Writing in organisations

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In October, I was lucky enough to go to Taiwan, a place I had never visited before, for a trip that was part work, part fun. My highlights:  conversations in teahouses, a walk in the hills outside Taipei (see above), bathing in hot pools, and being part of a performance in a modern museum in the city of Taichung. 

On one particular day, I also ran a seminar at the University of Tapei on the subject of “Writing Experience” (deliberately ambiguous, since it could mean either “the experience of writing” or “writing about experience”, or both).

The people I was speaking to were interested in bringing their own experience into their writing.  At one point, I invited them to spend five minutes writing freely about some themes I had been talking about (see photo below).

This summer we were engulfed by plums and greengages from our French garden. After making plum tarts, plum coulis, plum puree and plum jam, we still had kilos and kilos. So my husband went round to neighbours’ houses with bags of fruit and drove our red 2CV down the lane to friends in a neighbouring hamlet.

We soon noticed how much these small acts of giving strengthened our local relationships (perhaps obvious to anyone who has lived in the country). Each time we turned up at someone’s house with plums, a friendly conversation started; one couple spontaneously invited us over for an aperitif the next evening. I even gave a kilo to the woman who serves in the village shop, and the irony of ‘giving food to your grocer’ gave us both something to smile about.

It’s much harder to give stuff away when you don’t have enough of it yourself. In her brilliant novel “Half of a yellow sun”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes perfectly the dilemmas people face in a situation of scarcity.

Though the book is set during the terrible war in Biafra in the 1960s when some three million people starved to death, it’s not relentlessly bloody or violent. Instead the author shows us the kinds of ‘micro-interactions’ that all add up to create a wartime society.

Towards the end of the book, Olanna, a previously well-off academic, is repeatedly confronted with the dilemma of whether or not to give food away when her own family is close to starvation. Together with her husband and baby, she has been forced to move into a single room in a multi-occupancy building. An unsmiling neighbour, Mama Oji, wastes no time in warning Olanna that all the other residents are ‘accomplished thieves’. 

“Lock your door even when you are just going to urinate," she advises.

Meanwhile, Olanna’s baby soon makes friends with a little girl, Adanna, who has liquid-looking boils on her arms and a flea-ridden dog. When Adanna’s mother (Mama Adanna) notices cooking going on in Olanna’s room, she comes over holding her enamel bowl:

“Please, give me small soup.” 

“No, we don’t have enough,” says Olanna. 

Then, thinking of little Adanna’s only dress, which is made from the sack used to package relief food, she scoops some of the thin, meatless soup into the bowl. She repeats this generous act the next day, but on the third day Mama Oji is in the room and screams “Stop giving her your food! This is what she does with every new tenant.” Mama Oji adds that Mama Adanna is not a refugee but an indigene who could be farming cassava instead of begging others for food. The scene concludes with Mama Oji shouting “Shut up your stinking mouth!” at the other woman.

What this scene tells me is, first, that it's much harder to give stuff away when you don’t have enough of it yourself. And second, the decision to be generous can involve many conflicting impulses. It also makes me wonder whether I have ever made a present of something I would have preferred to keep for myself. I do recall some small examples of spontaneously giving away much-loved cashmere scarves to friends, knowing they were just the kind of thing they loved. But these examples seem piffling compared to what went on in Biafra.
 
So, what can those of us living in a wealthy society give away, apart from ‘things’ that many can afford to buy for themselves?” How about time and attention? When we give those, we don’t really even lose anything. But sometimes it feels as though we might. For instance, if we take time to listen to someone, we might have to put off something else that feels more important (for me it’s often my writing). What’s more, to listen really attentively, we have to stop distracting ourselves by silently preparing our next interjection. This can be hard.

It seems that being generous, whether with things or non-things, can be highly complex. While it's partly about compassion, it’s also entangled with other aspects of human relating, such as friendship, our sense of social obligation and even our identity – we might, for instance, want to be seen as kind and generous.
 
