story

We have just finished updating our company profile. It has been an interesting process of getting in touch with our story as a company and putting serious thought into how we describe what it is that we do.

You can dowload a pdf version at the bottom of this post, or from the sidebar on our main page.

We'd love your comments and feedback.

• Sometimes mystery is more important than knowledge
• Mystery is the catalyst for imagination
• Mystery offers Infinite possibility
• A blank page is a mystery box
• Stories are mystery boxes
• The difference between what you think you're getting vs what you're really getting is often profound
• The mystery box IS all of us - what is really inside of you?

We're involved in the planning phases of a project looking at redefining ICT education in South Africa in order to increase the "digital workplace readiness" of people entering the job market.

We'd like to get an initial idea of what the real issues are, and also what the perceptions are in various industries regarding what "digital workplace readiness" really is.  

We've created a short survey to gather stories about your experiences around this topic, and we'd really appreciate it if  you could spend 10 minutes to complete it.

The survey will be open for then next 5 days. Thank you in advance for your story contributions.

An area where we believe narrative in its various forms can add a lot of value is recruitment.  To illustrate: In a recent engagement with a global consultancy around their internal talent management issues and processes, a key theme emerged around finding more appropriate ways to recruit the right type of person.  This company (and from past experience all large consulting houses) has a strong culture of having to "fake it till you make it", new recruits typically had to fend for themselves and find work for themselves, otherwise they'd end up spending many frustrating hours on the bench.  When they do manage to get themselves on a project, they typically have very little guidance - they're thrown into the deep end, having to gain the necessary skills as they go along. ...

I came across this little anecdote in and article in the latest edition of Strategy + Business.  It illustrates how savvy leaders know how to use metaphors and symbols to get their point across effectively and strengthen company culture.  David Ogilvy is the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, one of the most successful advertising agencies in the world. 

"... it wasn’t just what David Ogilvy said that made his principles special; it was also how he said it. ... Ogilvy communicated his principles in speeches and memos, then went beyond words, using quirky flourishes — like the Russian matryoshka dolls that directors found at their seats at one board meeting. Opening the nesting dolls, each smaller than the one before, every director found the same message typed on a piece of paper inside the tiniest doll: “If you hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If you hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.”

Over the last few months we've been refining the way we approach narrative in organisations and have found something that now works for us, and is pretty simple to understand. 

Head on over to our Narrative Model page to see the model in full details.

Credit must be given to Shaun Callahan from Anecdote who originally developed a very similar model that we've tweaked.

One of the questions Sonja and I often get when introducing ourselves is this, "Why use the word narrative? We find the word "story" easier to understand."

In response we've said that the word "narrative" has more gravitas to it and communicates that we're more than just story-tellers. However, of late we've begun to use a way of describing narrative that Anecdote use: the difference between big "S" story and small "s" story. Here's what I mean ...

You might have seen that the slogan we have up on our website is this:

"The common ground between complex problems and simple solutions."

In explaining what this means we often refer to the use of an efficiency rudder used to improve the turning circle of ships (read about it here). In a similar light, I've discovered the story of John Snow as an example of how a simple solution can solve a complex problem ...

"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on." - G.C. Lichtenberg

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.