ONLINE BOOK

STORY CONSULTING

By David M. Boje, Feb 4, 2007

CHAPTER 11: WHAT STORY CONSULTANTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STORYABILITY AND COMPLEXITY

From the Book, STORY CONSULTING

Online at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/690/cpscBOOK/index.html

This chapter combines insights from work with trauma victims who cannot yet story, and the results of the Las Cruces, New Mexico Storytelling and Complexity Workshop (called ‘Socratic Circle’) that took place in October 2006.

Ken Baskin (co-facilitator with myself and Kaylynn TwoTrees) has asked me to provide a brief primer on the relationship of complexity science to storytelling science.  Ken and our colleagues Terrence Gargiulo, Carolyn Gardner,  Grace Ann Rosile, Theodore Taptiklis, and Jo Tyler of STORI (STorytelling ORganization Institute http://storyemergence.org) are also getting ready for our second workshop at end of March 2007 in Las Vegas, and working in the OD track of the sc’MOI (Standing Conference for Management and Organization Inquiry) event (http://scmoi.org). Many of the ideas in this chapter on differences in types of sensemaking (such as reenactment and storyability, system versus complexity thinking, & restorying) are developed in more detail in the Storytelling Organization book that Sage is bringing out later this year (Boje, 2007, London: Sage). It is available on line until publication at http://storytellingorganization.com (click on book and enter password ‘ejob’ don’t tell anyone)

I. STORYABILITY MODELING

Figure 1 gives a summary of a storyability model, which I hypothesize, is compatible with complexity. The basic theory is that not every event in complexity or in life in general is storyable. There are several propositions embedded in the model of how storytelling relates to complexity science.

Storyability First proposition: Before anything has what I shall invent as a word, “storyability” it must be discursable (i.e. have language and symbol to be in discourse).  Once events are discursable, we are able to move out of reenactment of events into storyability. But, if events are undiscursable (either in words, gestures of dramatics, or visual imaging) then they are not storyable!

Reenactment Loop The second proposition: reenactment, particularly of trauma or stress events go through reenactment looping that is different from remaking events into some kind of storytelling (see 1 to 4 in Figure 1). Storyability research into trauma finds that there is at least four reenactment loops: (1) dissociation, the splitting of self by compartmentalizing trauma events, so they repeatable, but not necessarily storyable without distance from the event, and perhaps only with psychotherapy (Bal, 1999; Hirsch, 1999; Van Alphen, 1999). (2) an annihilation of the self occurs, where the person looses all sense of self, such as in concentration camps during the Holocaust, slavery, spousal abuse, child abuse, etc. (3) acting out can occur such as reenactment of Vietnam or Gulf War (I & II) posttraumatic stress disorder, replaying at the slightest provocation until it becomes treated. (4) repression of events that occurred so that only signals one observes are pregnant pauses, Freudian slips, or strange gaffes in the garbling of sentences.

Restorying The third proposition: Once events are discursable (in language & symbol) then it is possible to have restorying (restoryability). Restorying work by White and Epston (1990) allows that a dominant narrative (such as traumatized child told they are nothing, worse than animal, never amount to anything, etc) to be restoried into a new story (see 5 to 7 in Figure 1). This occurs through the restorying processes in organization work by Grace Ann Rosile, for example, through (5) acts of semiotic inventiveness (inventing the terms and images to make sense of events), (6) genealogical reconstruction that recreates pieces missing from a dominant official history of an organization (see Boje, 1995; Boje & Rosile, 2005; Boje, Rosile, Summers, & Dennehy, 2000), and (7) the antenarrative (double meaning of prestory, and bet that some new storyability is possible) [see Boje, 2001]. Key to this third proposition is that story and restory shapes and reshapes collective memory.

