Writing in organisations

Reading time 2-3 minutes

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).

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.

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.

I recently gave a lecture on writing to undergraduate law students. The title was “Structure in writing”, and I attempted to introduce them to both logical structure and story. At the end I asked them to write down what my lecture had left them wondering about structure in writing. We collected up their notes and I studied them at home. Their wonderings were interesting – e.g. Why is story more intriguing [than logical structure, presumably]? How can I integrate story and facts? How can I use stories to draw my reader in? 

As always, it was the one critical comment that stuck most in my mind:  “Why were you beating about the bush? This could have been covered in 30 minutes.” On my way home I pondered what this student had meant. Perhaps he or she felt impatient listening to my anecdotes. I had made a special effort to bring my lecture to life with tales from my own experience. For example, I told them how, when applying for the job of editor with the management consultants McKinsey back in 1987, I wrote a covering letter using what I understood to be the “McKinsey way of thinking” (logical structure), taking the specifications mentioned in the job ad as my starting point. I got the job, so maybe my logically-structured letter made a difference.

As I reflected on the student’s comment, I reflected that you can’t please everybody. Some want the general principles (or the ‘so whats?’ in McKinsey-speak) without any narrative detours, while others like some stories and examples to ease them into the principles. Including stories in a lecture is a bit like digging in compost to enrich and lighten heavy clay soil.

The question for me is always: how best to interweave narrative and propositional forms (argument, opinion or generalisations) in a lecture or piece of writing? As Jerome Bruner noted: 

“A good story and a well-formed argument are different natural kinds. Both can be used as means for convincing another. Yet what they convince of is fundamentally different: arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness.” (Jerome Bruner: Actual minds, possible worlds)

So if you combine the two, you may have a powerful mix. The art lies partly in selecting the best and most relevant stories and examples to engage your reader, and then telling them well. That requires considerable thought, empathy and storytelling skills.

Related reading

Jerome Bruner. Actual minds, possible worlds, 1986

Stephen Denning. The springboard – how storytelling ignites action in knowledge-era organizations, 2001.

Richard Kearney. On stories, 2001.

Barbara Minto. The Pyramid Principle, 1987.

For me, this year has been one of reviewing how I want to live and work for the next few years. It has become clear that the most pleasing daily routine is to start with breakfast and some reading, then write for the rest of the morning, have lunch and spend the afternoon doing something else.

Every book about the writing process seems to recommend spending at least a few hours each day writing.

This morning I had only got as far as the reading stage when I heard our current guests, a Dutch couple, enter the kitchen downstairs. I decided to join them in my morning gown for a cup of tea and some talk. While staying with us, Jos has been working on a biography of a prominent Dutch politician; Ilda has been painting portraits of people with Alzheimer’s.

At some point our talk turned to the subject of narrative writing. Jos works with a group of PhD students in Amsterdam: “When asked to write narratives, what they produced wasn’t narrative at all,” he said.

“What did they do instead?” I asked. “Did they generalise?”

“Yes,” he replied. “They abstracted – maybe that’s the same as generalising – and they wrote about how things should happen in their organisations.”

“I expect abstraction comes naturally to them,” I went on. “In our society, we swim in an ocean of abstract concepts and categories. The students probably can’t see the water they are swimming in. So much of the language we use in organisational life is remote from any lived experience. Somebody I know once said that we’ve ‘become lost in our abstractions’.”

“It’s as if we live in a parallel universe,” Jos reflected.

I started thinking about what kind of conversation I might have with the students in Amsterdam about narrative writing and abstraction. The way I see it, writing has enabled humanity to develop complex abstract thought. But writing is such a versatile tool; it can also be used to develop other kinds of thinking, such as stories and narrative accounts of experience.

I mentioned Marshall McLuhan and his notion that the tools we invent shape us. For me, this perfectly encapsulates our complex two-way interrelationship with writing. It sparked a further thought from Jos: “We could explore with the students how the narratives we create shape us. At the moment, they view their working lives and academic study as separate spheres.”

“And narrative writing could help bridge the gap,” I suggested.

Before long, all three of us felt ready to go off and do our morning’s writing or painting. I am reminded again as I write this how inspiring it can be to allow conversations to emerge from the cracks and crevices in one’s daily writing routine.

Epilogue – how writing reflective narrative changes us
If we write a narrative account of our own experience, unexpected insights usually emerge. First we tell a story, then we re-read our own words, and finally we reflect further on what is emerging. The very process of writing changes us.

Related reading
Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg galaxy. University of Toronto Press, 1962.

David Abram. The spell of the sensuous. Vintage Books, 1996.

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).

Telling a story using multiple voices or perspectives – it has definitely been done in literature and cinema. In film, I immediately think of “Mystery Train” by Jim Jarmusch or“Rashomon” by Akira Kurosawa. And my favourite example in books is Matthew Kneale’s novel “English passengers”, in which each chapter adopts the language and point of view of a different person, including the various passengers on board a ship heading for Australia in the 1850s but also one of the last aboriginals of Tasmania. As the Good Reads website puts it, the various characters “come together in a storm of voices that vividly bring a past age to life” (see www.goodreads.com/book/show/14257.English_Passengers).

I have used multi-perspective narrative myself a number of times in my writing and my colleague Jane Maher recently reminded me of a good example. Nearly 10 years ago, we were piecing together the story of a group of doctors working with UK charity Macmillan Cancer Support to improve the care of people affected by cancer. We realised that there was one aspect of the story which the individuals involved (doctors and people in Macmillan) would never agree on. So with another colleague, Elizabeth Lank, I conducted one-to-one interview-conversations with each person separately. I then used extensive quotes, in their own words as far as possible, to construct a joint narrative of unmerged voices. In each version, the story was recognisable, but the interpretations of what had happened, especially where the difficulties had lain, were quite different. 

We gave each person the opportunity to review their part of the story before anybody else saw it, and they could correct, expand or delete anything in the text. That way, we were able subsequently to share the written account across the group of doctors, and beyond. We got a sense that this helped people move on from history and turn their attention to what they wanted to do next as a group.

In one sense, every story encompasses multiple perspectives. When we tell or write stories, we may be drawing on many past conversations and reading. Other people’s voices and ideas have become interwoven in our internal dialogues. Nevertheless, it has proved very helpful to make diverse perspectives explicit in written accounts, especially where the aim of writing was to stimulate reflection and learning or to enable a group to make sense of their common but different experiences.

I am currently reading a wonderful diary ("Memoires de la comtesse de Boigne") by a French woman who lived from 1781 to 1866 and spent her early years in the court at Versailles. I have been noticing that the passages that give most pleasure are the little anecdotes and scraps of conversations she recreates.

For example, she describes a particular house occupied by an archbishop (l'archeveque de Narbonne). The customs observed in this house were rather liberal by any standards - "the tone was free", as she puts it. Here is one anecdote:  a grand, old vicar, seeing the Comtesse de Boigne’s mother looking very sad one day, said to her:

"Madame la marquise, don’t worry, you are very pretty and that is already a fault; but people will pardon you that. However, if you want to live here in peace, you would do best to hide your love for your husband; conjugal love is the one thing that is not tolerated here.’"

For me, this little exchange evokes a feeling of the time in a way that facts and generalisations do not. It interests me particularly because my work involves writing narrative accounts or histories of groups and organisations. (And, come to think of it, when I was at school I felt incapable of retaining historical facts as they were presented in those days... and possibly still are today.)