Anecdote - Business Narrative

Hi, I'm Shawn Callahan and welcome to my lens on business narrative. I developed this lens to help our blog readers quickly access the essential blog posts we've written on this topic over at the Anecdote blog. As you know blogs contain a tremendous amount of content and can be unweildy. The aim of this lens is to help you get up to speed quickly on what we're doing in the field of business narrative.

Business narrative is a set of techniques based on the collection and interpretation of stories collected from a workplace. This technique is most effective when applied to seemingly intractable problems such as culture change, trust, innovation, leadership and change management.

Business narrative is more about listening rather than telling. By this I mean business narrative is based on collecting anecdotes from people about how they actually do work. Then we use these anecdotes to make sense of what is really going on in an organisation so a set of interventions might be designed. Storytelling, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with crafting persuasive stories to affect change in an organisation. Both are important and complimentary uses of narrative in organisations.

Our business narrative process

discovery, sensemaking, intervention design

I learned a lot about how to help people make sense of complex environments using narrative techniques while working in IBM's Cynefin Centre. Since leaving IBM 2 years ago we have made a range of changes and improvements to the orginal process. At its core are three stages: discovery, sensemaking and intervention design. Let me briefly describe each phase. The other modules in this lense will point you to more information.

Discovery: this stage is all about collecting stories. It's like we are acting like corporate anthropologists except, wherever possible, we train people in the organisation to do it themselves. Our favourite technique for discovery is the anecdote circle.

Sensemaking: making sense occurs throughout the three stages but after discovery we typically run workshops to help people see things from another perspective. This process helps people to notice those things that might have remained un-noticed, helping them detect weak signals. The stories are a major resource for sensemaking.

Intervention Design: in a complex environment it's impossible to predict the results of any action in detail. Consequently to make progress requires putting into action small interventions designed to disrupt and create new patterns in the system. From here astute managers nuture favourable patterns and disrupt unwanted ones.

Discovery

Anecdote circles

There are many ways to collect stories from people in organisations. One of our favourite techniques are anecdote circles. Here are some blog posts from www.anecdote.com.au talking about anecdote circles.

Anecdote circles definiton: A basic definition of an important techniques used to elicit anecdotes.
Building trust in an anecdote circle: Some steps you can take to build rapport and trust in your anecdote circle.
Warming up the anecdote circle: Getting people comfortable with talking is an important first step.
Using silence in anecdote circles: Andrew did some interesting analysis of turn-taking in anecdote circles and shows just how much involvement a facilitator should have.
Crafting good anecdote circle questions: Some ideas on developing anecdote eliciting questions.
How to learn to run anecdote circles: We offer this service to help people learn anecdote circles so they can start collecting stories from their organisation as quickly and effectively as possible.

Sensemaking

Following are some of the key posts we have made about sensemaking.

Designing interventions requires new perspectives: Here we introduce the idea of new eyes, new frameworks, new experiences, new combinations.
Sensemaking: the role of stories: How the telling of stories starts the process of sensemaking.

Intervention design

Here are some of the posts we've made we think help explain intervention design.

Designing interventions requires new perspectives: The role of perspective in intervention design.
Intervention design for complex issues: Describes the nature of an intervention.
Intention in a complex system: This post describes a way to think about intention in a complex environment.
Updated view on complex system intention: An expansion on my first post regarding intention.
The act of setting boundaries: Interventions depend setting boundaries and here are some thoughts on the process.
An example of an intervention: One of a series of example of what we mean by interventions in complex systems.
A couple of things I've learnt about interventions: One in a series of reflections in helping people design interventions.
Intervention design - an example: Second set of example interventions.

Selected Anecdote whitepapers

business narrative

Using stories to size up a situation: This paper provides a description of when and how to use narrative techniques to supplement traditional interviews and surveys. It focuses on a technique called 'anecdote circles', and illustrates how these circles can be set up and conducted in a manner that ensures the collection of rich stories. The paper concludes with solutions to the three most common problems encountered by facilitators of anecdote circles.
Avoiding change management failure using business narrative: Whether it is implementing a new IT system, organisational restructure or introducing a new business process, each situation involves individuals and groups changing their behaviour-a process which is often painful and potentially risky. Traditional change management techniques assume leaders can accurately describe a desired outcome and then design a set of tasks to hit the target. The base assumption is the idea that the work environment is largely predictable and people will respond in an expected fashion.

This paper provides an alternative perspective assuming human systems are complex and highly interconnected rendering them full of surprises, especially when forces of change of applied. The paper describes how an organisation can harness its complexity and make progress using participation, business narrative and a mindset based on complexity principles.
Aligning brand and customer service: This paper describes a process for closing the gap between an organisation's brand promises and its customer service-what Stewart and Barlow call Branded Customer Service (2004). The approach recognises the complexity inherent in the cultural change required, and is based on collecting stories from customers and staff. These stories form the basis for identifying what is really happening, and provide the material for decision-makers and designers to design interventions appropriate to the issues discovered.

Useful books and other resources

Books, technology etc

There are no books available specifically about business narrative as we practice it but here are some which have influenced the way we conduct the technique. I've also added the recording equipment we use.