By David M. Boje, Jan 9 2007
Story control is the promise made to exectuvies by MSC. Story is the be all and end all tool to deliver control into the hands of the exectuvie. The majority of people want their CEO to deliver a two minute story that will amke sense of everyones life, give a linear plot of pgrogress, who the way to emancipaiton, and cloak rationality form its mythmaking addiction.
Story control is against the collective process of deliberationi. With every fiber of their being, MSC is opposed to counterstory, purges them to protect the brand image of dominant story.
MSC puges, degenerates, and annihilates counterstories. BME prefers sinularity, simplicity, simplification that will authenticate official versons of history.
Strategy has become story control! If strategy is about anything it is about telling a story that puts the organizaiton in good stead to exploit its environment. Changes in the environment, emergences into socioeconomic world canot be seen by MSC story strategy. They have not got the methodologies or the rigor to track changes in the enviornment. This is becuase the need for coherence so overwhelms the MSC methods, they are bat blind to anything that does not fit into BME linear narrative archetypes. They are doggedly convinced that story control leads to profitable strategy. Such strategy works fine as long as the environment does not shift, does not become turbulent, does not become ruled by complexity.
I learned from Ian Mitroff and and Hal Mason that in strategy needs to be subjected to evidence. As my colleague Lynda St. Clair was telling me, a warrant is the bridge between a claim and the evidence. MSC is terrified of eividence, because their bridge would collapse.