By
David M. Boje, Jan 9 2007; Revised Jan 5 2008
STORY CONSLULTING There are two kinds, one
I call' managerialist narrative consulting,' and one I will teach you, call
'living story consulting.' The two kinds of storytelling practices are in
interplay, in a special cycle of relationship.
Managerialist Narrative Consulting Managerialism is defined
as the view of story and narrative from the voice and logic of the managers
(& owners). Managerialist story consulting is a misnomer, it is
more accurately narrative control consulting. Narrative consulting is done as a
managerialist tool, a route to performativity.
Lyotard (1979/1984) defines performativity as an
input/output ratio, with the expectation of stable input, a process of
overwork, and predictable output. It is not the same as performance.
Performativity is squeezing the last drop of blood out of labor in the labor
process extraction of surplus capital. Performance is optimization,
performativity is maximization of output from the inputs, of which labor is
one, and environment is the other. Managerialist narrative consulting helps
along performativity by distorting collective memory. It enables organizations
addicted to believing their own fantasies (some would say 'lies') to turn
otherwise polyvocality into monovocality, polylogic into monologic. And not
just any logic, but a strictly managerialist logic of performativity. Story
consulting in managerialist training regimes imprint official ideology onto
collective memory, and use training to indoctrinate the minds of subordinates
using cutely crafted BME narratives, oftentimes called "Springboard
stories." BME stands for Beginning, Middle, and End. It is about narrative
control over story, and if you want to learn the meaning of punishment, try
telling a story that goes against the dominant BME linear narrative, or heroic
adventures of ruling CEOs.
Managerialist narrative consulting makes story
into a tool of power. Story pressed into the service of narrative power is said
to be very visionary, very transformational, but it can be quite the narrative
prison. Managerialist narrative consulting is all about story control, crafting
the story that sells, the story that persuades, the story that legitimizes, and
the story that rationalizes. Story control is accomplished with the casket of
BME linear narratives of coherence with very few characters (guess who), a
breeding ground for progress myth (things are getting better all the time) and
emancipation myth (follow this path to liberation), and rationality myth (out
of this data will come truth). Add to this the whitewash and the greenwash, and
managerialist narrative consulting has much to account for, but lots of
clients, and a growing multi-billion dollar industry. Story control is always
incredulous of counternarratives.
Collective memory is an historical
narrative. Under managerialism, counternarratives are purged to realize the
progress myth, and the emancipation myth. It is like some kind of grand
rehistoricism. Those with the sword write the history, and everyone else is
written into oblivion. The purge of collective memory of any counter narrative,
or any version of the dominant story that is not gaining profit in the here and
now, keeps Storytelling Organizations entirely busy.
Narrative Consulting and Myth-Making Enlightenment is the
product of modernity, and MSC is its handmaiden. On the one hand MSC promises
to purge collective memory of myth, and replace it with rational thinking, but
on the other hand, what kind of rationality can ever do without myth-making?
The enlightenment project has been going on for some centuries. Most scholars
date it before the industrial revolution.
Now there is a supposed dialectic, an endless
battle in enlightenment to drive out myth. But myth is not so easy to vanquish,
and in MSC, myth serves so many instrumental purposes. "The dialectic of
enlightenment and myth cancels out any progress: enlightenment reverts to
myth" (Bauer, 1999: 13). The modernist enlightenment project promises to
demythologize organizations by elevating rationality over myth.
"Enlightenment is thus the emancipating process by which reason unfolds
and develops toward self-determination" (Bauer, 1999: 22). You cannot
understand managerialist narrative consulting without understanding the
Enlightenment, how it keeps reverting to mythmaking.
Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Habermas advocate
different enlightenment projects:
·
Kant
uses pure reason to realize emancipation
·
Hegal
uses absolute spirit to counteract exploitation urge of man
·
Nietzsche
is considered anti-enlightenment, but in his third phase did think there was
some hope
·
Marx
once thought the class struggle would be a revolution and lead to the
emancipation of society into classlessness
·
Habermas
thinks that a communicative rationality and rule by consensus will lead to
emancipation.
Like everything else in modernity, the enlightenment
has not one definition, but a legion of them. Habermas assumes the radical
kinds of questioning we critical postmodernist do will derail the enlightenment
project of progress, rationality, and emancipation. For Habermas, reason can
keep challenging myth, purging myth, and be the basis of negotiating consensus.
Habermas, besides rejecting Adorno and Horkheimer, rejects Nietzsche and
Foucault, and challenges us critical postmodernists to get off our obsession of
how power and knowledge are so tightly coupled. You see, I hope, the story
control is all about this. "Nietzsche and Adorno maintain that
enlightenment itself has become a myth that functions as a substitute for
religion and metaphysics" (Bauer, 1999: 33).
After the time of Taylor's Scientific Management
(he did not invent it, but did consult in it), there has been an idealist faith
in Mayo's school of Human Relations Ideals that progress and emancipation would
come if we could only understand motivation, leadership, and the rest of it.
