We have worked with many organisations in the last decade, including:
Horizon Scanning and Futures governance for policy-makers. We’re in the middle of the final phase of a piece of work in three parts for Defra to develop a project book for policy-makers. Made from the first hand experience of policy-makers and futurists, fused with organisational standards and the best external references, it provides practical guidance, and some provocative prompting, on how to make the most of the conflicts and challenges presented by Horizon Scanning and Futures research in the policy-making process. You can find the interim reporting from the second phase at http://horizonscanning.defra.gov.uk/. We’ve run this work throughout as a narrative enquiry at the express request of our client and we’re also seeing it as a forward evaluation – a way to take lessons learned and invest them into new frameworks, guidance and protocols which blend authoritative standards with personal perspective. Victoria is leading this work.
Tools for involvement. We’re doing some work with Royal Mail around the development of their internal communications plan for the transformation programme. We’re working, with internal communications, towards what we’re calling for now a narrative system of work that tests useful narrative twists to the normal ways of leading and managing change, without making a big deal about it – useful small daily story-things, not wildly dramatic attention-seeking story-things. The challenge here is to to accumulate the work into a collection of resources that contribute to long term shifts in approach. In particular we hope to end up with the research team examining the consequences of this work under a very bright light. It would be disappointing simply to fluff around in narrative as ‘soft skills’ (or worse, end-of-the-pier entertainment) when there’s an opportunity to contribute something substantial like this.
Knowledge transfer programme. We’ve just completed an enquiry for MLA London into the value of London’s cultural assets to business innovation. The report and recommendations, and a detailed method paper on how we went about it, will be available here later this year, once approved by the client. A more interesting aspect of this particular narrative enquiry is that it’s the first time a client researcher has worked with us in the narrative database, developed by Will, working alongside us over the past 10 or 11 years. We’re building on the work to develop some new approaches to what we’re calling cultural substance or resilience in organisations. This practice is being led by Sabine. (We’ll certainly change the name.) Borrowing the words of the CEO of Montblanc pens in a recent article we’re looking to work with organisations to help them keep questioning themselves and
‘always be prepared to explore new options, to value age-old tradition yet remainining open to new forms of audacity and creativity….That is why we see our collection as [being] not decorative but rather provocative.’
Knowledge Expeditions. We’re working with km4dev on the development of a virtual community enquiry concept called Knowledge Expeditions What is the context/group knowledge in which the user can make decisions about using the right tool to get something done? And how can you build and sustain that context and repertoire through social networks and technologies? The current work on Knowledge Expeditions centres around the next face to face meeting of km4dev in South Africa next spring. This is, in itself, being conceived of as a kind of travelling conference. We were hoping, beforehand, to use a call for practices to build practical ideas and personal relationships which make the actual face to face meeting feel like part of an ongoing exploration with different kinds of meetings and exchange leading up to it. We’ve come to think this might be quite a stretch so perhaps it will be parked to ‘season’ (in the Quaker way of things) for another time and opportunity. Meanwhile, Paul is attending the km4dev meeting in Portugal in June.
Records Management Practices We’ve recently completed a project for Transport for London’s Group Archives and Records Management area led by Paul. We have acted as coach, mentor, critical friend and facilitator: creating a set of activities as part of a programme to help TfL and its extended family become an exemplar group in records management practices. Following this work we evolved a small and neat structure to help with future collecting strategies and practices. This allows the organisation (and the people in it) to take a sideways look at individual and collective collecting habits and develop new ones that contribute to a much better understanding and way of going on together (as Gergen would describe it) over time.
Story Competitions We have growing interest in our work on story competitions (so far with SDC, BT Corporate Social Responsibility and the Islamic Development Bank). So we’re working to develop a handy kit’n’coaching thing which we can use to support people who’d like to develop this way of generating new channels for the flow of experience and observation.
Writings and musings Victoria has written a brief piece on story Breathing Spaces in organisations – for the Appreciative Inquiry monthly magazine February 2008 edition. She and Paul have also just completed a 9,000 word essay for the June 2008 of BIR, published by Sage. Victoria has written an essay on knowledge work in the construction industry for an MBA in Estate Management. We’re working through and annotating our back-catalogue of papers, cases and interesting things and will post this to the publications page. We’re also refreshing our glossary of story-at-work methods, and may publish this later this year. Please contact us if you are interested in these, and other, publications.