Book review
The Power of the Tale: using narratives for Organisational Success
Julie Allan, Gerard Fairtlough, Barbara Heinzen
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd; Chichester 2002
Hardback, 306pp, £19.99
ISBN 0-470-84227-X
I've always been interested in story-telling and observing the different stories that are told in corporate life. So, I was really pleased when I was asked to review this book. I did wonder, however, if a real business case could be made around using stories. They are interesting to hear and we might draw some conclusions, but what can actually be achieved by story-telling?
In reading this book I (re-) discovered not only how pervasive our use of stories is, but also how much we can actually achieve using story-telling. If only we take a little time to think about how they are useful to us in our work.
The Power of the Tale is well thought out and logically presented. The first chapter gives definitions and tells you how to use the book. The next six chapters are about different organisations and their use of stories. The last of these is not really about an organisation, but about how countries can use story telling (through developing scenarios) to build a new future.
Near the end is a chapter that gives the results of the authors' trawl through the literature and contains all the theory you would ever hope to find about the use of stories (organisational, psychological, social, counselling and anthropological). Finally, the part I liked best, a chapter on tools and techniques that can be used. It gives clear instructions for different exercises to be used in workshops. It gives several different frameworks so that you can help people to tell the stories that need to be told within an organisation. And it gives you suggestions and exercises that you can use to help you to develop your own story-telling ability.
I enjoyed reading the book and it gave me many ideas that I will be trying out in my own practise. It is definitely a book to recommend to those with curiosity or interest in story-telling.
Before human beings learned how to write (and still, in illiterate societies), story telling was the medium of collective memory. It is something that we find easy to do and easy to follow. It helps us to make sense of what is happening around us.
The authors tell us that stories work because they are memorable, economical, entertaining and they are centred on people. They also encourage creativity, help in handling emotions, help to make sense of puzzling or ambiguous situations and co-evolve with an organisation's culture (p. 10). The overall theme of the book is that stories are the best way to handle complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty and rapid change. Stories are about communication. To be fully competent in communication, we must learn to communicate in the areas of facts, values AND feelings. Story telling helps us most especially with the feeling side of communication. They also help to combine the three areas in one narrative, quickly and compactly.
Story-telling can be particularly useful on away-days or when a group of people needs to get their imaginations going. It helps them to share the ideas that they dream up and to understand sympathetically the ideas that others put forward (p. 35).
Story-telling can help us avoid 'Groupthink'. I remember hearing the story about the Abilene Paradox many years ago and I personally use this story to help teams to understand what happens when it is felt that it is more important for the group to be cohesive than to disagree with what is happening. (The story concerns four people in Texas - none of whom wishes to stop what they are doing and go to Abilene - who all, nonetheless end up going there. In Abilene, they have a rotten dinner, get hot and sweaty, and then drive 100 miles to get back home. Once they get home, one of the people explodes saying he didn't really want to go there anyway... and it turns out no one else did either! They were all just trying to be nice to one another). Just re-telling this story and posing the question, 'Are we going to Abilene?' helps teams to explore their assumptions and may help to surface disagreement.
Gossip and politics are both forms of story-telling and they are both necessary for organisations to survive in today's world. But there are two forms of both. It is the positive form that is espoused here. Truthful gossip validates empathy and transparency is truthful politics.
Well worth thinking about and thinking about how we can make better use of the stories we tell.