| 7/10/08 | | Values in action stories |
Most organisations have a set of values statements. Many of these do not reflect reality as displayed in the behaviours of people within the organisation. For example...'we value working collaboratively' is displayed on the wall but people are told "do it my way or else" by managers; deriding other areas of the business is effectively endorsed when people are not 'called' on the behaviour.
We had a fun day on Thursday running our 'Storytelling for Business Leaders' workshop in Sydney. The group chose 'values in action' as one of the story patterns they wanted to examine in detail. We came up with four questions you can ask to help identify the values at work in organisations:
- Think about a time when a manager made a tough decision, and did 'the right thing rather than the easy thing'. What happened?
- When have you seen someone 'cross the line' and they were 'called' on it. Alternatively, have you seen people 'cross the line' without being called.
- When have you felt uncomfortable about something your boss has done?
- When have you felt proud to work for this company?
Can you think of other questions that could help explore an organisation's values?
I also related an example of a values in action story from our workshop in Brisbane in August.
A company introduced a new health and safety policy for mobile phone use while driving. The policy was "engine on, phone off". Some time after the policy was introduced the company did a random call-around of about 50 employees. A senior manager answered his phone while driving. The response was "turn around, return your vehicle, give the keys to reception and clear your desk. Your employment with this company is over". The rationale was that the manager could not help enforce a policy that he was abusing himself.
For me this story says very clearly 'we value health and safety'. However, the story didn't seem to be well received by the workshop participants, possibly because firing the manager seemed a little draconian. What do you think?
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
| 7/10/08 | | Please elaborate |
Examples, especially in the form of stories, help us make sense of what someone is saying. This is partly because when we listen to an example we are using our natural pattern matching abilities (something our brain has evolved to excel in) to link the example with our own experience. We then adjust our understanding based on the new input.
So it makes sense that examples also increase our ability to remember the main idea they illustrate.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska put this idea to the test. They asked 22 students to read an essay about a fictitious African country. The essay consisted of 32 paragraphs, each paragraph with a single, main idea sentence followed by none to three one-sentence examples. Here is an example paragraph from the essay.
Virtually all social reforms of the early 20th Century were the personal responsibility of King Manual. A state run medical service was established by King Manual in 1900. A system of primary education was created under Manual's direction in 1920. The forceable recruitment of native workers was stopped by Manual in 1915.
When they were done the researchers asked the students to recall the main ideas.
The result: the more examples (at least up to three), the better the recall of the main idea. The researchers suggest that the laws of diminishing returns must set in at some point. The likelihood of nine examples being more effective than eight is slight.
So why don't we see many examples in the things we read, especially in business writing?
I suspect it takes more time to find an example and it's much easier to espouse an opinion.
For example, I'm writing a client report at the moment and I've asked my client to send me a couple of examples illustratinh how their information system has been used to have a bottom-line and positive impact on the business. I also asked for examples of when the system had been misused or failed the organisation. My client could immediately think of examples of the latter and is still looking for our positive examples.
So maybe it's harder to find the positive stories and business report writers have a tendency to want to show strength and a positive outlook, and this is more easily done, especially with time pressures, with opinions. The problem is, we are creating a false intellectual economy because without the examples your readers don't know what you really mean and instantly forget the main ideas.
Palmere, M., S. L. Benton, et al. (1983). "Elaboration and Recall of Main Ideas in Prose." Journal of Educational Psychology 75(6): 898-907.
I discovered this research reading John Medina's Brain Rules.
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| 6/10/08 | | MLA London knowledge transfer project |
MLA stands for Museums and Libraries Association and my friend Victoria Ward has recently finished a tremendous project using narrative techniques to help MLA London understand and enhance the way in which Museums and Libraries are used in London. The bonanza for narrative and knowledge practitioners is that the MLA and Sparknow (Victoria's company) have shared their findings, method and initial pilot descriptions for everyone to download.
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| 3/10/08 | | In storytelling manipulative? |
Here is my test for whether a skill is manipulative: “Would it lose its power if people knew exactly what you were doing and why?” If the answer is yes, if the technique loses its power in the light of day, then it’s manipulative and I don’t want any part of it. - David Maxfield
This definition works for me.
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
| 3/10/08 | | Common Ground and the Role of Stories |
Last week Mark and I agreed to each develop a plan detailing how we were going to meet our targets. I opened up Excel and created a spreadsheet showing the number of days I was working with each of my clients. Mark opened Word and eloquently wrote how he was going to achieve his objectives. We both knew what a plan looked like. We just had two different visions of what plan looks like. We lacked common ground.
Patrick Lambe's recent blog post set me off on this train of thought about how effective teams share common ground. Team members must have a good understanding of what their colleagues mean and a good idea of what they will do. Both comes from working with our colleagues, asking questions and requesting examples that illustrate what is meant. In fact this propensity to second guess our colleagues and infer their motives (sometimes called Theory of Mind) is a signature characteristic of humans that is likely to have resulted in our species collaborating in the first place and through this collaboration outsmarting our stronger, faster and more deadly predators.
But concrete understanding of concepts like 'common ground' or 'planning' is unlikely to emerge from an abstract explanation of the terms. It comes from first hand experience, and when you can't get that, from stories, examples that illustrate in detail what's meant.
Patrick points out that common ground must be cultivated or maintained, much like my grandfather's obsession with keeping his carrot patch weed free. Periodically teams must work to repair or re-establish common ground because people change, views change, and what's happening around us shift and warp.
Did you know that US fighter pilots decide whether to follow the instructions of their weapons director based on how competent the weapons director sounds as they barking commands on the communication channel? Common ground can be a life and death proposition. Bringing this idea back to business, have you ever thought how you come across in a teleconference? How competent do you sound? This concept of common ground has been well thought through by Gary Klein, the famed psycholgist and decision making specialist and in this video Patrick interveiws Gary (I was impressed by the two camera production and editing). They not only explore the concept of common ground but I suspect they are also creating it for themselves (this video is 20 minutes).
