What’s in a story

I am struggling and at the same time I am reading “More time to think“, a book written by Nancy Kline and published last year. What am I struggling with? Well, I am struggling with the idea that I would like to write a story about the service I am trying to develop and to offer to the business world ‘out there’. Nancy Kline suggests that I need a thinking partner but the cat is asleep so I will have to play both parts in this dialogue, thinker and partner alternately. This dialogue takes the form of question and answer and I think that I have answered the first question; what I want to think about is writing a story about the service that I am offering  to the business world.

The next question is, “What am I assuming that is stopping me from writing that story?” That is a good question. Perhaps the answer is that I am assuming that I do not really have a story to tell. I am assuming that I cannot pull together a coherent and valuable analysis of the experience that I have accumulated over many years working in a number of industrial and academic environments. I am assuming that as an engineer I am not qualified to advise on ideas or working practices that are more in the strategic domain. I am assuming that what I have to say has been said before. Oops, hold on there one minute.  There are several assumptions here; which is the critical one? I think it is that my lack of qualifications will result in my producing a half baked story which will be neither interesting nor convincing to its readers. Even that assumption has another assumption underlying it: that economics and behaviour  are key disciplines in understanding the business environment, in neither of which I have any formal education.

What is the validity of these assumptions? What happens if I assume something different? Is it true that I have no formal education in economics and behaviour? Yes. Is it true that these disciplines are central to understanding the business environment? I think so and there is certainly a case for arguing so. Do my lack of formal qualifications bar me from making a useful contribution to the discussion on strategy and working practice? No, of course not. Whether anyone will listen will depend on how I write and what I write. Let me assume that if I approach the task with a clear focus on delivering value to the reader there is a fair chance I will deliver it.

So how do I free myself to contribute? By recognising, acknowledging and celebrating my background; by engaging with individuals who are debating these issues, becoming a conduit to creative thinking, critical analysis and innovation. And by revelling in the process.

I hope that I have not short changed Nancy Kline in this short exercise. I know it would have worked so much better with a genuine thinking partner but, honestly folks, the germ of a new idea has come to me during the past hour or so. To find out more about thinking environments, go to ‘Time to Think‘.