It’s also noticeable that a generous gesture often prompts a delightful and unexpected response. A few days after we gave away our surplus plums, more than one neighbour came round with a jar of jam they themselves had made out of them. 

Related reading

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

Trust between humans always has both history and context. Even when we first meet somebody, context plays a part. We may already have heard something about them, or we may be influenced by their status or job title – e.g. we probably respond differently to a nurse, a businessman, a teacher or a homeless person. So in my view, if we want to understand how trust works, abstract definitions have limited value. Perhaps what St Augustin said about time could also be said about trust:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

If we can’t define trust satisfactorily, can we at least begin to understand how it develops between people – and between people and institutions – over time? That is what Rob Warwick and I explored recently with a group in Brighton, by using stories, group conversations and writing to stimulate thinking.

Overall, the day prompted me to reflect on how human relationships, and trust in particular, ebb and flow. If you cast your mind back to how one of your relationships has developed over time, you may recall some striking or memorable moments along the way. Perhaps something happened to unsettle or even destroy the trust between you. Maybe you managed to rebuild it. Maybe you didn’t.

Not surprisingly, I noticed just this kind of ebb and flow during the workshop. For example, I felt warmer towards people who smiled or responded constructively to something I said. In contrast, when someone spoke in a complaining tone (as if they were a consumer who had bought a faulty product), I noticed my trust in that person sag.

At the end of the day, I came away wondering again whether it isn’t a bit strange to focus solely on this “thing” called trust, when trust is only one of several aspects of human relating. What about fear, sadness, irritation, enthusiasm, love, disappointment, exclusion, rivalry or anger? Surely these all deserve our attention.

Talking of anger, I recall how an old friend once criticised me angrily at the breakfast table (there were five of us in the room at the time). His words felt pretty much out of the blue. The memory of that exchange has lingered in my mind ever since. I would still trust him in most things, but in that moment something precious was lost, and I have gone back to it in my memory many times. 

One person at the Brighton workshop wondered whether trusting someone could be understood as “anticipating that they won’t do harm to us”. I suspect we just need to feel safe enough with other people to be able to “go on together”. 

Note: The event was the AMED writers' annual workshop in Brighton on 20 May 2016: Writing, Conversation and Trust: a day of exploration by the seaside. The original research was funded by Roffey Park.

Related reading
​
​Alison Donaldson & Rob Warwick: The emergence of trusting relationships: Stories and Reflections. Val Hammond Research Paper for Roffey Park, 2016. Available free as PDF.

Alison Donaldson & Rob Warwick: Trust and the emotional bank account: using stories to prompt learning. Strategic Briefing for Croner Publications, 2016. Available free online.

Conversation… we all do it. At best, it can be lively and creative and at worst infuriating or just dull. Last week I spent two days with a group exploring one approach to understanding how conversations work and what we can do to shift the frustrating patterns that sometimes develop.

The occasion was a workshop in London run by Rowena Davis, a friend and consultant who is very perceptive and skilled at working with people. The method she introduced us to was “SAVI”, which stands for System for Analysing Verbal Interaction. It involves identifying certain common “behaviours”, recognising frustrating or repetitive patterns, and then trying to shift them. The aim is to have more productive and satisfying conversations, whether at work, at home, with friends or anywhere else. The method can also be applied to “email conversations”, although without being able to hear the other person’s tone of voice this can be much harder to do.

Here’s just one example of a common pattern of conversation:  Person A complains and complains about something; B offers suggestions and solutions but A just continues complaining. The process repeats in a kind of loop and a “stuck” pattern has established itself.

