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Anecdote - Business Narrative

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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 unwieldy. 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.

More about business narrative, or what we sometimes call organisational story-listening, below. And please provide your feedback in the Guestbook at the end of this lens.

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 in 2004 we've made a range of changes and improvements to the original process. At its core there are three stages: discovery, sensemaking and intervention design. Let me briefly describe each phase. The other modules in this lens 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 anecdote circles.

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 notice those things that might have remained invisible, 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 nurture 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.

Inter-relationship between story-listening and storytelling

When we first starting working with business narrative we thought it was all about gaining insight, which is does very well. But over the years we've realised that when people work with stories they become inspired to take action and it's this phenomenon that's most important in designing and implementing changes.

In our most recent work we now combine our story-listening techniques (described in the lens) and storytelling techniques to help leaders convey principles, direction and what's really important around here. The two (storytelling an story-listening) go hand-in-hand.

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.
Three journeys: A narrative approach to successful organisational change
This paper describes the approach we take with clients to successfully foster change in their organisations. It is based on our deep knowledge of both complexity and narratives, and it reflects our holistic approach in working at both systemic and personal levels to help organisations and their people move forward. Coaching is integral to our process at each step of the way and to our clients' success in reaching their change and improvement goals. Our approach helps leaders and organisations embrace the need for change, approach it openly, prepare for it fully, and achieve the critical outcomes-whether it be a new technology, a turnaround, a new strategy or some other cause.

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.
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Business narrative workshops

I thought you might like to see what our sensemaking and intervention design workshops look like so I've added a few photos to give you a flavour.

curated content from Flickr

Reader Feedback

  • MarotaAphane Nov 11, 2011 @ 5:24 am | delete
    It is a fascinating technique when ditting is involve but can be very frustrating when you have to prompt for experiences. Generally, a satisfying process to facilitate.
  • planettech1 Apr 15, 2009 @ 3:22 pm | delete
    An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true".
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    vikas

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    Drug Intervention North Dakota-Drug Intervention North Dakota
  • TerrenceGargiulo Feb 15, 2009 @ 1:31 pm | delete
    I can vouch for the effectiveness and power of Shawn and Anecdote's work. There are few people in the world with his level of knowledge, and practical experience in taking the obvious power of stories and harnessing its potential in tangible, tactical ways that lead to measurable business results.
  • John Caddell Dec 5, 2006 @ 8:42 am | delete
    This was a great distillation of a complex topic. I will be trying to learn more about this technique and how to use it.
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I'm the Founding Director of Anecdote. We help business leaders engage their people to be even better collaborators, leaders and change agents using the... more »

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