Managerialist narrative consulting is all about
story control, to make life appear with more coherence than the underlying
world of senselessness assumed by us critical postmodernists.
To summarize there are three myths that
managerialist narrative consulting rely upon to apply their craft:
1. Progress Myth: Things
are getting better and better all the time
2. Emancipation Myth: Those
in power are going to empower me and set me free of hierarchy
3. Rationality Myth: Pure
reason knows it limits, and will allow science to be free of myth-making
People want their superhero, the leader telling
stories of progress, emancipation, and rationality. They want to believe in the
progress myth, and ignore all retrogression. They want to believe things are
always getting better. It makes the majority of people feel secure. They
majority want to believe in the emancipation myth. They believe that working in
a hierarchy will set them free. They believe leaders a applying good science to
rid the organization of its mythmakers. They believe the three myths because to
do otherwise is to face the senselessness that is all around them. But if there
is anything that the Enlightenment has taught us it is that rationality reverts
to myth, that there is some kind of dialectic of myth opposing rationality
(& vice versa) that is at the heart of the Enlightenment (Bauer, 1999).
People want to be in the pyramid, with CEOs on
top telling them fantasy stories of progress, emancipation and rationality! The
majority of people have the heard instinct (see Nietzsche). The majority of
people do not want to look at retrogression, oppression, or mythmaking.
There are many versions of postmodern theory. I
like the one that is combined with Critical Theory (the work of the Frankfurt
School to overcome the evil of World War II Nazi Germany). Combined with
postmodern theory, we can study story consulting that has both a wondrous side
and a dark side.
Storytelling Organizations can create such deluded
abortions of collective memory that they no longer serve as a way of being
adapted to an environment, which is no longer supporting, believing, or caring
about the old ways of telling. Storytelling is the preferred sensemaking
currency of organizations (Boje, 1991, 1995, 2008).
Living story is counter to spectacle theatrics
that continues to folly the masses into seeing progress, emancipation,
rationality, and even ethical corporations on every street corner, every
billboard, and every TV and computer screen.
I take the radical approach that modern and
postmodern language games continue to promise emancipation, progress, and
sometimes even rationality, while delivering only sweatshops, hierarchy, wage
slaves, wage slavery, Prima Donna CEOs, and retrogression. Nietzsche's 1st
phase is to empower free spirits; 2nd phase to recognize the dialectic of myth
and enlightenment; and 3rd phase to offer "reconciliation between myth and
enlightenment" (Bauer, 1999: 40).
Story control is an instrument of power deployed
to keep people in illusion, unable to see or feel an inverted world. In
Nietzsche's 3rd phase, myth and enlightenment reconcile. Nietzsche thus
critiques the Enlightenment, but remains in its orbit.
Collective Memory is an ideological work of
fiction; a play written by mythmakers and people saying their reason is not
about myth (they protest too much). Collective memory is an administered story
life, an administered memory. Collective memory as administered memory, can be
logocentrism, or more often what Derrida terms phallologocentrism. Logocentrism
is one logic fits all. A logos dominated by masculinity-stereotyped traits.
Enlightenment is trapped in its own fictions and progress and emancipation are
only two of them. Mythmaking is indispensable to science, and it is equally
indispensable to postmodern science.
What is critical postmodern organization science
(see this short essay)? Its most basic
premise is an ethical approach to science, including organization science.
Story noticing is a methodology helping to
discover or create one’s story by withdrawing or detaching from cultural
narratives. In the later stages of story noticing one recognizes the dance of
cultural narratives and living story possibilities. There are three dance steps, the hierarchic, the dialectic,
and the dialogic. Most of us live in a hierarchic dance, where cultural
narrative controls, marginalizes, or completely vanishes our living story.
Story noticing increases our awareness how we
dance in, out, and in-between narrative and story.
Story noticing encompasses many levels of
meditative depth, to find wakefulness, mindfulness – during the performance of
day-to-day play and work. At the
initial levels of story noticing, the inquirer is unaware of just how strong
and prevalent are the internalized narrative consciousnesses, scripts, games,
and identities. IN the middle levels, the person draws back from narrative
experiences, and tries to detach, in order to cultivate living story. However,
at the higher levels of story noticing, one registers the dance of narrative
and story, and experiences their interweaving, changing the steps in the dance.
There are five levels of narrative and story
noticing that interplay in day-to-day activity:[1]
Story noticing is a methodology that we can
carry over into everyday life. There is a sense of getting in touch with one’s
living story, which aids in the integration of our liberation from narrative
control that is all around us.
Story noticing is a doorway that opens to the
experience of trans-narrative realms of existence. The is in the dialectic of
narrative and story, a moment-by-moment merging, a negation of narrative by
story, and a negation of story by narrative. In this present, narrative and
story boundaries become blurred, as each attempts to become the other.
Story noticing is never at an end in itself. In
dialogism, narrative an story interanimate each other, are the bounds of each other,
and produce generativity.
[1] See Yoga-Sutra (I.39; II.l1) 5 levels – in essay by Georg Feuerstein www.santosha.com/moksha/meditation1.html