This morning, Shawn and I compared recent airline lounge experiences. Mine went a like this

One could argue that the Qantas staff member was being consistent (fair, equal) in her application of the rules. A good thing you might say, except that a very frequent traveller left with the resolve to travel VirginBlue in the future. In Shawn's case, the staff exercised some autonomy, weighed up the situation and decided to be flexible, whilst still making it clear that it was 'against the rules'. Which is the better example of customer service? It reminds me of my time in the Air Force where our mantra was "Rules are for the guidance of the wise and for the blind obedience of fools'.

Everyday we tell those closest to us (our family, friends, colleagues) about what happened to us: today, yesterday, last week. Occasionally we'll reminisce about the old days but for those we know well what's worth recounting, what's remarkable, is happening on a daily basis. We don't even need to tell the whole story because the people we know well have much of the background. We tell the smaller details that wouldn't make sense or be interesting to someone we didn't know that well. The storytelling is gradual.

Imagine you grew up without knowing anything about restaurants. You've never heard of them, never seen them and have never had an experience, apart from eating a meal at home, that is anything like going to a restaurant. Then one day a friend takes you to one and you can't believe that you can just order your meal, that waiters bring your meal and clear away all the dirty dishes. For you this is truly remarkable and if someone ask you to share your experience you could do it without hesitation.

For those people who go to restaurants regularly much of the experience is invisible. We're not surprised by waiters, menus, asking for the bill, etc.. We have developed a script for what a restaurant experience will be like and we will only notice things if something unexpected happens. These scripts are important. Without them we would have to think through everything. It would be exhausting.

Important knowledge, however, resides in the scripts. It's difficult to recount stories for someone who is not close about what you do day-in, day-out. You're not sure they care about the small stories you tell to those people who see you every day. There is an art to collecting stories, especially the small ones.

I mention this conumdrum because just knowing that stories can get converted to scripts will help anyone who is trying to elicit stories to go beyond what's remarkable to a stranger. For a long time I was flummoxed at times during an anecdote circle when the participants could only give you broad illustrations of what they did at work rather than specific anecdotes. It didn't happen often but when it did I couldn't explain it. With this explanation I do three things to find the small stories.

1. be truly interested in every detail. Curiosity must exude from your pores
2. use memory triggers: timelines, artefacts, pictures
3. get peers together in the anecdote circle

The next frontier for me will be cognitive task analysis. I have Crandall, Klein and Hoffman's book, Working Minds and I'm looking forward to learning more about the techniques.

Some implications of this research.

Don't think you can provide nifty arguments to change people's minds. People will reason things away in whatever way they can and feel good in their answers regardless of how faulty the thinking.

Emotion has a large part to play in our decision making so we need to employ ways of connecting with people that are emotional, such as stories.

In a large change initiative you are just not going to get everyone accepting a new way of thinking or approaching things so it's important to work with those people who can take on the ideas and show the others it can be done.

Westen, D. 2007, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, PublicAffairs, New York.

Westen, D., Kilts, C., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., & Hamann, S. (2006). The neural basis of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints on political judgment during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947–1958.

Today's Australian Financial Review (p7) reports on the release of a study funded by the federal government. The report, titled 'Management Matters in Australia: Just how productive are we?' demonstrates what we know intuitively..that if a company can lift management performance, it will be a key factor in improving company financial performance. The report found Australia is pretty much in the middle of the field compared internationally across a range of management performance indicators. The article includes the statement:

Investing in improved management practices is the single most cost effective way of improving a company's performance.

I am in the middle of running a management development program for one of our clients and the article was bought to my attention at lunchtime by one of the participants. He commented that this article was a good argument for why the company was investing in the program and that he could now clearly see what he can do to achieve the promised performance improvement. It's great to be able to make a difference.