Once Upon a Corporate Time. The role of stories in organisational learning.

Feature

posted 1 Dec 1998 in Volume 2 Issue 4

Once Upon a Corporate Time. The role of stories in organisational learning.

'Sometime reality is too complex.. Stories give it form.' Jean Luc Godard. As we are bombarded by the fast moving pace of the 'Information Age', we should not forget the past and what it has taught us over centuries; the power of stories for learning. Here Michael Reilly, Trisha Matarazzo, & William Ives translate 'Once upon a time' to a business level and reveal the use of stories in the workplace.

Sam reflected on his sales plan as he prepared to meet the next customer. He would portray a day in the work life with his new product to make the benefits concrete and understandable. But even before that he decided to set up the story by presenting his customer's situation in a story format - the situation, including his customer's goals or quest - the complication, including the obstacles to meeting these goals - and the resolution or how his product can help the customer overcome the obstacles and achieve the goals. Sam felt confident as the time arrived and he reminded himself to share this event with his new apprentice.

The Power of Stories

This story could have taken place 3,000 years ago, 300 years ago or even last year, and it provides an example of how stories can be powerful in educating and sharing knowledge. Historically, we know that stories have played a key role in transferring knowledge. The epic poems, ancient parables and the teachings of many major religions are all evidence of the ageless nature of stories. Stories are part of the human spirit; they touch our emotional core and provide a natural means for organising our key values (e.g. McAdams, 1997). Recent research into great leaders has suggested that a leader who truly enables change is one who creates a story; a vision that significantly effects the thoughts, behaviours and feelings of a large number of people who then become followers (Gardner & Laskin, 1995). For example, Gandhi conveyed a vision that in non-violent struggle both sides could emerge strengthened. This applies to business as well as politics and religion.

Before text was invented, stories were the main form of knowledge recording and sharing, as the conditions for the preservation of ideas were mnemonic (Havelock, 1976). Stories provided the organising framework for both the recorders and the receivers of knowledge. With the advent of text and storage devices such as clay tablets and papyrus, others forms of documentation became possible. But stories did not lose their power to move people and the printing press made them scalable. For example, many historians have argued that Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was more instrumental in convincing the people of the northern United States of the evils of slavery than the more abstract appeals to morality by contemporary politicians. Stowe was referred to as the old lady who started the Civil War. Within business however, although stories have remained important in informal knowledge transfer, they have not been formally recognised for their value and have not been managed to achieve maximum benefit. Stories are about sharing knowledge, not simply about entertainment. It is their ability to share culture, values, vision and ideas that make them so critical. They can be one of the most powerful learning tools available, yet business has been slow to take advantage of this potential. Storytelling can assist with almost every aspect of the business environment, from strategic planning to assisting in enterprise transformation.

While stories can be simple, they also require a broad bandwidth to convey their context and richness. Business information systems have traditionally focused on data and information. Now, with the increases in bandwidth, information technology and knowledge management interest, corporate stories can become more recognised as a major source of organisational learning able to be managed through technology. Stories can be made scalable in a digital world and a knowledge-based economy. They can be recognised as a source of value to increase the success and wealth of the organisation. These stories need to be managed, evaluated, documented and distributed to the right people in the most effective ways. We will now discuss four key uses of stories.

Uses of Stories

1. Developing Business Strategies

Stories have many possible uses. These can range from the tactical approach (e.g. passing on successful sales techniques) to the strategic approach (e.g. conveying global corporate visions). One of the powerful uses for stories is in strategic planning. In our firm, we have a number of scenario-based planning tools designed to help businesses understand complex dynamics about the future of their businesses and plan accordingly. One of the most successful scenario-based planning tools has been within the Financial Services Industry. This industry is undergoing some highly complex changes in which both the nature of suppliers and the nature of customer demand are drastically changing. By plotting these dynamics against each other, our firm has been able to build a matrix of possibilities for the future of financial services. The matrix by itself was not compelling. What made it such a powerful tool was the addition of complex and compelling stories for the extreme situations that could take place in each of the quadrants. This allows individuals to grasp more completely the nature of the interactions that the industry is undergoing. It allows for greater depth and understanding in planning future strategic goals against the various dynamics. Stories transformed a simple 2x2 matrix into a powerful strategic planning tool.

2. Enhancing Learning

Another purpose for sharing stories is to enhance learning and accelerate growth within companies. Every good teacher knows the value of putting key messages in a context that learners can understand. Businesses need to apply the technique of framing a message in an understandable and concrete context for learners. In fact, a recent U.S. study found that most employees thought they gained most of their work-related knowledge from informal conversations around the water cooler or over meals, not from procedure manuals or formal training (Wensley, 1998). By using stories in formal training, whether through self-study materials or instructor-led classes, abstract material can be transformed into real-life application. A familiar context gives meaning to the story and allows conclusions to be drawn for real-life application. With proper questions, learners can imagine how the lessons learned from the stories can be applied on a day-to day-basis. For example, imagine trying to convince life insurance sales trainees that understanding all their client s needs is essential before recommending the correct product. A few stories showing the negative consequences of not doing this and the positive outcomes of taking this extra step will have a much greater effect than abstract statements or discussions of company policy.

Simulation-based learning experiences go a step further by actually placing the learner in the storyline itself. For example, if the key learning was based on time management, the business simulation would put you in a pretend situation where you had too much to do in too little time. In these situations, learning occurs during the activity and is applied in the context of the story. The learner can then apply their new understanding to real situations at hand. This learning is further reinforced when the class or individual reflects on the process and the choices they made during the experience.

New technologies and advancements in learning theory research place us in a position to go beyond relaying stories in the traditional manner of instructor-led training. Now we can create active stories by placing learners in a virtual learning zone. We know how to record stories both in sound and picture; we have learned how to broadcast knowledge around the world in just seconds. Tools such as the Internet have provided a platform to access people s stories across time and space. Steven Spielberg s extensive digital video recording of Holocaust survivors - and cataloguing these recordings as a means to capture the real experience - is a good example of the significant new opportunities brought by recent technologies. A similar approach could be applied to significant lessons learned at key business events.

Virtual Reality is still in its infancy, but it will pave the way to an even better story telling experience; soon we will be able to enliven the tale. We will be able to record audio, visual and textual information and make it come alive for future generations to enjoy and learn from. In this case, the learner can really play a part as the main character in the story. They can create the events that happen and can draw upon multiple resources to make decisions.

Injecting real-life experience into technology-based training does not have to wait for virtual reality to mature. In today's age of computer based training, basic teaching material that would normally be used during self-study or instructor-led classes can be extended with digital audio and video resources. Learners can even be guided by an on-screen coach who asks questions, tells them stories that relay key points or prompts them to head in the right direction. In a number of cases we have found that this approach significantly increases learning efficiency, and translates into measurable business results. For example, a knowledge system created by one of our project teams for Property Insurance Claims Agents captures stories from experienced claims agents in the form of digital video clips. These stories are categorised and quickly accessed according to the issue they are currently facing. It is like having the expert supervisor always on hand to relay the right story at the point of need. The story contains much more than a series of basic procedural steps. It can contain the rationale, the strategy and the cultural values implicit within the actions taken by the story teller. In addition, as the ancient storytellers realised, it is also much more likely to be remembered than the usual uninspired file of procedural steps for processing claims.

3. Shaping Corporate Culture

Stories can also be powerful in helping to shape corporate culture. One of the biggest challenges companies face when creating a knowledge-sharing culture is how to convince everyone to support such an initiative (e.g., Cole, 1997; Davenport & Prusak, 1998). One of the best ways to do this is by examining the stories the organisation tells. As the research on leadership indicates, great leaders are those who share a vision that compels others to follow, rather than those who rule by power (Gardner & Laskin, 1995). Ken Dorr, chairman and CEO of Chevron has linked knowledge sharing to organisational strategy and has been an untiring supporter of the cause. He has said: 'Every day that a better idea gets unused is a lost opportunity. We have to share more, and we have to share faster.' (O Dell & Grayson, 1998). Chevron has realised more than $650 million in benefits as a result of this dedication to knowledge sharing. The use of stories for cultural dissemination is one technique companies can use to share the values, environment and behaviours they wish to be embraced or rejected in their corporate culture. Many times these informal stories accurately reflect the environment. It becomes leadership's role to encourage collecting and sharing of stories to reinforce the values, environment and behaviours they wish to foster.

This also works in reverse. People can share stories about what happens when the esteemed values, environment and behaviours of an organisation are violated or disregarded. This may feel uncomfortable, because society tends to dictate that failure is embarrassing, and that negative PR is damaging. Yet a story of failure or disapproval can generate great learning. For example, the U.S. Army has installed knowledge sharing as a standard part of its work in both training and real duty in the form of 'after-action reviews' (Ricks, 1997). No effort is considered complete until it has been reviewed and its lessons obtained, including the lessons learned from failures. As knowledge is useful only insofar as it guides action, a key success factor has been a rigorous program of applying the new insights gained through reviews. During the U.S. military efforts in Bosnia, lessons learned were distributed on a frequent basis. Because such observations as, 'avoid snow-covered roads with no vehicle tracks, as they are probably mined' were credited with saving lives, members of other co-operating armies frequently requested a copy of the latest 'lessons learned'. People can benefit from their own mistakes and the mistakes of others if they are open about the truth and if communication is facilitated.

Openness builds confidence and sharing stories openly builds confidence in employees and in the organisation as a whole. This is done by individuals using stories to build confidence in themselves, the direction of their team or the future of the company. In these cases the moral of the story could be 'We did it before and we can do it again', or 'Look how bright the future can be.' Companies can further develop the organisation and its employees if people are given the opportunity to reflect on both the positive and negative realities of their workplace. Learning from each others past mistakes or successes through stories can build awareness, skill and confidence. The 'glory day' tales or ' war stories' you hear informally or formally throughout a company present learning opportunities without having to go through the experience yourself. A motivating story about what you, your team or your department once accomplished can motivate and inspire the confidence that success can be achieved again.

Consider Texas Instruments, a company that is extremely serious about encouraging re-use of ideas and design by its engineers. To encourage this process the company periodically holds a contest within the company to collect the best story based on 'We didn't build it here but we used it anyway.' Teams within Texas Instruments scramble to come up with the best story on design re-use. They then share the story with others at an awards dinner. The stories and the activities of the company serve to foster their knowledge-sharing culture. Texas Instruments has achieved $1.5 billion in additional wafer fabrication capacity as a result of their knowledge-sharing program (O'Dell & Grayson, 1998).

Story telling does not have to be elaborate in order to help change the culture. Examine the communication vehicles that are available. In most organizations there will be some form of newsletter. It does not matter whether this communication vehicle is pushed to the user or pulled down by the user, or even if it is electronic or paper. The newsletter's content is the most important factor. To change the culture of an organisation, articles should contain stories focusing on the desired culture. If the company wants to focus on customer service, then publish stories about teams going out of their way to help a customer. By collecting and publishing these types of stories, individuals will begin to realise that this really is a priority for the company. This is not to suggest that stories by themselves can change a corporation's culture. They do have to be used in conjunction with a number of other change initiatives.

Documenting and Sharing Organizational Knowledge:

Story telling can play a powerful role in one of the most basic tasks of knowledge management i.e. collecting information from one team in order to support another team. In most elementary knowledge-collection processes the focus is only on collecting materials. If this application is more sophisticated then the abstracting process is more efficient as documents will be correctly described. This is an excellent first step, but it is seldom sufficient to simply capture a document and give a description. Unlike a magazine article or a book, most of the knowledge that we collect in a business setting is part of a larger project or plan. Without this contextual background the use of that document, no matter how well catalogued may be greatly reduced.

Consider the example of Hughes Space Division. The company made a strong knowledge management effort collecting and making available the designs of their engineers. They then discovered that these designs were not being re-used. Engineers involved in building multi-million dollar satellites were unwilling to use the designs of others because they did not understand the context of how the previous design had been developed. Context was required to explain the history of the designs, so engineers were encouraged to engage in dialogue in order to unlock the knowledge within their colleagues minds (Davenport & Prusak, 1998).

To make knowledge collection and knowledge sharing more effective, one must go beyond simply abstracting documents from explicit knowledge sources. It is necessary to provide a story of the document. One of the techniques that we have found to be extremely useful, especially in collecting team knowledge, is to build a central record that contains the story of the team. It describes the overall problem they faced, the steps they took and some of the lessons they learned. Once this story is complete, individual documents can be linked with their abstracts within a central record. This solves the problem of providing a context for these documents and the project as a whole.

In a recent project where we helped a team begin to collect their knowledge, we found that by using this story telling technique, we not only improved the positioning of the knowledge but the collection of it as well. Once team members realised they were building the story of their team, they also realised that certain key documents were missing, so these were added to the tale as well. They also worked to arrange the contributions into a consistent framework, which then made the knowledge easier to use. Finally, they revisited the newly created story and added a section explaining how they had collected and arranged the knowledge. This would help future teams understand the reasoning behind the architecture of contributions.

In environments such as Lotus Notes these tiers of knowledge and stories can be very powerful. By building a repository of stories, users can search for situations similar to the one they have encountered. They can then see all of the knowledge capital that was associated with that team and perhaps gain insights on items they might not have considered if they were simply searching for a specific document type. In essence storytelling helps to begin to transfer some of the team s tacit knowledge.

This idea of focusing on stories can be taken one step further. One of the more powerful knowledge management tools that we have found is the use of story tools. Story tools - or advisory support tools focus on capturing the experiences of other team members in order to make them available for the entire team. Consider a customer service example. If a customer service representative encounters an entirely new question, they can pull up the story tool to see if any of their team members have encountered a similar question. If they find a similar question, they can then learn how that customer service representative solved the problem. If they cannot find a similar problem, then after they have researched the answer they can add their case story to the repository so that it is available to the team for future similar encounters. This type of tool is extremely useful for repetitive team tasks since it allows the members of a team to learn from each other. The technology to build this type of tool is not extremely complex. It requires a basic repository with a fairly powerful search engine. Getting the business process correct is critical. Use of the tool, contribution to the tool and the management of those contributions all need to created. If they are not, then this is just another pretty piece of software.

Approaching knowledge capture through stories in a related way, MIT s Centre for Organizational Learning has developed what they call 'learning histories'. This involves the collaboration of trained learning historians and employees involved in the work event (Kliener and Roth, 1997). An example of a work event could be developing new procedures or products, or responding to customer inquiries. The employees supply the events and the historians help interpret these events. This approach has provided very useful results for large companies trying to make sense of major events; however, this type of labour-intensive intervention cannot be applied in all cases. Useful guidance can also be as simple as creating a series of structured questions on a contribution form that help to determine the plot of the story: What occurred? Why did it occur? What are the implications? How can it be improved? The use of forced choices for categorising information provides the contributor with a framework that is aligned with the organisation's desired categories. The contributor can then create a meaningful story out of the data according to guidelines.

As technology and bandwidth increase, our ability to share information will also increase. The Information Age will continue to accelerate, flooding our lives with data, audio, video and eventually virtual reality.

As organizations struggle to make the best advantage of this flood of information, attempting to harness technology to further their planning, education, training, and knowledge-sharing abilities, it is important for them to remember the power of this ancient tool. Stories are both the past and future for helping organizations to gather, share, learn new ideas and skills and make sense of all the information.

' ...Sam's story had helped to break the ice with his new customer. Negotiations lasted a while, but eventually he was able to close the sale. Sam closed his eyes and slowly lifted off the virtual reality helmet. 'Boy, that was a tough one,' he whispered as he rubbed his eyes. Sam smiled at some of the ways he used the story to gain his customer's confidence in the simulation. He also appreciated reviewing the sales success and failure stories contained in the course database. This sales training simulation had been one of the toughest courses to date. He had lived the experience of some tough sales. These story courses were hard, but they certainly prepared you. Sam couldn't wait to try some of the techniques the next time he faced a real customer with a similar problem. He also looked forward to adding his own sales stories to the database.'

Michael Reilly (michael.f.reilly@andersenconsulting.com) is a Consultant , Trisha Matarazzo (trisha.a.matarzzo@andersenconsulting.com) is an Analyst, and William Ives(s.william.ives@andersenconsulting.com) is an Associate Partner in Andersen Consulting's Change Management practice.

References

Cole, B. (1997) Users loathe to share their know-how. Computerworld, 17 November, 6

Davenport, T., & Prusak, L. (1998) Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA

Gardner, H., & Laskin, E. (1995) Leading minds: An anatomy of leadership. New York: Basic Books

Havelock, E., (1976) Origins of Western Literacy. Toronto: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Press

Kleiner, A., & Roth, G. (1997) How to make experience your companies best teacher. Harvard Business Review, 75, 172

McAdam, D., (1997) The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of self. New York, Guildford

O'Dell, C., & Grayson, J. (1998) If only we know what we know: Identification and transfer of internal best practices. California Management Review, 40, 3, 154-174

Ricks, T. (1997) Army devises system to decide what does, and what does not, work. Wall Street Journal, May 23

Wensley, A. (1998). The value of story telling. Knowledge and Process Management, 5, 1, 1-2.