Living storying as instrument for change

Living storying as instrument for change Alexander J.J.A. Maas Universiteit voor Humanistiek, Utrecht NL Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam/RSM, NL Presentation at Symposium on Narrative Research, Thursday 31st March 2011 at the University for Humanistics, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Discourse on storytelling in Organizational Sciences • As autobiographical accounts in the voices of the storytellers, • As an interpretation by an objective narrator (i.e., a scholar), • As an ethnographic description by a subjective narrator, • As a narrative, or short story (fiction, or realistic), • As a multiplot story (like Dostoevsky/Tolstoy and Victorian novels) • As a story of multilayered stories written at least by two co-writers • Et cetera

Discourse on Storytelling in OS • Question in this paper is: in an organisation context, how to deal with rich and insightful information and use a story in such a way that it becomes an intervention tool in itself in the relational practice, or organisation at stake. • In my paper I reflect on the theories in OS literature, here I take the applied scientist stand and tell you about methods I use in practice. So, I tell about: • Social relational stand of the researcher • Collecting of data, organizing the team • Writing as a relational process • Intervention as a relational process (of course important, but not coped with)

Vivid organizational Storytellingas collaboration process? • No fiction, but real life • A relational stand of a storytelling team • That deal with multiple voices, multiple logics simultaneously • Do take the interacting process between your team and participants in and around ‘an organisation’ serious

Vivid organizational Storytellingas organizing process? • Disinterested. During the conversation process, you are slowing down, a slow listener, ready even for a short chit chat in order to build trust and make the conversation work. You raise questions to produce and explore the differences you are looking for. You take time for difficult issues… The resulting process are authentic conversations that get to the heart of what is really going on in a situation, and combine heart and head… • Engaged. During the collection process as a team you are in touch with each other. You talk about the progress, the multiple voices you hear. You read text, look and discuss (text and film) recordings of the conversations, discuss the course of the conversations together…

Vivid organizational Storytellingas structuring process? • Writing process – “Connective writing” • Adopting multiple voices • Showing how stories have evolved • Acting and interacting between people become core focus. • Realising that it is their organisation, their change process… • Lessons from the novelist George Eliot

Eliot (1819-1880) - pseudonym for Mary Ann Crossand Middlemarch • Middlemarch (1871-1872) • I use two sources: Garrett’s (1980) the Victorian Multiplot novel and Beaty’s (1960) Middlemarch, from notebook to novel • Fiction story. Dorothea, a young girl, decides to marry an aged academic, Casaubon, against the advice of her friends and family. Casaubon dies and Dorothea marries his nephew, Will. The novel is set in a small town, Middlemarch, and traces the arrival of a young doctor, Lydgate, in the town and the start of his practice. Rosamund, a woman who has spent her life in Middlemarch, marries Lydgate, and the two are taken in by the corrupt banker Bulstrode. Fred Vincey waits to inherit money from Featherstone, a rich neighbour. When this fails, he drifts towards joining the clergy and finally marries Mary Garth.

Middlemarch as Connective writing Social relationships • A.o., Beaty clarifies that Eliot in her notebook about the last part of Middlemarch summarizes her main scope as such: • 72 Dorothea wants to help Lydgate • 73 Lydgate’s first anguish • 74 Mrs. Bulstrode learns her sorrow • 75 Rosamond & Lydgate • 76 Lydgate & Dorothea • 77 Dorothea, Rosamond & Will Ladislaw • 78 Will & Rosamond • 79 Afterwards Will & Lydgate • 80 Dorothea in her anguish • 81 Dorothea & Rosamund • Eliot traces a web of interactions, a network of interpretations. • The relational mode between two or more people is the most precious • Narrative movement presents both individual characters and their contexts as a process of an unfolding of change and interaction

Middlemarch as Connective writingOrganic form • Everything in the book to be related to everything else • Organic form. Result? Intricate web of interrelationships, interwoven strands of action, theme, and image. • Constantly shifting focus • Each situation more perspectives: each character both as • he is perceived by others and by himself • Consequence? • (a) multiplicity of interpretations, • (b) multiplies both perspectives and lines of development. • (c) Each character becomes somebody with his own point of view and • his own story

Middlemarch as Connective writingNarrator • Shifting focus stresses distortions each produces • Narrator to recognise claims and distortions of several perspectives • S/he offers access to each ‘intense consciousness’ • S/he provides a larger context which contains them all • S/he works to establish continuity • Basic method: moving back and forth between general and particular, similarity and difference

Middlemarch as Connective writingWatch the Rhythm • Expansion and contraction : • From the microscopic scrutiny of particular scenes to • More general assessments of the character, and • Beyond to wider generalizations of their significance. • Basic method: a movement of perspective which corresponds to the developmental structure of separate yet interrelated, distinct yet comparable plot lines

Middlemarch as Connective writingForms of bridging • Narrator: mediates between individual and universal, • S/he balances between involvement and detachment • S/he is in a perpetual process of ‘ checking’ one perspective against another • S/he is ‘ protesting’ against the logic of her own narrative • In order to recognize another’s perspective • Basic method: tension of centring and decentring

Middlemarch as Connective writingMapping • Gradual action of ordinary causes • Novel as a microscope and telescope, narrator presents the unfolding action as tight fabric of causation requiring close and further analysis • Construction of a situation by cumulative causes, effects and consequences of numerous small decisions and lapses. • Emphasis on the result rather than the process of convergence • Similarities leave room for large range of variation, • i.e., close and shifting interplay of similarities and differences, • and thus they can always be read with different emphases • Basic features: the degree and quality of openness and potential • for growth or enclosure and limitation • in every case we see the different roles played by intention and circumstance.

Middlemarch as Connective writingConsequences of foci • No single centre, • Multiple and shifting focus • That seeks centres of consciousness which can enact a process of interpretation like the reader’s • Problems according to intersection in the novel’s web of meanings • Bond between reader and character remains open to change and development • Middlemarch, and thus vivid storytelling, is ‘about’ interpretation!

Middlemarch as Connective writingOut of the box Sometimes a look outside a window becomes the culmination of the novel

Middlemarch as Connective writingPlot’s features • The novel’s plots explore different stylistic and temporal modes where difference is the common denominator! • The conclusion of the novel brings all the characters on stage • ‘Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.’

Resulting process? • Discussions in the team • A draft that is discussed with key persons • Rewriting process with key persons, et cetera • A new draft that is copied and recopied • And that inspires to take action…

Living storying as instrument for change