Narrative

Ethics Conference

Sonja and I are in Cape Town tomorrow for the Unashamedly Ethical conference on Friday and Saturday. Since the release of the King 3 report on corporate governance earlier this month, there is increased pressure for Board's and Directors to report on and manage the ethical performace of their companies. Managing ethics? The reality is that the realm of ethics is a profoundly complex problem, a problem that escapes direct management ... added to this complexity is the problem of human nature [...]

By Aiden Choles|September 16th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: Complexity, ethics, Narrative|0 Comments

Have your answers questioned

This blog entry onOpen Forum got me thinking. Specifically this paragraph: "Find some truth tellers. The first thing every CEO must realize is that everyone is lying to him (her too). It just happens. They didn’t coin the phrase “shoot the messenger” for no reason. There are many wonderful organizations out there for CEOs that provide truth-telling services. Vistage is an international group whose tag line is something like “Have your answers questioned.” It’s pretty clear that their ideal customer is the CEO who [...]

By Aiden Choles|July 7th, 2009|Categories: Communication, Leadership & Decision Making, Narrative|Tags: Communication, leadership, Narrative|0 Comments

Storytelling workshops

If you're interested in the more traditional application of storytelling, our good friend Peter Christie will be running a series of workshops on how you can harness your own storytelling ability. The two workshops are entitled: The North, South, East and West of Storytelling in Organisations (11th to 14th October) AND Life Storytelling in Organisations (14th to 17th October). They'll be run in the Maluti Mountains in the Free State. Contact Peter at bigchief@nottheboredroom.co.za if you're interested.

By Aiden Choles|June 29th, 2009|Categories: Culture, Narrative|Tags: peter christie, storytelling|0 Comments

2009 Accreditation kicks off

The 2009 Cognitive Edge Accreditation kicked off in Johannesburg today. We're running the accreditation in conjunction with Cognitive Edge and Steve Bealing (CEO) is here from Singapore running the session. It's Steve's first visit to South African, and Africa for that fact. He's on a whirlwind learning curve on South African culture and traffic ... We'll be live-tweeting the event over the next few days athttp://twitter.com/narrativelab. Follow us there for course updates, thoughts and nuggets of wisdom on narrative and complexity.

By Aiden Choles|June 22nd, 2009|Categories: Narrative, the narrativelab|Tags: accreditation, Cognitive Edge, Complexity, Narrative, steve bealing, the narrative lab|0 Comments

The non-crime hotline

People often ask why "appreciative enquiry" is not our methodology of choice, and why so many negative stories, archetypes and values surface in our processes. One of the key arguments is that humans don't tend to learn from other people's success as it is very difficult to replicate, we can however learn much from other's mistakes as it tells us what to avoid. This great post by Shawn from Anecdote about the "non-crime hotline" serves to illustrate.

By Aiden Choles|June 12th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: learning, Narrative, stories|0 Comments

Narrative at 29th OD World Congress

We've been accepted to present, alongside some sharp thinkers, our approach to Narrative Change Management at the 29th Organisational DevelopmentWorld Congress. The Congress will take place on 20th and 21st July 2009 in Pretoria (info here). In our presentation, we'll profile how a narrative approach to change management can be applied within change programmes to improve engagement, resilience and awareness. In particular, we'll be looking at a case study of how we developed a Change Story for the Turnaround Strategy within theDepartment of Home Affairs. Hope to see you there.

By Aiden Choles|May 22nd, 2009|Categories: Narrative, the narrativelab|Tags: change management, Narrative, narrative lab, presenting|0 Comments

Our study featured on Mining Weekly

Our mining safety research collaboration with Deloitte has been profiled on Mining Weekly. Feel free to read/comment/distribute it. Read it here.

By Aiden Choles|May 19th, 2009|Categories: Narrative, the narrativelab|Tags: deloitte, mine safety, mining, narrative lab|0 Comments

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 [...]

By Aiden Choles|May 15th, 2009|Categories: Culture, Narrative|Tags: Culture, Narrative|0 Comments

Using narrative in the recruitment process – part 1

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 [...]

By Aiden Choles|May 8th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: fit, HR, interview techniques, Narrative, recruitment, story values|0 Comments

Take part in Story Week

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.

By Aiden Choles|May 4th, 2009|Categories: Narrative|Tags: anecdote, barack obama, Narrative, story week, storyteller|0 Comments

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