Storytelling Organizations;
By David M. Boje; Publisher: Sage Publications;
Pages: 282; Price: £24.99
Writers, unfortunately and often, do not pay attention to their narrative, and to making sense. This book by David M. Boje teaches every apprentice of the written word the importance of examining thoughts and theories before putting an idea down on paper.
The book aims to capture narratives of companies’ past business events, and to give an argument some coherence in order to achieve believability. He throws certain theories at the reader with which he (the reader) may introspect before going out to write a story. Boje builds upon the usual journalistic tradition of asking what, where, when, why and who, followed by how, but he also goes beyond connecting the dots.
The author looks at how business organisations can employ story-telling techniques to gather support for the company’s goals from its shareholders and the public. Corporate annual reports, news stories and press releases are routinely mundane, repetitive and, not surprisingly, frequently ignored by writers. The question is: what do we, as writers, do with all this information? Boje’s contention is that information related to a company can be made lively and easy to understand.
The book explains theories such as Michel Foucault’s architectonic narratives, which basically stress on a structure for everything that is to be written. Boje presents eight ways of making sense in a business narrative — the beginning-middle-and-end method is one of them. Although the book does not offer any one solution in order to make sense out of business stories, Boje reminds us of the structure and chaos that exist between the pen and the process of thinking. He points to a direction and turns this book into a tool with which the writer can structure a narrative. In the end, there is no right way of telling a story, as long as readers are captivated with it.
To this end, Boje brings in dialogisms, where one element of the story becomes the storyteller. He illustrates the use of dialogisms with the example of Wal-Mart: for over 30 years, till before his death, Sam Walton based his annual reports on what consumers and employees thought of his company — often featuring their lives in his annual reports and his autobiography. Walton had the reports written carefully so that they would not speak of the company and its greatness. Instead, the focus was always on the target (the stakeholders), and the story would tell them there were no complaints.
The story-telling is a form of propaganda with which a CEO can control his sales force, vendors and customers, writes Boje. But he also says that even though a conglomerate will have some epic stories to tell, the general trend is to favour short reports.
However, approaching a story and shortening it depends on the writer’s ability to capture everything within a small space. To understand and resolve this conflict between a lot of information and little space, Boje throws in a paradox: he says there is no whole story — that a whole story is just a poetic illusion. The story is not about victors with swords, but about a simultaneous narrative with causes and effect, interpreted through characters in the story.
Companies also use writing techniques to prove their legitimacy. Enron was a classic case in point: it kept adding dead assets to its balance sheets, and presented to the world a high stock valuation over business that was non-existent.
Perhaps, the most important part of the book covers strategies related to story-telling. The author explains why elements such as the use of different media, or the hiring of consultants, becomes important for the narrative. He quotes IBM, which says that strategy narrative is important because of “the character of a company — the stamp it puts on its products, services and the market place — is shaped and defined over time. It evolves. It deepens”.
Boje’s work is a theoretical interpretation of how a writer would have to rethink a million times before he organises his script or story by weaving in all the characters. By doing this, the theories showcased in this book become essential reading for professionals in the film, journalism and advertising industry.
The beauty of the book can be captured only when the reader does not confine himself to any one theory. Instead, these theories can be connected to the reader’s real experiences in the corporate field, which can then go towards the writing of a fabulous tale. Sadly, we do live in a repetitive and monotonous era. Boje does well by reminding us of the basics. And it is here that he allows us to find who we really are as writers, and as organisations.
This review was published in the Businessworld issue dated Dated 31 March-06 April 2009
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