Collective Memory The fourth proposition: Multiple types of collective memory interact creating their own emergence of complexity dynamics as well as being contextualized, and restoried in wider patters of emergence and in wider adaptive complexity of patterns of interrelationship of the organization and its environment.  Extending the work of Maurice Halbwachs (1950/1980) that there are multiple interacting collective memories in combination with Deleuze and Guattari (1987) I have developed an initial typology of different kinds collective memories that might be interacting in an organization and its relationships to environments harboring collective memories (see 8 through 12 in Figure 1): (8) Beginning, Middle, End (BME) managerialist cover story oversimplifies dynamics of complexity by presuming linear sequence of highly selective events controlled by a few organization characters or agents. (9) a variation of the first type is punctual collective memory where there are multiple hierarchical silos between say a headquarters and branch operations, or between federal and state in the public sector, resulting in multiple center-point memory controlled from external agency implanted onto branch units. (10) Multilineal collective memory (in families the maternal and paternal side of family genealogy) in organizations what Derrida (1991) calls duophony (two memories superimposed) such a phenomenon can occur in organization or merger or acquisition, as well as in intergenerational memory. (11) Polyphonic collective memory, by extension, is a multiplicity of voiced memories that are different, fully-embodied, such as in loosely coupled network of interacting units or organizations, each hell bent on retaining their own uniqueness. (12) There is a type of collective memory that in work of Hirsch (1999) is called ‘postmemory.’  Postmemory is the internalization of events that did not directly happen to the subject, but in the postmodern sense can become more real than realness of someone with direct experience. This is a common occurrence of sons and daughters or survivors of Holocaust, but by extension can be postmemory of sons and daughters (on down the generation) of former slaves, or of children growing up with mother who experience spousal abuse, rape, or incest. By extension, an indirect experience of trauma or extreme stress can be called collective memory.  Here I will take a leap, and argue that there are milder forms of postmemory occurring in organizations.  For example a cover story or founding story, that is told and indoctrinated to people who had no experience of the larger-than-life legendary founders, other the great heroes or villains that succeeded them in the great official history of exploits and adventures.

II. RELATIONSHIP OF STORYABILITY TO COMPLEXITY SCICENCE

Ken Baskin is developing the complexity science bit of this in our upcoming book. I will therefore tell it from a story science point of view.

There is, dysfunction, dissociation, repression, undiscursability, unstoryability, storyable events, types of collective memory that become restoried, that are in interactive interrelationship to noise, cacophony, disorder, emergence, strange attractors, in other words the patterns known far and wide as complexity.

Ken and I agree, I think, that there is an emergence of improvisational complexity (see work by Stacey, 2006).  There is emergence that is punctuated eruption that disrupts whatever imagined equilibrium may have been. The is gradual emergence of unnoticed change. There is that sort of butterfly effect emergence that sends in the whirlwind.  As I understand complexity, there are patterns recurring in what people perceive to be chaotic event relationships, but this is not the same as noise. In this, how doe complexity and storytelling interplay.

Based on Figure 1 storyability model, I make the following generalizations.

