thought this is great. I have two good script ideas. I turned up in Cannes, you walk up and down the croisette and it’s like this big village area where you can just basically go and pitch ideas to anybody.
And when I arrived at the credential areas, there was 14,000 other people there ready to pitch ideas. No matter how good my idea was, it only had to be better than 13,999 ideas. And that struck me that that area of having creative intent, but actually getting it made or done is enormously difficult.
But I went back and went back again, and I did have something optioned, which was really exciting, and I thought that might happen. It’s still on the shelf behind me if you want to read it, but you know, these things were really good outlets for me for conversation, for creativity, and just for you know, just trying to share an idea.
Alison Jones: It really is that point about the idea itself is important, but it’s got a necessary but not sufficient condition.
John Dore: Yes, yes I mean I don’t know if you know, but film writing, I mean, film writing is probably the most extraordinary discipline because since the 1920s or 1930s, there’s essentially a format. There’s a page, the margins, the line, the typeface, the font, the structure. You’re only allowed to describe what an audience can see, not what they might think, you want them to think or feel. So you have to do it in a very, very structured way.
So, most screenplays are relatively sparse. There might be maybe 10 or 15 thousand words for a 90 minute movie, which is if you think about it, if you ever do a novel or you write a business book, you might be asked to write 70, 80, 90, 100 thousand words to express an idea. In a film you have so much less.
Now, the learning for me on that, I think it has some relevance to the business thing. How do you do that in business? How are you succinct? How do you get people to visualize things in a really you know, in a really immediate way?
You know, you don’t have a thousand words. You have a couple of lines, a couple of lines of dialogue or a couple of lines of description. And we’re used to that in films. But in business we seem to communicate with word salads and mud. Huge, huge complications.
Someone described this to me the other day. I thought this was lovely. It was the old Apple story. You know, when they created that, I’ve got one behind me, an old, the original iPod or whatever, and you know, they didn’t talk about it being a technology device that said it’s a thousand songs in your hand. A thousand songs in the air, you immediately got it. Now what’s the business…
Alison Jones: …and you remember it. There’s poetry in that.
John Dore: Yes so, you know, but often, when a strategy is described, it’s seven bullet points, only three of which you, the research says, only three of which you’ll ever remember.
It’s too complicated. What’s the simplicity that you’re trying to communicate across ? And some of the work I do with clients is in that realm. And if you’ve got a strategy or you’ve got an objective, how do you make it tangible and simple? And forgive me, Alison, the punchline to that is one you’ve heard, I’m sure, many times.
You know, people don’t remember strategy, but people do remember stories. How do you make a strategy a story? And the best leaders and the best communicators do that. They turn something that’s functional and rational into something that’s a story that emotes people in some way.
Alison Jones: Yes and you actually talk about storytelling as a vital component of Glue itself, don’t you? That leaders have to have that skill. They have to have that ability to tell stories, to create emotion in people, to give people vision. It’s all part of that sense of binding people together.
John Dore: Yes it is.
And there’s a lovely thing, you know, there’s a phrase in the book again from Gershala, but you get the smell of the place pretty quickly when you go into an organization and you don’t get that through reading the handbook or reading the mission statement on the website. It’s the stories people share, it’s the heroes and the villains, it’s the people to get alongside with and the people to get close to, it’s the things that have gone wrong, it’s the disasters had in the past, it’s all those inbuilt stories about the organization that express the culture.
And if you walk into an organization where there are a few of them, it’s probably a poorer place. You walk into an organization, which is full of these, you know, vivid characters and all sorts of extraordinary things that have happened in the past, that gives you, I think, a sense of interest for the future.
Alison Jones: Yes, and we published a book recently called The Way We Talk Around Here by Gill Ereaut, which is, she’s an organizational linguist. And you picked up a lot of the stuff that she does really in depth, like the pronouns that people use, the values they celebrate. All absolutely fascinating insights into what matters and how people understand themselves in the context of the organization.
I’m going to ask you, John, because I always ask my guests, what’s your one best tip for somebody listening? Who’s perhaps at the start of this journey.