To get out of this loop, B could try out one of many possible new responses – and choosing the most promising one is in itself as much an art as a science. For example, B could “mirror” A’s feelings by saying something like “You seem to be sad/angry/frustrated about this” and see whether that helps. Or they could express what kind of feelings they themselves experienced while they were listening to A moan. And/or they could try summarising or paraphrasing what A said to show they had listened and understood. Or they could just offer to listen attentively for a set time period, such as five or ten minutes, after which A and B might both be ready to turn their attention to a different topic. Whichever option is chosen, B cannot be certain what A’s next response will be. But it’s worth a try.

For me, the workshop highlighted how often we just react to each other. For example, when one person speaks in an angry tone, the other may respond fiercely or self-righteously and the conversation can go downhill from there. Or people can get locked into a pattern with each discounting the other’s opinion (“Yes, but” is a common response) and then going on to state their own position again, and again. Provided we notice patterns like this in the moment, we may be able to buy ourselves time by trying something different or responding in a new way.

Since the workshop, some of my own conversations have started to become noticeably more satisfying and constructive. And some need further work! For example, the other day I was in the passenger seat of a car when I noticed we seemed to be accelerating towards a young woman on a bike on a mini-roundabout just ahead of us. My dialogue with the driver went roughly like this:

Me (alarmed, in a raised voice): “Careful!”

Driver (crossly): “I saw her!”

Me (crossly):  “I was just trying to warn you. If you’d hit her, you would have killed her.”

Driver (crossly): “No I wouldn’t. Do you think I wanted to kill her?”

Me (crossly): “That’s a ridiculous question.”

By now, I felt so angry I could hardly hold myself back from swearing at the driver. But, thinking about the workshop, I managed to keep my mouth shut, still seething, while I looked for pen and paper so I could record the exchange and think about how else I could have responded. After I put down my pen, I decided to explain what I was doing, and we went on to talk relatively calmly about our little spat. We agreed it would have been almost impossible to avoid the initial exchange (“Careful!” and “I saw her!”). Those first reflexes felt uncontrollable in the moment. But after that, instead of continuing to fight back, perhaps I could have said “I’m sorry I shouted but I was really frightened.” There is no guarantee, but maybe this would have helped.

Understanding how verbal exchanges like these work is useful for anyone interested in complexity and emergence. "Complexity thinking" is very much about how change emerges from human interaction. We all know that conversations are capable of giving rise to conflict, mistrust and mutual blaming, but they can also bring about learning, innovation, understanding and trust.

So let’s do all we can to increase our understanding of conversation and dialogue. But let’s also remind ourselves that we can’t change other people – we can only try out new responses ourselves. 

Related reading

• If you want to find out more about SAVI, go to www.savicommunications.com/index.html. If I had only seen the SAVI website, I might not have signed up for the workshop. What convinced me to do so was my trust in Rowena and my conviction that conversational (dialogical) skills are vital for human cooperation and survival. So don’t be put off by the trademarking or the (for my taste) over-scientific language – it is sprinkled with words like “systematic”, “objective analysis” and “coding” (or by the reference to 1940s Information Theory, which in my view has serious limitations when applied to human beings… ).
• If you’re interested in doing a SAVI workshop and willing to travel, the next one is in Bucharest 17-19 March 2016 –  www.comunicareesentiala.ro/savi2/
• For a different approach, see “Nonviolent communication” by Marshall B Rosenberg, and www.cnvc.org/
• For a complexity perspective on conversation, see Patricia Shaw's book “Changing conversations”. Also “Learning to talk to one another – politics and practical judgement” (blog post by Chris Mowles, University of Herts).
• For more academic “dialogical” thinking, see “Conversational realities revisited” by John Shotter, or just visit www.johnshotter.com/

Postscript

SAVI looks mainly at what we perceive directly in conversation, especially words and tone. It doesn’t delve beneath the surface in the way that, say, psychoanalysis would. But I think that is also its strength. It takes appearance seriously and is not over-theoretical.

A visit to Amsterdam recently reminded me just how valuable the practice of “reflective narrative writing” can be as a method for deepening thinking. I left Amsterdam realising we need to make this clearer to more people. Otherwise, good research may be nipped in the bud.

