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Digital workplace readiness survey

By Aiden Choles|May 15th, 2009|Categories: News|Tags: education, story survey, workplace readiness|

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 [...]

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By Aiden Choles|May 15th, 2009|Categories: Culture, Narrative|Tags: Culture, Narrative|

In our mine safety research one of the key issues is determining the actual root causesof unsafe behavior. These are usually deeply rooted in entrenched belief systems and metaphors. This story, that I found on Bob Sutton's blog, illustrates how determining what is actually driving behaviour (in this case workplace theft), can lead to astoundingly simple (and cheap) solutions. In fact, as you'll see in the story, the more expensive solutions (installing cameras) made the situation worse ... "This 2001 study was done [...]

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Where the role of narrative can be applied

By Aiden Choles|May 14th, 2009|Categories: the narrativelab|Tags: narrative lab|

Here is a simple diagram outlining where you could apply narrative/stories in your organisation, and to what end:

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Art from mass collaboration

By Aiden Choles|May 14th, 2009|Categories: Cognitive science|Tags: collaboration, distributed cognition, thrive, wisdom of crowds|

I found out about artist Aaron Koblin's use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk to use mass consultation to create collaborative art in a blog entry by John Winsor. It's quite a shift in paradigm to what we normally see as the artistic creation process. Winsor comments that "Art always seems to lead the way in paradigm shifts. What's next in this evolving landscape." James Surowiecki's book, "The Wisdom of Crowds"; related some interesting stories about leveraging the wisdom that exists in large numbers of independent people.... It can [...]

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Great research quote

By Aiden Choles|May 8th, 2009|Categories: Systems|Tags: bias, pre-hypothesis, research|

In Gerald Zaltman's new book,Marketing Metaphoria he writes: "There are no easy solutions, just prescriptions for failure: When an answer immediately emerges from the data, the researchers probably rigged it into the study. That is, their confirmatory research mind-set unwittingly designed the study to arrive at the apparent solution. Beware of obvious conclusions." This is why we are such strong proponents of pre-hypothesis research.

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Using narrative in the recruitment process – part 1

By Aiden Choles|May 8th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: fit, HR, interview techniques, Narrative, recruitment, story values|

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 [...]

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Unintended consequences

By Aiden Choles|May 7th, 2009|Categories: Complexity|Tags: Complexity, goodhart's law, problem solving|

An article in the news today reported concern among AIDS organisations and Doctors without Borders about a worrying new trend where people are neglecting to take life-saving medication in order to qualify for government subsidies. In South Africa, the government pays a special disability grant to people living with HIV. The problem seems to be that there is no standard set of guidelines as to determining who qualifies for the subsidy and who doesn't. Some doctors are basing their recommendations [...]

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Narrative Lab on Twitter

By Aiden Choles|May 5th, 2009|Categories: News|Tags: twitter|

In addition to being able to follow Aiden and Sonja's twitter stream, we've now started a dedicated TNL twitter stream, @narrativelab for some focused narrative tweets. Why not follow us there?

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Take part in Story Week

By Aiden Choles|May 4th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: anecdote, barack obama, Narrative, story week, storyteller|

Shaun at Anecdote has launched a mini-experiment in the form ofStory Week. Each day, starting today, he'll be publishing a story and asking us to gauge the impact the story has on us. He's hoping the results will tell us something of what makes a story so powerful, and what stories move us. Mosey on over to the first installment here ... a story by the US Storyteller in Chief, Barack Obama.

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Our mission: water and safety

By Aiden Choles|May 1st, 2009|Categories: Mission statement, the narrativelab|Tags: Culture, mine safety, narrative lab, transformation mindsets|

Most traditional companies are quite intentional about choosing their mission, often settling on a well-crafted statement that sets market domination and excellence as their target. Sonja and I have been less intentional, and have rather let our mission emerge over the last 12 months - emergence is a key factor in managing complexity after all :) What is our mission then? It's not market domination, nor is it service excellence ... while those are important factors of our business. Rather, [...]

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