"Q: How did you get the idea for "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"?

A: When I started to write, the idea was very small, just an image, not an idea actually. A man who is 30, cooking spaghetti in the kitchen, and the telephone rings -- that's it. It's so simple, but I had the feeling that something was happening there.
Haruki Murakami, in an interview with Laura Miller, Salon Magazine (2000)

story

Using narratives and story to transform practice

In a modern business context a compelling story can provide the ideal vehicle for ideas, learning and good practice; simple, familiar and immediately understandable, it can also accommodate many points of view, strong emotion and difficult truths. When shared it becomes part of the collective memory on which the future can be built. It can also act as the glue that holds networks of unlikely business partners together in a common purpose. Using stories in presentations, reports and evaluations processes will illustrate and deepen the quality of your insights.

Sparknow has been developing practical approaches to the use of story and narrative techniques in the workplace for 7 years. We use storytelling to:

identify and exchange learning episodes
explore values and inspire people towards the possibility of change
enrich quantitative information with qualitative evidence, illustrations and real examples
identify connections and create shared purpose, and
improve the effectiveness of strategic decisions by creating a better loop of understanding between strategy and implementation.

We constantly test and refresh our approach, marrying theory to practice, through conversation with other leading thinkers and practitioners, and active participation in conferences, by way of presentation or workshop delivery. For example, as a consequence of our growing international reputation in this area, we have been invited to Washington, D.C., in the United States in April this year to deliver a workshop at the Golden Fleece conference, which specialises in developing techniques in organisational storytelling.

We have also experimented with a wide range of proven techniques to elicit, prioritise, repackage and communicate stories and histories, and engage people with them. Techniques we have explored range from appreciative inquiry, oral histories, episode analysis, ‘future’ and ‘trigger’ stories, journalism, use of postcards, faceting and language analysis, qualitative research techniques, visualisation and mapping tools. These techniques are often already in use in a particular community – for e.g. field work approaches used by aid workers or process analysis in the health sector.

All our experiences and what we learn and research are injected into the design of our story work for the benefit of clients.

Want to know more?

Two key references are: