We’re really humming now. Harrison Owen replied to my stories post on the OSLIST with these comments, among others: This is interesting soup indeed. I think the real positive here is the emphasis on Story Telling. For 40 odd years, ever since the days when I presumed to be an academic delving into the mysteries of myth, ritual and culture in the ancient near east — I have felt that we (all of us humanoids) are essentially story-tellers, it is the way we make meaning and communicate meaning (as in the natural first question of a new person — “What’s …
Yes to this from Carla Verwijs: : The good thing about stories is that it is not ‘just another technology’, it’s something that’s already there in the organisation. You only have to discover them and listen (be open). Everything you wouldn’t read in glossy corporate brochures and promotional videos and that show you the inside of the company, you’ll hear in peoples’ stories. Stories are the heart of the company. Stories are about people, culture, wishes, dreams, new ideas. And that’s what makes them so interesting to me.
Ton is musing about organizational structure: While browsing the Actionable Sense Wiki…I came across this statement of mine, that I scribbled down some weeks ago: Organisations are clusters of relationships between people. | The invididual and the network are the relevant economic units, not the organisation. | Value is in the relationships, organisations are transactions along those relations. The first statement puts people and their relations in the spotlight, thus including informal structures in orgs, not just the formal ones. The second includes all stake holders in any situation from the get-go not just share holders. The third brings into …
My dad directing a bridge building crew on the Bruce Trail My dad has a blog. I love this. In his second post, he the various attractions that abound in his villiage of Clarskburg, Ontario and the surrounding area. The thing is that he actually DOES all this stuff too. When he turned 65 last year I asked him what was different for him. He had retired several years before so I wasn’t sure that 65 marked any great life transition. His reply was that the Old Age Security cheques start coming. He was planning to spend his first one …
I pointed to this paper, How stories affect human action in organisations, last week, as it came by way of a regular mailing from the Plexus Institute. I’ve had a chance to read it and it posits a number of interesting points. My reading of the paper follows the development of these key ideas: Organizations are not “things” but rather relational processes. Human beings use story to represent and understand the patterns of experience. Stories only represent partial versions of reality and so narrative interpretation is subject to power dynamics. Powerful storyteller can make people “captives” in the story; this …