By David M. Boje, Feb 6 2007
It is often said in story consulting that 'story is a powerful tool."
If I put this into the terms of the Chap 11, people in organizations cannot experience complexity, because they do not have the language to make it discussable. And since they lack the language (symbols, images), they are not having experience, they are just able to retrospect (repeat the emotion memory, or as Grace Ann calls it the bodily horsesense). So the problem with saying 'story is a powerful tool' is the language defeats us when we try to understand complexity.
In the new way of thinking about the relation of event to experience, one needs language to make event discursable. Saying story is tool does not help us unless we get more precise in developing our language of tools. And to go the next level to interpret event into storyable experience, one also needs language about complexity in relation to story which everyone calls 'tool.'
The problem we face with our audience of story clients is they lack language of tool discernability, and they lack the kinds of storyablity understanding that will all them to have an experience of complexity.
This begs the question, if people coming to story workshops do not have the language, and are just repeating the body horsesense of complexity as sensory perception, first is this experience, and second, what are they perceiving? I would say they cannot experience complexity without the language. They cannot have experience of complexity except some sort of oversimplification, bewilderment, or misconstruction --- unless they have that language.
Event is not the same as experience. Experience puts event under some kind of will. It takes language to exercise the will, unless you intend to use brute force.
What I am learning about story is that in order for it to be different that retrospective repetition (say of a trauma), storyability must move to a new level of understanding, and a new level of social storyability.
Perhaps there is a way to explain that the power of story as tool is unleashed when there is language, and when the process of storyability is understood.
Story is used in narrative therapy to facilitate re-storyability (restorying). Story is not a tool, in the sense that a retrospective glance at complexity event stream is not the same as a storyability of complexity events into experience, which is an act of memory (retrospective reenactment is not memory or experience, it is not learning, its more trigger-response psychosis).
The current story consulting market uses story as a tool. That is for sure. Pick up this Deming 'Springboard tool,' apply it in the Tom Peters' 'Stump speech' and the tool magically transforms the complexity of your company into controllability. We know that this tool is not going to change the pattern of complexity. Surely the audience knows this, readers know this. I hope you know this.
Storyability assumes that it takes language to turn event-reflection into something storyable, that becomes experience (which changes event) and shapes collective memory. Storyability as a tool is something that can shape both experience and collective memory of what is experiencable.
Springy story is a tool that doesn't work. Focus group so-called sense-emergence is another story tool that doesn't work. Story control is a tool that works, but has consequences that are disastrous for complexity.
The question is will storyability be a better more powerful tool for people to have the experience of complexity they would not otherwise have? Would this experience of complexity made possible by collective storyability that we consultants facilitate lead to shaping collective memory that will put the organization into more adaptive position vis a vis its environments? I think the answer is yes.
Still does it make sense to call storyability of events into a newfound experience and memory of complexity a tool?
Let's explore a more variegated set of meanings of what is a tool and perhaps we can pick out ones we don't want and one we do.
A tool is an 'implement' used in the practice of a vocation. Our vocation is story consulting. A tool facilitates mechanical work, like a wrench or a saw. Does not seem to fit the story occupation. Tools of the trade, carry out the purposes of an occupation. A tool for a musician is a musical instrument. In phallologocentric speech, males consider their instrument of pleasure a tool (vulgar but true).
From here what is a tool morphs away from physical instrument. In economics they speak of tools that adjust monetary flow. Fiscal and monetary tools are used by occupations in government to control economies. That seems closer.
But here is a meaning that is in vogue that raises many problems for story consulting. A person who carries out the design of another is called a 'tool' (or a dupe, stooge, pawn, or puppet). A 'tool' in this meaning is a person who performs something for someone else that is a task that is unpleasant or even dishonest. People who wear huge corporate logos on their shirts or tattoo them onto their bodies are 'tools.' In war, dynamite, knives, and guns are tools. In computer science, an application program that creates, manipulates, or analyzes other programs is a tool-program. In computer parlance, a student who hacks too little, and studies too much is just a' tool.'
None of these definitions of tool seem to work for what my colleagues, the Magnificent 7 mean by the phrase 'story is a powerful tool' (see http://storyemergence.org)
How about these definitions? Storyability is a powerful tool is to form, work, or shape events of complexity into storyable experience that makes sense of patterns of complexity. Here we use story as a tool, but not a physical tool like a hammer or saw, but more as in the kind of tool that is an economic tool, a social tool of learning and collective engagement or learning that is social and strategic.
So perhaps it is not the 'word' tool that is giving us difficulty, but what we 'mean' when we say 'tool' and what our audience will 'understand' and 'think' we mean. It seems to me, the audience will think we mean the common definition of tool as a physical instrument, when we mean tool to mean something non-physical. The kind of tool we have in mind is suitable for teaching and learning a new way to have the experience of complexity and not subvert it into one more retrospective non-appreciation.
