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stories to ring the changes.

How Stories Work in a Changing Work Environment

By Dorian Haarhoff

To remain vibrant… we must always be inventing ourselves,
weaving new themes into our life narratives,
remembering our past,
re-visioning our future.
(Sam Keen and Ann Valley Fox)

Nasrudin, en route to market, loads bags of salt on his donkey’s back. They come to a river. Nasrudin tries to lead the donkey across the shallow causeway but the donkey chooses to cross at the deepest part. The salt dissolves in the water. The donkey trips lightly up the other bank and trots off.

Next market day Nasrudin loads the donkey with bales of wool. The donkey once again chooses the deep part of the river. The wool absorbs the water. The donkey staggers up the river bank, the bags weighing heavily on his back. Nasrudin turns to him and says, “You thought that every time you entered the river you would come off lightly, didn’t you?”

In another story Abe rushes up to someone in the street.

“Eve… I haven’t seen you in years. You’ve changed. Your hairstyle, the way you walk, the way of dress.”
“The woman retorts, “My name is not Eve. It’s Mary.”
Abe exclaims “See, you have even changed your name!”

South Africa since 1994 has been ringing with changes, and the eyes of many South Africans often reflect uncertainty, fear and resistance. Changes arrive uninvited, unannounced. Natural disasters wipe out structures. Stock markets crash. Companies merge and retrench. Change is the only certainty - accelerated change. You die or adapt, like the dinosaur or the elephant.

Perhaps we do not such much fear the unknown as the loss of the known. We have been conditioned to be in control. To dictate pace. Not to take risks for growth is painful. There is a saying, “No-one crosses the same river twice.” The river has changed and the person has changed. Or in the case of the Nasrudin story, the donkey has changed, the river has changed and the weight on his back has changed. And if Mary ever was Eve, she has changed. And if Mary always was Mary she has changed too.

I believe that stories help organizations and individuals in transition and induce the kind of changes the workplace needs. Changing the route to market. Changing the relationship between the CEO (Nasrudin) and the personnel (the donkey). (Or are the roles reversible?) Finding markets where there is no river to cross. Changing from salt to wool. Working with new identities.

We are the stories we tell about ourselves and our workplace. And an organisation, like any individual, has its own story. In one firm the merger that happened last year is the last chapter. Like Eve who became Mary (if she did) the new company name and redefinition of image marks the beginning of another chapter. Strategic planning is the next one. How will the story continue? Here are some insights that stories offer an organization in crisis, struggling like Nasrudin’s donkey out of the river.

Stories open troubled organizations to lateral thinking and to imaginative solutions.

To our rational minds (left brains) the Nasrudin and Abe stories contain illogical elements. Like dreams, stories speak from the right brain – the intuitive side. University of Oregon studies reveal that when we are dreaming, the right brain provides a fireworks display of electrical impulses. Scientists have solved problems through dreams. Elias Howe designed the sewing machine needle after a dream where warriors chased him. Their spears had eyes at the points.

Stories invoke a new kind of leadership because they hold multiple meanings.

No one meaning is ‘right’. Collective answers are richer than those arriving top-down. Stories create tolerance and cultivate the art of listening and of respect for another point of view. A story is a store-house of the collective wisdom of the organization and a place to draw from for the next business adventure.

Stories are open-ended.

Both Nasrudin and Abe involve conversations. Stories start a conversation with ourselves and with others, and meet us where we are in personal and work circumstances. Who knows where that conversation might lead? Staff can identify and invest in a story that moves as the company moves.

Stories raise awareness - the spiritual IQ of a company.

They encourage personnel to reflect on past actions. The Nasrudin story reminds me of times when I follow a recipe for something that succeeded last time. This time it fails dismally. Times when I have neither read the river nor the load on my back correctly. The Abe story reminds me that I have been through changes without being aware of the process.

Stories arrive in a pliable ever-changing form.

If you re-tell either story (Nasrudin or Abe) you will add your own details and insights. Your own voice. Re-telling encourages personal identification with the professional story.

Stories offer a context for change.

They hold what is happening to us – they become the proverbial life boat in a stormy sea. An organization with a story is in a stronger position to survive and make the safety of the shore.

Stories are the way of the future.

An article in The Futurist describes the ages we have lived through – gatherer-hunter, agricultural, industrial and information (the current age). The writer predicts that the next age will be the story- telling age. Part of his reasoning is that there is an information overload. How do we contain it? We store it in a story – that seemably simply yet highly complex form.

Stories nourish the health of an organisation.

They provide fodder for Nasrudin’s donkey so he can better exercise his river choices. David Whyte, a poet active in corporate America, recently worked with Nedcor in South Africa. In one of his poems he writes:

This is not the age of information…
This is the time of loaves and fishes…
People are hungry.

The environmentalist, Barry Lopez, believes, “Sometimes people need stories more than food to stay alive.”

Stories offer us alternatives - other ways of responding to changing circumstances.

They remind us that we have the resources. Stories offer us a place to embrace change from within, for in hearing and responding to the story we are changed. And as we work with stories, a new organizational story is born in a changing South Africa, searching for new ways to lead the world.