The occasion was a meeting of PhD students from the Open University of the Netherlands. Their doctoral programme draws on thinking around complexity and management. I completed a similar doctoral programme 11 years earlier with Ralph Stacey in the UK. Indeed, the Dutch programme was instigated by one of Ralph’s graduates, Nol Groot.  

My journey to the venue was not entirely straightforward. I took a bus from my overnight accommodation to the end stop, where I found myself in a modern, impersonal part of the city. I asked a passer-by the way. As she was going in the same direction, we accompanied one another and we got into conversation. Just before we parted, this exchange took place:

Me: What kind of work do you do?

Her: I work in computer systems. 

Me: That’s funny because the meeting I’m going to is almost the opposite! We’ll be talking about complexity and emergence in organisational life and narrative writing. Come to think of it, though, those things can and do co-exist with systems! 

Her: Yes, absolutely.

That fleeting encounter was itself an example of emergence: a specific conversation sparked fresh thinking (and helped me find my destination).

Having arrived, I took part in the morning session, and then after lunch it was my turn to speak. I had decided to share my own experience of using reflective narrative writing. This seemed like a sensible way to stimulate some discussion. And anyway, as I see it, there is no “technique” for reflective narrative writing – no model, matrix or set of prescribed steps. Instead the writer usually writes an account, in the first person, of a striking moment or significant experience from their everyday working life, typically including details of specific incidents and conversations. 

After telling my own story, I highlighted a few themes that have come to matter to me. These included the merits of handwriting a first draft, then typing it, and revising it again and again (“iterative writing”). By writing about an experience, we can later go back to it and, in a sense, enter a dialogue with our own writing. This enables us to weave in further thoughts and insights. And if we share successive drafts with other people (e.g. a supervision group, or even the people who were involved in the incidents described), our reflective narrative can grow into a rich account of lived experience. 

Why is this method so productive and rewarding? I think it is partly because normal organisational life is so busy and pressured that we hardly have time to reflect on what has been happening. We may discuss things with a colleague or a friend but writing is different. It gives us time to find our own way of articulating our experience and to deepen our thoughts about it. It enables us to “make sense” in new ways and sometimes to act differently. 

So I was saddened to hear that the powers that be at the university don’t fully appreciate this form of research. That’s a real pity because the method may not look academic or scientific at first sight, but it can and does generate immense insight and wisdom. 

I am in touch with many people who have pursued Ralph Stacey’s doctorate in organisational change since 2000, and my sense is that all those I speak to have gone back into their work environments wiser. Some learned how to break through constraints in ways that previously seemed impossible. Others became more confident and (perhaps) less controlling leaders. Many, like me, changed the nature of their work after graduating. Personally, I came to see that there is no need to chase constantly after a new theory or the latest best-seller on leadership.

In short, by using reflective narrative writing, we can take our experience seriously and get better at noticing and reflecting on what is going on around us. We can explore things we normally take for granted, and we can develop our own practice in ways that may influence others too. 
 
As I write those words, I am reminded of John Shotter, who opened my eyes to Wittgenstein’s thinking:

[Wittgenstein’s] concern is not with finding anything radically new, but with seeing something that is difficult to see for other reasons: either i) because '... like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off' (1953, no.103); or ii) because it all '...goes by so quickly, and [we] should like to see it as it were laid open to view' (1953, no.435), thus to be able to survey it at one's leisure, reflectively.... (Shotter, 1997)

Related reading

John Shotter (1997). Wittgenstein in practice: from 'The Way of Theory' to a 'Social Poetics'. In C.W. Tolman, F. Cherry, R. van Hezewijk, and I. Lubek (Eds.) Problems of Theoretical Psychology. York, Ontario: Captus Press, 1997.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

To see how the idea of talking to the PhD students about narrative writing emerged from a conversation, read my earlier blog post here.

