Conversation, story and narrative

We see conversation, story and narrative as the key force in organisations.

Work gets done through conversation. Talk is not the precursor to the work … it is the work. Conversation is action and action is conversational. But, contrary to conventional notions, it seems clear that once a conversation starts no one person is “in control” of what happens next. They can only anticipate how others will respond and then respond in their own way to that responding. Likewise when people seek to initiate or influence change the best they can do is say what we think should happen. After that they must wait to see how others respond and then “go on from there” together.

Much of the conversational life in organisations is storylike. Story is used to convey meaning and to help make sense experience. People organise their understanding of the past in narratives that create a sense of order and design out of the “messiness” of experience, they tell stories (ante-narratives) about possible futures and trade emergent stories and rumours that help them make their  own sense of what is going on around them. In this context change is difficult and needs to be approached locally as well as globally because the global forms and is formed by what happens in a myriad of localities.