Hi Dave,

Gee you certainly now how to burst a girls bubble. I was a bit disappointed to read your blog post and sorry you have taken my comments the way you have.

Telling stories to reprogram your employees is something I certainly do not agree with and I believe is quite sinister.

What we believe is that when organisations attempt to introduce change there are already existing stories. Stories around 'we tried that before and it didn't work' or 'last time they did this my best friend was retrenched'.

When we work with our clients we help them understand that those stories already exist and are powerful blockages to change. We encourage them when communicating the key messages of the change they use story to help their employees understand the possibilities and hopefully engage in the new direction, making organisational change perhaps easier for everyone concerned.

Another aspect of storytelling that we very much believe in is that it should be factually and authentically true and used in a very authentic way. I guess that is why I was a tad upset with your comments as it goes against everything I believe.

I have long been an admirer of your work and would love to catch up when you are next in Australia and talk about all things storytelling.

Regards,

Gabrielle Dolan
One Thousand & One

I don't know that I would have interpreted this the way you have, but you have certainly painted a rather Orwellian 1984 type picture. Let's hope that isn't what was meant!

Well looking around her web site this morning I got a bit more depressed. Looked like the classic consultancy "hoovering up" of methods tools and partly understood concepts with some hype messages and over promising. But as you say, I would hope to be proved wrong.

"Story-telling" sounds so much better than "brain-washing" and "propaganda" !

Scary. Or rather, "doubleplusungood". :)

While this does sound a little scary, I doubt that it is very uncommon for companies to try to control the brand image this way--internally and externally. This sounds like it was taken directly out of my brand management textbook in college.

Thanks for commenting Gabrielle. Nothing could please me more than to know you did not intend to suggest that we could program the stories in people's heads. I think the phrasing in the article is unfortunate but I've probably made similar mistakes (the odd accusation of managerialism still stings) so happy to take and accept your clarification.

I remain very concerned about manipulative use of story techniques and may be a bit paranoid in seeking out examples. However I think the whole use of narrative is at a turning point at the moment. Normative recipes and manipulation are spaces I want to avoid. Pleased to hear that you do to.

To Gabrielle's point about stories "factually true"? Hmmm. Very difficult idea. Might be just an issue with language, or a cultural thing. Stories are not about the (atomistic) facts. And stories can only ever "contain" a small selection, a subset, of the "objective" facts. Thus even by selecting some and ignoring others, you distort the "factual base". For the story teller, stories are always "artifacts", from a perspective, not from an eagle's or god-like omniscopic view.
And those hearing stories add a huge amount of distortion and own interpretation into them. Everyone hears a different one - at different times. Example: here's how Cory Doctorow was disappointed when he found out that the author of Fahrenheit 451 did not mean to say what he though was the message: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/04/bradbury_denies_free.html
So: the facts are not the point with stories. It's the meaning.
And cohesion grows with telling and listening and retelling and hearing the similar but not identical ones again and again...
(I shut up, rather than annoying you by preaching Luhman's meaning of meaning again).

Christian,
I very much like your comments. I just listened to Dave's podcast from Canada in which he makes a very important distinction between content and context. Narrative is experienced through the listener's own filters of contextual meaning and by its very nature change what is being heard. It is always amazing to hear two people who heard the same information from the same person and at the same time, tell two different versions.

Gabrielle,
At the risk of prolonging the discussion, may I highlight one part of your comment:
"We encourage them when communicating the key messages of the change they use story to help their employees understand the possibilities and hopefully engage in the new direction, making organisational change perhaps easier for everyone concerned."

The impression I get from this is one of a consultancy that places itself at the disposal of the employer for the purpose of persuading employees that its plans for organisational change are palatable. I see a consultancy working to get people to understand a set of possibilities.
I would be suspicious of you from this impression. I would wonder whether you would respect my 'stories', my way of looking at the world. You see what is missing, for me, is a sense of co-existing clusters of meaning, co-revolving clusters.
If you are working for one side of the equation, that's fine, so long as you declare your allegiance sufficiently openly for me to recognise you. If you bring a distinct, more systematic perspective in your working practice, I suggest you might like to consider how that could be re-expressed.

Gloria,
that's approximately what I wanted to say. Anyone using the word "storytelling" should watch Rashomon at least twice. Should have to? Should want to?
The movie is now in the public domain, available from google video, link available e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film)
(yes, Rashomon is a piece of art, not a "real" anecdote, but it makes the point.)

Perhaps one of the problems here arises from thinking of leadership communication solely in terms of ‘getting the message across’ – whether or not story is used as the way of pursuing this. Organizations comprise people talking, acting, interacting and transacting with each other continuously through the medium of conversation. As people get together, both formally and informally, they make things up. That is, they perceive, interpret, evaluate and share their views of what’s going on and decide how, in the light of that, they should act. Through these everyday interactions, ‘stories’ are jointly crafted which, in turn, tend to channel ongoing conversations down familiar, ‘cultural’ pathways.

Outcomes, in the form of the sense that is made and the use that this is put to, are co-created by those in the conversation. These can’t be handed down by leaders – or by anyone else for that matter. From this perspective, a leader’s task is to actively engage in the joint sensemaking process – both directly and indirectly – to build active coalitions of support around themes that are organizationally beneficial. Others who participate in the process will do so from their own perspective and with their own agendas in mind - coalescing informally around particular themes, either to advance a particular cause or to frustrate it.

From this “informal coalitions” view of organizations, the future is being perpetually constructed in the present, through this dynamic network of self-organizing conversations. Sometimes these conversations serve to reinforce the existing patterns, ‘deepening the channels of meaning’ (in the form of openly articulated stories and taken-for-granted assumptions) that are currently influencing the nature and outcome of everyday conversations. At other times, the conversations shift the patterns in new ways, creating new ‘channels’ that begin to divert sensemaking in new directions. As the pattern of conversations change, so do the stories that are told. And so does the organization.