Cautionary Tales and War Stories - How stories impact organizational life

One of the most common tools used (and misused) by organizations is staff surveys, sometimes known as climate surveys.

The management sends out a survey for staff to complete, generally anonymously, with questions carefully tailored to ensure that no nasty surprises emerge. And the results of such surveys are almost always the same: hardly anyone has much confidence in management and the biggest problem is almost always 'communication' (which is almost always defined differently by management and staff).

( A friend of mine told me about a manager who carried out a non-anonymous survey and were then unhappy about the answers from one of their team leaders. When they aired their concerns, another manager said to them "If you didn't want to know the response, why did you ask the question?")

The problem with such surveys is that by narrowly constricting the range of questions and responses, they pretty much guarantee that no new learning will emerge from the data gathered. ( And if staff even remotely suspect that their answers aren't ruly anonymous then their responses are unlikely to be candid either.) I have never yet seen a survey where staff were asked to rate their managers competence, people skills, integrity or the extent to which the managers presence does more harm that good.

So maybe one alternative to such surveys might be to survey staff to find out what questions they would like to see asked in  a staff survey. I don't see that this is ever likely to happen since management would lose control of the outcomes and whatever survey they came up with, certain questions would be conspicuous by their absence. And it is THESE questions that staff would know the management was afraid of hearing the answers to. (See my previous post on the subversive power of questions.)

There is another approach however that could also be taken involving collecting stories. But before I discuss this I first want to talk about what impact stories have.

Firstly, stories are part and parcel of organisational culture. Part of becoming integrated into any organisation is hearing the stories of what different people in the organisation have done in the past and the consequences:

• Remember the last time we had to implement a change and how manager X bungled it?
• Remember when Y made a suggestion to improve process Z and what happened to her?
• Remember how the last time someone suggested that they were shot down in flames?
• Remember when W happened and management covered it up?
• < Add your own >

These stories constrain what people are prepared to try in the future. If other people have been burned then by avoiding similar behavior, new staff and exisitng staff hope to avoid a similar fate. If someone made a good suggestion and it was either ignored or a manager took the credit for it, then everyone else learns that there is no point in making suggestions. If a manager always complicates things whenever they get involved then staff learn to keep any initiatives they implement secret from the manager. One of the biggest determinants of staff behavior are the cautionary tales they hear from other staff. And often these stories have the effect of engendering learned helplessness. No-one bothers to try anymore.

Secondly, these stories continue to be passed on for years as a kind of oral tradition, long after the managers concerned have completely forgotten the triggeering events. In many cases, the managers involved may not be aware of the stories even circulating. All they may be aware of is a drop in productivity, or commitment or engagement of their staff without really knowing why it is happening. So they may implement solutions to this morale problem without ever knowing what their role was in causing it.

Thridly, they are stories and such stories are a form of gossip, they tend to be more vivid and believable than any amount of facts or figures or reassurances from senior managers. When we know the people involved, it is easier for us to put ourselves and, since they are just like us, to see ourselves suffering the same fate.

So surveys are useless while the stories circulating in the business may do a lot of harm to it.

So what can be done?

Simple. Surface the stories! Rather than carrying out a survey, ask staff to tell a story of something that has happened in the last year and what lesson they learned from it. Collecting scores of such stories would say a lot more about what is right and what is wrong with the organisation and quite possibly point to areas that seriously need to be improved. And management can plan how to counteract the perceptions and behavior that result from the story by dealing with the kinds of events which triggered such perceptions and behavior.

Would they do it? Somehow I doubt it!

Like questions, stories are powerful challenges to the status quo. While they will circulate regardless of what management may say, if they are surfaced then they might require action since they may well indicate areas of managerial incompetence, dishonesty, ignorance or stupidity. And since they wouldn't know what stories would emerge until they asked, they would lose control of the outcomes.

By not asking, they remain ignorant, and ignorance is a splendid excuse for inaction.