Organizations are full of stories and so are the markets in which companies operate and the disciplines in which members of the organization are educated. Those stories express successes and failures, ambitions and worries, strengths and weaknesses. People have much to learn from telling those stories, especially if they do it together. They are perhaps not used to talking about their work as filled with adventure and drama, perhaps because they are the stars in them. But seeing the adventurous and the dramatic as the coloring of stories that happened around them brings the organization – their organization – to life.
Also, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end (sometimes an open end). Typically, telling stories in a comprehendible manner helps the story teller see the beginning, middle and end of his or her own stories, and inspiration for the excitement of work.

Seeing the organization as a story book

 

What would happen if your organization were to produce a storybook? Imagine that this storybook is not produced by the pr department, but by random members of the organization and other stakeholders. What diversity would it show? Perhaps there would be serious studies in it, as well as novella’s, interviews, cartoons, stories and drawings from children of employees (“the place daddy/daddy goes to”). Some stories would be thrillers (remember that reorganization?), war-stories (“attack by the hostile-take-over mogul”), adventure stories (“how we opened our first facility in China”), biographies and auto-biographies, love stories (maybe romance is against company policy, but do you really think it does not happen?), histories and images of the future. There would be suspense, tragedy and drama, descriptions of beauty and undoubtedly much comedy.
Imagine the diversity of the people involved and the imaginations that are mobilized. Some of them have been in the organization for thirty years and some of them recently joined; some of them work with spreadsheets and some of them work on the leading dock; some of them are in the UK and some of them are in China; and what have you.
The organization can be seen as the combination of many stories, which have more or less a common theme. Perhaps it can be seen as Bocaccio’s Decamarone, in which people are stuck in the same building and tell each other stories, while living the same story together. Through telling each other stories, the real story becomes bearable.
Probably you do not want your story to be bearable; you want it to be successful. You want it to have heroes and a happy ending. But imagination is not “out there”; it is about reality, just about a different perspective of it. The myths and successes are already known, and writing stories about them makes you relive them. It also makes you learn from them. You would also put them on the ground. Then you see how what you perceived as a myth has in fact had its ups and downs, and it had involved a lot of hard work; less of a miracle and more the result of good work. Or you see how a certain type of behavior has proven the bearer of success, and perhaps you also see why it has. The storylines will become clear and you may see them run into the future.