the narrative lab

Here are some descriptions we often use when introducing ourselves and what The Narrative Lab does:

• Making sure you ask the right questions about your problem
• Why solve a problem the very same way it was created
• The common ground between complex problems and simple solutions
• Different approach, and yet strangely familiar
• Helping you gather the stories you really need to know about
• Harnessing the power of story-telling and story-gathering

We're a finalist in the SA Blog Awards for a second year in a row. We're chuffed as we've been nominated in the Best Business Blog and Best Group Blog.

To those who nominated us, thanks. To those who might be tempted to vote for us ... mosey on over to the blog awards widget on the right of this page, click and enter your vote for us (and other amazing local blogs).

Voting closes on 1st April 2009.

After way too long, we are now finally launching a newsletter this month. At this stage it will be a quarterly edition that advertises projects and events, promotes new product lines and points to recent blog posts you should read.

You can start subscribing by giving us your email address in the Newsletter block on the right menu bar, but we'd also like your suggestions on what to call the newsletter. At this stage we're looking at calling it "Dialogue". What say you?

I suspect this cartoon holds some deeper wisdom and insight than we'd initially assume. One of our frustrations here at The Narrative Lab is how the discipline of business has attempted to thwart our natural ability to tell stories, especially around the board room table. How did this happen? Well, it was one too many business executives attempting to "set up the story" by not letting the story tell itself and trying to spell things out for their staff ...

Hat tip to Don Packett for the 'toon.

On the weekend Mike Stopforth asked the Twitter community to share what their sales pitches were, in 140 characters or less. Novel idea in line with the whole elevator pitch meme. Well, here's what my response was:

R u aware of the stories told by ur staff & consumers abt ur Co or brand? I'll help u gather & harness them for better decision making.

See some of the other pitch's here.

Towards the end of 2008 we partnered with Deloitte Consulting on a research project aimed at the field of mine safety. We are painfully aware of how mine safety needs to improve, especially within the South African deep level mining context. Nicolaas Herholdt approached us to partner with him in developing a Point of View that uncovers new and important insights into mine safety that might assist in addressing the way in which safety statistics have plateaued.

The reality is that despite all the focus and attention the media and companies are giving to mine safety, deaths still occur - the improvements have stagnated - and it is clear that we are missing out on something.

We used our narrative research approach and applied the Cynefin Sense-Making Framework to make sense of the results. In general, the research identifies a clear gap between the current initiatives in place and the nature of the problems we are facing. 

Feel free to download the Point of View below or by clicking here. Read, it, discuss it, share it and then contact us for more information.

Kudos to Rob Hooper for some awesome depictions of stories gathered in the process!

In a recent blog entry, Dave Snowden commented positively about the design elements that make up our corporate identity. Coming from him this is a great complement, as the interpretation of abstract ideas such as "probe, sense, respond" into visually compelling graphic elements was a challenge!

I'd like to express appreciation to our designer, Angela Lang for a job well done!

Maybe I should elaborate a bit on why we selected probe: sense: respond as a tagline. We see our core focus area as assisting clients to address complex and intractable problems through the application of narrative and intervention techniques based on Complex Adaptive Systems theory (and other disciplines such as cognitive psychology, physics and anthropology).