Author: Dr Anna-Rosa le Roux
Stay a while and listen!
I love the experience of musical events in the form of screened concerts at Cinema Nouveau and a recent event triggered my thinking on a trio of themes. I was watching BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, one of the most popular musical celebrations enjoyed by millions of people and billed as the ‘biggest classical music party in the world’. The guest conductor of the BBC symphony orchestra, David Robertson summarised the spirit of the 2009 promenade concert drawing from a musical metaphor. I remember this to be something along the lines of:
“ … each instrument has its unique voice, its unique history, its unique sound, its unique technical design, its unique tone … these are all seemingly unrelated … however in a symphony orchestra all these seemingly unrelated instruments play together to create harmony and a showcase of spectacular sound!”
I realised that each instrument has its own story to tell … creating identity … creating synergy … creating shared identity.
A recent consulting assignment in Africa challenged our insight and understanding of the construct of synergy and identity. We were tasked with the notion of creating an improved strategic collaboration and to build more fruitful, synergistic relationships between our client and their implementation partners at national level. How are we going to give all the implementation partners a voice? How will one leverage individual identities to create an overarching shared identity? How do we create future hopes and dreams that will transform current operational obstacles? How do we create meaning? How do we create a picture of the future that is worthy of their efforts? How do we create alliances? How do we look beyond the practical and discuss value drivers? How do we define the character of our relationships? How do we develop ideas for information sharing, fruitful co-operation between implementation programs?
We found part of our solution in the linking of identity at individual, team, organisation and inter-organisational levels. Stories needs to be told to explore and unpack who we are: our perceptions, values, thinking, goals, aspirations, dreams and future hopes. Story-telling is central to who we are:
“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens: second in necessity after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or a home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives …” Reynold Price
In our modern, disorganised, hierarchically random world of disparity, there is a need to listen to the voice of individuals and create identity and shared identity. John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist of Xerox and co-author of The Social Life of Information define, from a scientist perspective how the world has changed from Descartes’
proposition, “I think, therefore I am,” to the current “We participate, therefore we are.”
Stories are also an important vehicle for facilitating change and transformation. Steve Denning, former program director, Knowledge Management, at the World Bank beliefs that springboard stories enable individuals to make a leap in understanding how an organisation, a community, or a complex system can change.
Our methodologies ranged from the introduction of participants as cartoon characters, thematic dialogues creating new futures and themes, working on collages to express the future positioning of the partnerships and facilitating conversation on guiding principles and practices going forward.
Story-telling transcended the differences in individual identity, paved the way for creating a shared group identity, contextually positioned and defined for the mammoth task of transformation at hand.
