MITE6328 (6)

Storytelling in

Organisations

Review Group Blogs

Overview - Storytelling in Organizations

Storytelling in organizational learning

• Strategic story telling
• Categories of stories in organizations
• The attributes of a story
• Reflections
• Group task – developing stories in your organisations to effect change
• Group assignments
• References

When people tell stories in organizations, what exactly are they talking about?

Categories of Storytelling

CRITICAL INCIDENTS

• Events that signal a change

STORIES ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE

• Exchanging news about people’s reliability, trust & knowledge

STORIES ABOUT WORK ITSELF

• About the nature of the work
• How to do it better?
• How to do it at all?

STORIES ABOUT ORGANISATIONS

• Stories as social bonding
• Stories to encourage interpretation

Categories of Storytelling

STORIES ABOUT THE PAST

• The history of organizations

STORIES ABOUT THE FUTURE

• Mission & vision statements and how they fit in
• Using stories to spark changes

STORIES ABOUT LIFE ITSELF

• The workplace has become a place where people learn about life

STORIES ABOUT ONESELF: IDENTITY

• Most people act and then tell stories about their actions

THE ATTRIBUTE OF STORIES

Endurance

• Some stories in organizations endure a long time

Salience

• Wit, succinctness & emotional power
• Funny, clever, & moving

Comfort Level

• Is it true to your experience?
• Does it reconfirm what you already feel in similar situations?

Sensemaking

• Capacity to explain
• a story has to be true to one’s own sense of how things work.

SENSEMAKING - the ability to make sense of an ambiguous situation

Sensemaking - the process of creating situational awareness and

understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty

in order to make decisions

“… a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections

(which can be among people, places, and events) in order to

anticipate their trajectories and act effectively" (Klein et al, 2006, p. 54)

NARRATIVE AS A KNOWLEDGE MEDIUM IN ORGANISATIONS

Organization has two components:

• Authorized part of the organization - the formal business processes & structures
• Social fabric of the organization - the place where the work gets done

This is:

• where the social networks and communities of practice live
• where the stories get created and told and retold
• where the stories migrate, where rumors get created and spread

THE FUNCTIONS OF STORIES

• Entertainment
• Conveying information
• Nurturing communities
• Promoting innovation
• Preserving organizations +
• Changing organizations

Different NEEDS require different kinds of stories. Stories can change organizations

WHAT MAKES STORIES WORK?

Stories work when they help people reach a new level of understanding.

Successful stories are:

• Understandable
• Told from the perspective of a single individual who is in a typical situation in the organization
• Embody the change idea
• As recent as possible
• Must be true

Case Studies as Stories

Group Activities

1. Identify a story in your organisation that helps explain issues that need to be addressed. Share your story with colleagues, select one story from your group to share with the class (3 mins max)

2. Peer review and comment on individual contributions to Group Blog

3. Weekly activity:

Upload into your Group Blog, a story about your organization that helps explain issues that need to be addressed.

Corporate

Storytelling

Source: http://www.google.com.hk/imglanding?q=storytelling&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=ClU&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&source=og&tbs=isch:1&tbnid=-vblrIO3H2qChM:&imgrefurl=http://www.storycraft.com/files/activ.htm&imgurl=http://www.storycraft.com/images/picnic.jpg&ei=bud2Tee1E8uXcZmMlfkE&zoom=1&w=1792&h=1142&iact=hc&oei=Oed2TbTeFI67cazT9OsE&page=4&tbnh=104&tbnw=163&start=84&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:84&biw=1256&bih=706

Storytelling in Organisational Learning

Are our schools like the railway systems?

http://www.rogeredwardjones.com/

http://learningwithtechnology-vincent.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephen%20Heppell

REFERENCES

• John Seely Brown et al (2005) Storytelling in organizations: Why storytelling is transforming 21st century organizations and management. Boston: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Denning, S. (2001). The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Burlington, MA, KMCI Press.
• Girad, J.P., & Lambert, S. (2007). The story of knowledge: writing stories that guide organisations into the future. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 5 (2), pp. 161-172. Available online at www.ejkm.com
• Klein, G., Moon, B. and Hoffman, R.F. (2006). Making sense of sensemaking I: alternative perspectives. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(4), 70-73.
• Schreyogg, G., & Koch, J. (Eds.) (2005). Knowledge management and narratives. Organisational effectiveness through storytelling. Germany, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Available online: http://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=BMfQFHfl6aAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA123&dq=steve+denning+%2B+storytelling+%2B+organisational+change&ots=O65FwEin2C&sig=oaFUgFEdvNHKG4UhnTzx08sObrU#v=onepage&q=steve%20denning%20%2B%20storytelling%20%2B%20organisational%20change&f=false
• Swap, W., Leonard, D., Shields, M., & Abrahams, L. (2001). Using Mentoring and Storytelling to Transfer Knowledge in the Workplace. Journal of Management Information Systems , 18 (1)