Conversation is not what it used to be – for me at least. Many years ago I used to take it for granted, as I suspect many still do. I always loved “a good talk”, as my mother used to say, but I never really stopped to look more closely at what goes on between people in a conversation.

Then, towards the end of the 1990s, my whole understanding of conversation started to shift and grow. Beginnings are impossible to pin down, but one important moment was when I met Patricia Shaw at a coaching firm I was working with in London at that time. I knew plenty of consultants but she behaved quite differently from the others. For example, one afternoon, she invited everybody – not just the coaches but also administrative staff and me as a freelancer – into a room to have a conversation. There was no written agenda. Instead we were simply invited to explore the question “What do we think we are doing together?” 

I think this meant so much to me partly because I had been missing good conversations in my working life up until then. As a researcher, writer and editor, I was used to sitting at a desk for hours at a time. And, especially when working among management consultants, I had felt pretty isolated. I remember envying a friend who worked in PR and was constantly laughing with her colleagues.  

In 2000, partly prompted by these experiences, I took a big step in my working life by joining a new doctoral programme run by Ralph Stacey and colleagues. One of Ralph’s funnier stories was about how he told a group of managers that all they do essentially is “talk”. This infuriated them – presumably they thought they did more important things, like planning, analysing and… managing. But Ralph’s claim that they “just talk” was not an idle provocation. It had in fact emerged from his interest in complexity and emergence. 

What "emergence" came to mean for me, in a nutshell, was that interaction usually gives rise to something new and unpredictable. This insight changed me. In my work, I started to think of my meetings with potential clients not just as opportunities to win new projects but as conversations. I trusted that there was little point in over-planning, or trying to predict what they might lead to. 

I still think of conversations, meetings and interviews in this way today. Sometimes I am taken aback or disappointed when I realise that the other person views them as purely transactional, to be planned in advance and kept as short as possible. Indeed, I think the default one-hour slot offered by electronic calendars is unfortunate. Some conversations need five minutes, some need two hours...

If we do take conversation seriously, surely it makes sense to pay attention to its quality. For example, what makes a conversation lively? I would probably say now that, above all, it helps if the people involved are curious, listen attentively, are comfortable with difference, and remain unattached to specific outcomes. Why do some conversations or meetings get stuck? How do we unstick them? And what kind of conversation goes on inside our heads when we are talking or listening to another person? What does conversation mean for a writer? I could construct a whole book around that last question alone…

Composer John Cage once said (very slowly):

“I think conversation………………..  works best…………  when the second thing that is said…………….  is not in the mind of the person who said it………………” 
                             (“Nineteen Questions”, a film by Frank Scheffer)

I take Cage's words to mean that, when we are listening to another person talking, it helps if we resist the temptation to plan what we are going to say next. Just listen - simple but not easy.

Related reading

Patricia Shaw. Changing conversations. Routledge, 2002.

John Shotter. Conversational realities revisited: life language, body and world. Taos Institute Publications, 2008.

Theodore Zeldin. Conversation: how talk can change your life. The Harvill Press, 1998.

Learning from experience: 
why history matters in organisational life

In a recent publication, I muse on why one comes across so little history in organisational documents today. In my view, it has something to do with the subtle influences of communication technologies, including writing, printing and more recently computers. Added to those is blanket application of scientific thinking and managerial ways, especially in the public sector. 

In my own small way, I try to redress the balance by writing narrative accounts to describe and evaluate organisational activities that have evolved over time and are hard to measure. I take pains to incorporate process thinking and emergence in the narratives I write, using people’s own words as much as possible and paying attention to detail.

“In order to see more clearly, here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what goes on; must look at them from close to” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

Writing case studies and organisational histories does not just involve looking backwards. It is also about understanding how we came to be where we are today and what that might mean for the future.

“Good historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the question ‘Why?’ the historian also asks the question ‘Whither?’.”  (Carr, What is history? 1961).