• How can we create meaningful change in our organisation that lasts?
• Is our organisational initiative working or not? It seems impossible to get a handle on this.
• How do we ensure that when key people leave, what they know isn’t lost?
• Our people don’t seem to collaborate or share knowledge well. Help!

If you’re struggling with one of the above challenges, we can help. We specialise in empowering organisations to move ahead in a way that is more aligned with their purpose and goals, and makes better use of their people’s wisdom and energy. Our corporate and government clients appreciate our ability to uncover hidden problems and untapped potential and to get teams communicating productively about what really matters to the organisation.

What Makes Anecdote Different

We named our firm after one of several signature processes we use to get to the heart of what’s going on in a large organisation: stories. Listening for, sharing narratives and passing them along in an organisation accomplishes several things:

• The stories people tell reveal what’s actually happening.
• Listening to and telling stories engages people and encourages them to reflect further and share insights and options.
• Stories build relationships and promote collaboration.
• Stories communicate in a way that encourages (rather than commands) others to come on board.

The way we work with stories in an organisation often includes asking groups to reflect on what has changed recently in the organisation and then to select the story representing the “most significant change” they’d like others to know about. This technique helps harness people’s intuitions in assessing something that cannot otherwise easily be measured. It’s particularly useful for evaluating culture change, leadership, innovation, communication and knowledge management.

Organisations also frequently ask us to help set up “communities of practice,” which foster knowledge sharing, learning and collaboration. With more and more Baby Boomers nearing retirement, it’s essential to prevent their know-how from walking out the door. Communities of practice also help tap and share the ingenuity that exists in every corner of an organisation.

How We Work With Clients

A typical consulting project with us has six stages, with around two to four months for stages I through V:

I. Vision for the project – interviews and anecdote circles with the leadership team to set the broad direction for the project

II. Discovery – collect stories using anecdote circles to find out what’s really happening

III. Sensemaking – holding one or more workshops with leaders and staff to work out together what’s happening

IV. Intervention design – an adjunct to the sense-making workshops to work out together what needs to be done

V. Local improvement process – design and implement a process where all staff are involved in making incremental improvements locally to supplement organisation-wide interventions

VI. Monitoring – using the “most significant change” technique to assess the impact of the interventions, typically every three to six months

For a complimentary introductory discussion of how Anecdote can help your organisation in facilitating lasting change, fostering knowledge sharing or assessing complex initiatives, please contact us.