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| 2/10/08 | | Practising the art of creating possibilities |
People respond so differently to new ideas. While some people jump with excitement at the thought of new possibilities and irrational ideas, unfamiliarity can others uncomfortable, give up, or find it safe to be a skeptic. This is so well illustrated in this conversation between Alice and the queen in Through the Looking Glass.
"I can't believe that!" said Alice."Can't you?" the queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
| 30/09/08 | | Brain rules |
I'm reading John Medina's Brain Rules and thoroughly enjoying it. Here's a snippet illustrating his humorous style while making an important point.
Any learning environment that deals with only the database instincts [our ability to memorise things] or only the improvisatory instincts [our ability to imagine things] ignores one half of our ability. It is doomed to fail. It makes me think of jazz guitarists: They're not going to make it if they know a lot about music theory but don't know how to jam in a live concert. Some schools and workplaces emphasize a stable, rote-learning database. They ignore the the improvisatory instincts drilled unto us for millions of years. Creativity suffers. Others emphasize usage of a database, without installing a fund of knowledge in the first place. They ignore our need to obtain deep understanding of a subject, which includes memorizing and storing a richly structured database. You get people who are great improvisers but don't have depth of knowledge. You may know someone like this where you work. They may look like jazz musicians and have the appearance of jamming, but in the end they know nothing. They're playing intellectual air guitar.
Apart from a great last sentence, this paragraph is a warning against the pendulum swinging between rote and improvisation. I suspect we are at the impro end at the moment and at risk of being guitar heros.
Send this entry to:
Email to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| 27/09/08 | | Brand stories |
Marketing folk confuse me sometimes. For example, they talk about brand stories yet they forget the story bit.
For example, if you Google the phrase "brand story" the top hit is a blog post by Mark Thomson. Reading his post you'd be forgiven for thinking stories are superfluous to crafting a brand story because while he uses the word 'story,' often actually, he doesn't explain what he means by a story nor give any examples of brand stories. His advice is to be clear, consistent and give it a bit a flair. A nicely formatted set of dot points could meet his criteria for a brand story.
Let me show you a brand story and then I'll share with you why so many marketers, journalists, and political spin doctors talk about narrative but don't appear to really get it.
At a minimum stories are set in a time (at the turn of the century, three months ago, in 1996, when I visited Grandma, a long, long time ago—you get the idea) and events happen which are linked together inferring causes and effects. If you haven't got these two basic features—a time when things happened and things actually happening—you don't have a story. And these features are merely the pre-requisite. Having them certainly doesn't guarantee a compelling story.
I'm surprised how many people talk about stories yet can't actually determine whether stories are present or missing. I'd say about half of the people attending our storytelling courses are confused about what a story actually is and it's one of the things we spend a good amount of time to ensure everyone's got it. Without this understanding you can't work with stories.
Even our very best political journalists seem confused. Here's Michelle Gratton, political editor for The Age newspaper said recently:
Having a "narrative" — which is just a sexy and fashionable way of saying a government should present what it is up to in an overall framework — gives people the feeling their leaders know what they're doing, and that the ends of policy are both worthwhile and consistent with the means. (That is, of course, provided the narrative is convincing.)
And here's ANZ's chief economist, Saul Eslake, suggested narrative (according to Michelle) for the Rudd government.
"If I were advising the Government, I'd be trying to say that there are some downside risks as a result of global factors; that because of this inflation is likely to fade away; that the budget had got the balance right; that if things got worse, it has the funds to ease fiscal policy," Eslake says.
"It could also say that Australians are exposed to the international credit crunch not because banks are up to their gills in dodgy mortgages, as in the US and Europe, but because we have a huge current account deficit — and that we want to address that through better productivity, skills and other reforms including tax reform."
Saul's suggested narrative are merely a string of ideas. You could craft a story from Saul's ideas but in themselves are far from a narrative.
When someone asks me about Anecdote I tell versions of this story.
Ever since Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 people have viewed the world around them as measured, predictable and conforming to defined laws of physics. The world is a machine and we only need to understand how that machine works so we can optimise each part.
Fredrick Taylor introduced Newton’s mechanical perspective to business in the 1880s and 90s. Taylor strongly believed that well defined procedures executed with precision was the best way to run a business. His ideas took off and this mechanical view of the firm dominated business thinking for the last 120 years. It worked remarkably well.
Since the industrial revolution we have seen things speed up and the information revolution has seen the world become more connected with changes accelerating every day. The 21st century, however, marks a tipping point where the mechanical view begins to falter. We need new ways to conceive the way businesses work that reflect their complexity and their essential human nature.
In 2004 we started Anecdote in the belief there was a new way to conceive of work that was organic, human-centred and reflected the complexity every business experiences in the 21st century. So we set about developing techniques and tools based on stories, a uniquely human faculty, designed to facilitate change more effectively, foster learning and collaboration and advance the natural leadership capabilities that exists in every organisation.
We believe this human-centred approach marks the future of organisations. There is still a long way to go because the majority of businesses still work on the basis that they are a machine with levers to pull, wheels to turn and cogs to grease.
The thing is, it's not the only story we tell that helps people understand who we are and what we stand for. There isn't a single brand story rather organisations should have a repertoire of brand stories that everyone knows and can tell.
My guess is that marketers, advertising agents and political Hollowmen use the term 'story' and 'narrative' so often that there is a belief that everyone knows what it means but only a subset of the group actually get it and the rest are too frightened to admit their ignorance.
Send this entry to:
