mistakes & stories

Two Ning groups that you should all be looking at:

• The Mistake Bank: The Mistake Bank is a repository for "war stories," or brief narratives of mistakes that people would like to share. Please contribute videos or blog posts recounting your mistakes that you think others could learn from.
• Worldwide Story Work: If you care about story work in organisations please come and join us.

Thanks: Shawn

N.B. Ning doesn't seem to be very good at allowing you to merge accounts created with different email addresses. In fact, it's really bad at it.

Plug 1: Future of Volunteering Survey

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into Chris Fletcher & he asked me to publicise this:

Cognitive Edge is currently working with part of the Australian network to use narrative as a means of understanding the whys and hows of the Future of Volunteering. We are doing this with the Government of New South Wales, Dellotte, SOLA and the NSW Meals on Wheels Association. If you live in Australia we would really appreciate your participation. It won't take long and you have the traditional opportunity (provided by any on-line survey) to win an iPod or cinema tickets. To take part click here.

Do it! Do it now!

Dave Snowden casts his pod

First Patrick, then Shawn & now Dave hits us with his KM Australia 2007 gear. What is it with my favorite KM thinkers putting their stuff out there for free!!!

I agree with most of DS's positions (which will not doubt infuriate him). There is one thing that I think he is half wrong about at the 22:40 on the KM Australia keynote mp3.

DS states that creativity does not lead to innovation but rather the reverse - i.e. creativity is the product of an innovative system. And that innovation requires starvation, pressure & diversity.

Here I think he's half right. Trying to get people to be "creative" if everything around them shows that such creativity will not be recognised, rewarded, etc is foolish and heart-breaking. Innovation (as a complex social system) determines and is determined by individual creativity. However, research indicates that starvation & pressure is not always useful for creativity. It may be useful at an organisational level for innovation because a threatening environment can increase an organisation's appetite for risk.

If you want creativity & innovation there is a productive tension between giving people the room (intellectual, emotional) they need to innovate and allowing the organisation to stay off-balance enough to implement those innovations.

BTW I hadn't seen the traffic light /roundabout example before - loved 'em...

Narrative

I had the great pleasure of attending a workshop run by the Anecdote crew yesterday with a few other people. I first met Shawn back when he was in the IBM Cynefin Centre and I was impressed by the extent to which they had simplified and refined many of the ideas and added from other sources - such as Most Significant Change.

Key takeaway: narrative management is all about managing with stories rather than the management of stories. You cannot control stories but you can use them to gain a rich-picture understanding of your environment.

One thought: Lauchlan discusses an HBR article on innovation. The overall framework of the authors is useful as a diagnostic - and presumably narrative techniques could be applied to this. Anecdotes around successes, failures & managerial attitudes could be matched to 6 categories: If you have mainly positive stories around a particular area then good! If you have mainly negative stories then something needs urgent attention. If you have few stories then you have an opportunity to create a capability you don't currently have...