Yearly Archives: 2011

During the research I was doing within the industry of knowledge management, I came across a privately held consulting company; The Narrative Lab, a company which through the use of narrative, surfaces and influences the mindsets, perceptions and belief systems that govern the patterns of behavior in a team and an organization. I got fascinated by their approach, explored more of what they do by going through the company profile. An interest aroused within me on the company and I [...]

The previous year, heading towards completion of my bachelors’ degree, did not only bring a certain levels of excitement, but it also triggered great concern on how I would ignite my career. Looking at the difficulty that thousands of new graduates face on getting their first experience and the overall unemployment rate within the country made me realize the intensity of a situation that lay ahead me. I kept on repeating the same question in my mind; “What is it [...]

Dear readers of the TNL blog You will notice shortly that we have a new blogger on our site. He is none other than David Sebe, our newest recruit. As part of David's induction and development plan we invited him to chronicle his experiences in joining TNL (not to flatter us, although that may be nice) and to share with our readers his thoughts and reflections on the ideas, processes, products and clients that he encounters. We are his first [...]

There is a growing awareness of how important conversations are within our organisations. Dialogue has always been key, but the new economy requires a new way of facilitating business conversations. When it comes to facing the adaptive challenges in our organisation, conversation is a very useful tool for leadership to engage with staff on addressing problems. A Conversation Journey is an intentional, facilitated approach that helps an organisation understand their existing conversation culture and assists in creating a culture that [...]

This morning I picked up on a tweet by Zahmoo (Anecdote's new story bank software) that pointed towards a post about the Periodic Table of Storytelling. I've spent a few mintues wading through it and I'm pretty impressed. TVtropes.org have done an exquisite job of plotting out the basic elements of stories, in both literary and film form. Besides the natural link to the work we do, I'm interested in this table because we have developed a workshop process based on Christopher Booker's [...]

We received an introduction email about two months ago from a graduate who had come across the work we do in his course on Knowledge Management. We were quite chuffed to hear that The Narrative Lab is getting some airplay in the lecture halls of some of South Africa's leading universities. We were however not in a position to hire at the time, but the tide has turned, and we have just welcomed David Sebe to the team. David is [...]

We're pretty interested in all things systems and change related. And so, when we came across the Nexus for Africa movement, we were introduced to the idea of "whole system change". Nexus for Africa is a two conference (12th to 14th September) will be a unique experience where powerful approaches to collaborative change, selected from a repertoire of more than 60 methodologies broadly referred to as large-group methods/ interventions, whole-system change, or large-scale change, will be used to illustrate how organisations and [...]

We love working with cartoonists and doing things differently.  We also believe that conversation is of much greater value than simply sitting passively listening to the guru's speak (as is the case in most conferences). I found this approach to conferencing, and also conference reporting really refreshing.  Let's hope that more and more conferences will be run this way!