John Dore: Well, I think I already said it earlier, which was the best advice I was given was, you know, get people you know, and trust to give you feedback before you think it’s ready. Because I thought it was ready. There’s a wonderful colleague of mine, a gentleman called Julian Birkinshaw, and he read an early draft of the book, which is quite a big deal for him and for his time, he was the Vice Dean of the school, but he took the time to have a look, and he gave me some notes on it, and it’s a much, much better book. It’s not perfect, but it’s a much better book, because he gave, and three or four others all gave some feedback.
So my top tip is, as soon as you think you’re ready, and if you want to send it out to an agent or to a publisher, just get some people you’d really value, get them to have a read, and then just be ready for the notes.
Because if you get notes back which are platitudinal, that doesn’t serve you well. But if you get notes back that really, really, you know, help you sharpen what you’ve done, then there’s no harm done. And then the great benefit I had of that is then when I reached out to some publishers for that, I had a better sense of confidence about the quality of what I was sending over rather than them providing feedback. I don’t think you should ever let the publisher…
Alison Jones: Yes, don’t let the publisher be the first person to provide feedback. No, and you also probably had some good names for endorsements because you built those connections and had that trust built.
John Dore: and I think you’re a better expert than I on this.
I think that’s like a what do you call it? A sort of organic process. You reach out. People give you feedback. They say things. You can take an opportunity then to go back and ask them whether they would be happy to endorse.
You know, I’m not one for asking for endorsements if someone has not read the book.
I mean, I think if it’s going to read true on the back of the book, then they have to have some essence of what’s going on in the book. But I think that’s important. Again, I had two or three people who said some rather remarkable things about what I’d written, which, you know yes rather, rather heartening.
Alison Jones: Brilliant tip.
And I also invite my guests John to recommend a book. You’re not allowed to recommend your own, but what book would you gift to us?
John Dore: Okay well I had two. I have two in mind. Oh, I mean, there’s one I’ll wave at, I don’t know, wave at the camera, but it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever read. There’s a book called Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, it’s just like extraordinary. It’s 70 or 80 different stories, case studies, analysis, it’s full of sort of wit and wisdom, it’s beautifully written, it’s actually got a couple of chapters towards the end which are really, really sophisticated in the learning model that it tries to describe, but it still describes it in a way that’s really compelling and accessible, I think.
I think the book’s got a second edition coming out this year. And anybody who’s interested in the dynamics of organizations and how you unleash the best in people, I think that’s the handbook. You know, it’s like 30 years in the making for Gary Hamel, and I think that’s strongly recommended.
The other one I was going to mention, if it’s okay, it’s not a business book, but it’s something I read recently, but I think it’s sort of helpful if you’re thinking in this way. Which is a book called Trust by Hernan Diaz. I don’t know if you’ve come across it, but it’s absolutely extraordinary.
It’s sort of about an Elon Musk character back in the 1930s in the US, before the Wall Street crash and it’s four different perspectives on the life of this entrepreneur, and it’s absolutely stunning, and not necessarily into the world of business, but the psychology of the entrepreneur, of the business leader, of the person’s trying to grow. And then when you get different perspectives on it, you have this extraordinary, rich characterization of something.
Particularly somebody who’s trying to create value and make money and sort of do all those sort of hard things, but is was also deeply flawed and deeply mysterious as well.
So that’s my recommendation. It’s not a business book, but I think it’s going to be huge. It’s called Trust by Hernan Diaz.
Alison Jones: Love it. And I love, I know the Gary Hamel book, which is terrific, but I didn’t know the Diaz book.
So thank you. It’s always nice to get a recommendation I’m not familiar with. I’m going to check it out.
John Dore: I think it will be a movie.
Alison Jones: Oh, maybe you can write the screenplay, I don’t know.
John Dore: Yes that would be nice.
Alison Jones: John, it’s been absolutely brilliant talking to you.
I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. If people want to find out more about you, more about your work, more about Glue, where should they go?
John Dore: That’s really easy. So as I said, Wave Your Arms is there. It’s waveyourarms.com.
It’s all one word, wavyourarms.com. If you go there and as soon as you land there, no apologies, it immediately talks about Glue. So you’ll find it straight away.
Alison Jones: Of course it does. It makes my heart glad as a publisher. And it’s a great exercise also in nice, distinctive URLs as well. Brilliant. Good job.
John Dore: I did a book about Glue as well, so if you stumble that way, but Wave Your Arms I think is the route to go.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
John Dore: Wonderful, thanks for your time.