Perhaps we can specify that by 'tool' we do not mean 'physical instrument, implement, utensil, phallic device, or manually operated appliance.' When we say story has power to make complexity storyable into experience they would not otherwise have, we do not mean 'tool' to denote 'story' as a power-driven device that performs the function of being a power-tool like a drill, vibrator, or toaster.
I think we get into trouble using the word 'tool' if people think of if like the reengineering tool, information architecture tool, or decision making tool. Here tool is obviously some kind of process. And its a bit closer to our goal to think of tool as process than to think of tool as physical instrument. We need not limit the word 'tool' to physical objects. And when we say story-tool is a 'process' an 'act' or a cognitive-emotion-aesthetic methodology, then we get closer to what we mean to denote.
Storyability is a powerful tool in the sense that storytelling is the practices of a vocation. Storytelling means some 'act' is being accomplished. It is not story as kitchen utensil, or device in the mechanic's toolbox.
Story is a powerful tool still denotes some meaning I do not appreciate. Tool as man's power seems to denote something sexual. Story as powerful force get us back to tools like a hammer, fulcrum, whip, or screwdriver.
Story is a tool of the trade known as story consulting. Several meaning follow from this. A story consultant can use story as a tool in ways that we find unwelcome, but we do not have the guts to tell them they are errant. Story consultants who sell springy tools are themselves tools, always using story in ways out-of-place with storyability, out-of-line with understanding complexity, or just plain stupid ways of treating story as a tool-object. The story consultant is a tool who is always trying had to fit in a story, trying to make a springy story powerful, and never will succeed. However, the tool story consultant is useful because they one can use them for building a story market, even if people in that market are being used like tools.
Too many story consultants are tools. They are being used by others to utilize story, instrumentalize story. The problem with the story consultants who are tools, is (a) they don't see how they are being used, (b) they don't understand process tools, and (c) they are tool of fashion industry, taking story as fad-tool and thinking they have something powerful when they are just being used.
We do not want to become tools. We want to help people understand when they have become a story tool.
My colleagues at STORI (STorytelling ORganization Institute) are trying to take story power tooling in a different direction than the status quo of the our discipline. STORI develops story as a process to help story entrepreneurs create an experience of complexity they never had before. Story is a powerful tool that can be abused when turned into a techno-device, or the manipulation of desire, or to turn people into tools. STORI treats story as too powerful a tool, not to be cognizant of how to protect the story rights of self and others. STORI has respect for the power of story, how it is a community process, one that maintains the integrity of your enterprise.
You come into our workshop as a tool and you leave with a greater understanding of story control, how story may be running your life. You come into our workshop with one understanding of story as power-object or device. You leave with an understanding of story as powerful because its a process, one that is powerful because it lets you make sense of complexity, which is also a process.
Both storytelling and complexity are processes. To approach process tool as a mechanical device would make one a dupe, a tool, something used for other's games. To understand story as a process tool will mean giving up some tired worn out ways of understanding story. To understand story as a process will mean discovering the hidden secret power of story. They are hidden powers because, what is essential about story process has been forgotten, and is now widely misunderstood. The problem for you is to give up the idea story is a phallic tool, and develop a more feminine understanding of tool as process.
System theory has a long history of being a male way of thinking, looking for blunt or pointed instruments to be powerful, war-like, etc. Complexity thinking is not the old in and out, input-output, speed through the throughput process. We are talking here about a very different kind of process. The process of story being powerful, in complexity thinking, is more feminine. Its more about participation, rights of participants to be storied, to story others.
I am not sure what sentences or concepts of the above will sell a workshop. In a sense, as the story consulting industry has turned story into a tool, it has turned the story consultants into tools, who work to turn story clients into tools. I think this is because of phallologocentric discourse that is so prevalent. A more process understanding of story as power tool has to take the discourse in a new direction. I took it in the direction of feminism, ethics, and story rights.
Story Rights is defined differently in oral tradition than property rights, since each story is assumed to be owned by a memory of a community, and can only be retold by another with explicit permission. Once in written form, and published on paper or on line, it can be cited [See chapter 3 of Storytelling Organization book].
Story is powerful. That is why we treat them with respect. We are talking here about founding a new discipline. Perhaps we are rediscovering a discipline that has been lost to human understanding with the rise of the mechanical, instrumental reasoning of modernity and the industrial revolution. As we become process oriented to understand both complexity and story, it requires a way of thinking that does not makes is tools, does not make others into tools, does not make story process into tool. There is the very narrow, specific sense that story is a tool for complexity appreciation, and for shaping complexity, but only when story is a process, not an object. And ethically, not just any process but one with story rights and story answerability. Because story is such a powerful tool.