1. There is a difference between what is storyable and what is auto-reenactable. Patterns of complexity are in part arising out of the reenactable looping processes that are pre-storyable. Other patterns of complexity are in part emerging out of storyability processes.  These to me are very different forces and counterforces of complexity.  With auto-reenactment there is no evolution of changes, no disruption to well entrenched processes (other things being equal). With storyability, there is more or less continuous change, punctuated or otherwise.
2. Reenactable that is as yet unstoryable such as the kinds of undiscussable traumas and high stress discussed above requires a kind of story consulting that is not in vogue in the corporate and public administration worlds. An ethic of caring, a more psychoanalytic approach, one that facilitates the creation of language, recreation of missing links in genealogy, and people with similar repression or dissociation working their way out in self-help or facilitated groups, is necessary addition to current story consulting practices.  In relation to complexity, I would hypothesize that there are traumatic kinds of complexity. One would be a kind of performativity that is so exhausting, debilitating stretching of the working day such as in a sweatshop or the life of a workaholic executive, accountant or programmer, that the stress is the kind of milder from of trauma that results in dissociation repression, self-annihilation, and perhaps acting out.  Performativity is defined as input to output ratio that is kind of work till you drop dead of exhaustion or just plain dead. Another type would be any kinds of complexity that break into realization with such impact that the organization participants are traumatized. This could be a sudden downsizing, a merger where one or more of the participating organization’s histories is purged or radically marginalized. A third case would be a complexity pattern that emerges where an ethic of care culture becomes overcome by a more bottom-line reengineered culture of performativity.
3. For trauma to be discussable requires recognizable patterns of complexity, which means there must be discursability, the invention of language, symbols, shared semiotics, and even some archetypes to do representation. Otherwise the complexity emergence is just senselessness. Without language (word, sign, symbol) events shaped into complexity are unstoryable.
4. In reenactment looping there is dissociation, repression, and an annihilation of self that could be found in relationship to various types of complexity patterns of organization and their environments. A managerialist collective memory dominated organization well be all about maintaining story control. Story control that is centered in managerialism, or multi-centered in punctual (silos) will not allow a more nuanced reading of the changes in complexity. I would hypothesize that story consulting that can facilitate more multilineal or polyphonic collective memory will be helpful in reading certain kinds of complexity patterns. This might be ones whose patterns are not simple to read ones where the recurrence of pattern is not repeating in easily read cycles.
5. With restorying consultation some trauma from complexity become antenarratable. That is, a prestory and bet of what will happen next in the emergence of complexity becomes possible.  The use of genealogy reconstruction of missing pieces that history has written out can help. Semiotic inventions of language to make sense of the complexity pastern can help participants switch out of a reading of complexity that is no longer accurate.  Antenarrative, genealogy, and semantic inventiveness can be helpful in making complexity patterns storyable in ways that facilitate more effective coping.  The model assumes that to be storyable requires requisite semiotic, antenarrative exploration, and a genealogical, not an official history reading of complexity pastness, and presentness, as well as antenarrative of futureness.
6.  Story consulting it its contemporary practice assumes wrongly, according to the storyability model, that reenactment loops are storyable. The errant story consulting assumes that events are already experience. However, the trauma research shows in study after study that experience needs discursability to be storyable, and both are needed to shape collective memory. Otherwise its just endless reenactment looping, without getting out of it. Perhaps organization life that is turbulence, traumatic, is as yet unstoryable patterns of complexity, where only reenactment, especially enactment is occurring. Complexity can only be related to a model of storytelling that differentiates what is storyable and what is reenactment looping.
7. There are multiple types of collective memory. These can be direct experience of storyable eventness. Or people without direct experience can have postmemory.  It seems to me most of what is founding story, organization saga, and tales of past adventures is received by new people as a kind of postmemory.
8. The interactivity of direct collective memory types with postmemory has yet to be studied. Postmemory is unexperienced complexity events, yet the impact can be more real than real of so-called experience.  Hearing and seeing, touching, feeling, and smelling events is different than reading about them, or hearing them told by an eye witness. Still the postmemory can be traumatizing, which is what all that research on effect of watching violence of film and TV is all about. Even Plato feared that going to the theatre would prompt spectators to act out what they saw, and why Aristotle (350 BCE) wrote the Poetics.
9. In Tamara, there is a difference of the collective memories of the various groups and levels, as well as environments of organization (Boje, 1995).
10.  Complexity theory is not the same as system theory. The assumptions about storyability are quite different. In system thinking, story is whole with beginning, middle, and end (BME), an invention of Aristotle in answer to Plato.  BME narratives are thought to be transferable across time and space, such that it’s the same story that is sent and received, told and collected, tabulated and redistributed throughout an organization. Context and intertextuality story research proves such system thinking about story to be a gross exaggeration. As antenarrative moves between contexts, it picks up and shed elements, so that the story is not at all the same as it antenarrates fro location to location, or from time to time. Collective memory is also being picked up transplanted in each successive context. In complexity science, the assumptions about storyability are different. Story and storyability is not the same as trajectory occurs. Transplanted stories are quite popular in story consulting. An example is reading a group of executives a fairy tale. But such story transplanting does not look carefully enough at context in which the slants of meaning emerged, so very long ago, and how they are refracted today.
11. While I am on the subject of old school story consulting, cute experiential exercises, or day-long workshops in sense emergence, or story springing, are unlikely to produce any meaningful readings about complexity patterns, and insights in how to antenarrate their next iteration. Some of the story circle adaptations of ancient ways of storyability from native cultures around the world may be helpful processes. But as Walter Benjamin (1936) would argue, there are competencies way beyond instilling active listening processes, that are now dead to the world of organizations. 
12. Complexity thinking, more than system thinking, assumes a more hermeneutic spiral to be happing in the relation of storyability to complexity patterns. Storyability requires, as I have said repeatedly, symbol and language (discursability) that is shared. Storyability is also plotability which means that there must be some invented or adaptable plots (which would be justification for reading executives fairy tales, but only if the context is read then and now). The three mimetic moments (See Boje, 2001) are pre-story (language & discourse), plotability emplotment), and (post-plot) interpretability of the first two moments.  Interpretation of what becomes storyable becomes socially collective memories. These collective memories of experiencable events come in the several types already discussed (managerial, punctual, multilineal, polyphonic) and may or many not be postmemory to those without direct experience.  In shot the hermeneutics of storyability looks at the discursability of complexity, the plotability of complexity patterns, and the collective memory restorying of those patterns across time and space.
13. In system thinking the assumption is made that story moves without transformation from entity to entity (be they individuals, units, organizations, or environments). There is little appreciation of context interplay, and exchange during the antenarrative emergence process. There is not sensemaking of the fragment repatterning during trajectories.

That pretty much sums up what my take is on a model of storyability that has testable propositions about the relationship between storytelling and complexity sciences.  I use the word story science because I think some of these effects ad patterns could be testable in a Story Lab. If anyone would like to fund one, I am looking for that.

References

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