I recently subscribed to Shawn’s Worldwide Story Work group on Ning, and joined Steve Denning’s discussion on ‘Are we guilty of manipulation simply by using stories?’.

For me, the answer is ‘it depends…’. It depends on my intentions for telling the story - I may be telling the story because I hope to inspire others to share in my unique but currently unrealised vision, it may be that I tell a story so I can help others make sense of a complex and ambiguous issue, or I might be telling a story in order to seduce someone that I hope to become more intimate with.

Also for me, story telling is not inherently about guilt or manipulation, it is merely a vehicle for intention. I feel that if my intention is to manipulate a situation, then I will use whatever tools might be available to me, and story telling might be one of them. My manipulation of the situation may be driven by egocentric greed, or it may be inspired by selfless sacrifice, but the story telling is merely an expression of my specific intention, rather than something to be judged separately as good or bad.

The Steve Denning style of story telling process often becomes a one to many broadcast which is more about the story teller than the story listeners.  However, in Dreamwork we don’t really use story telling as a tool to attempt to effect some organisational change.  Instead we create a group space in which self authored stories can emerge from the seeds of group intention and individual experience.

When a pilots fly into cloud, they lose all external references and rely on their flight instruments to interpret the behaviour of the aircraft. There is no one instrument that gives pilots the whole picture of what the aircraft is doing. Instead they have to collect fragments of information provided by a variety of instruments and assemble them into a meaningful picture.

If a pilot cannot create a meaningful awareness, or perhaps becomes fixated on one instrument, then there can only be one outcome. Without sight of any external references such as the horizon, the aircraft’s wings will begin to tilt to one side or another, and that bias will continue to increase. Soon it will enter what pilots term a graveyard spiral from which there is no recovery, and it will plummet into the ground.

Graveyard spirals also occur when we try and interpret human behaviour by trying to impose a theory without external reference to real and observed behaviour. Clare Graves’ system of Spiral Dynamics categorises all of human behaviour into eight mutually exclusive categories, which results in large groups of humanity being judged to have the same behavioural patterns.

This ia classic example of trying to impose a theory on to a behaviour and then wondering why it crashes and burns. Instead we should observe and experience meaningful patterns of behaviour and dynamically assemble them into the real big picture. Human behaviour is not a black box recorder.

Recently a client who is about a year into a complex merger and acquistion asked how he could inject the corporate DNA of his culture into that of the acquired company. Cultural DNA is a fashionable concept at the moment, although no-one seems to be entirely sure exactly what it means.

I asked my client if he had a sample of the DNA that could be injected, and he confessed that he didn’t.  We then had an extended conversation about how he might isolate and extract his culture’s DNA, and what he described was his culture’s unique identity, particularly the more unconscious aspects of it.

The idea of being able simply inject DNA into an organism suggests a variety of processes like genetic engineering, genetic modification and virus replication. However, these are dubious practices that are often detrimental to both the injector and the host.

In the natural world, evolution does not take place by gene injection. DNA usually adapts and evolves in response to environmental stimuli, so to change the DNA of an organisation, you need to change the space that it operates in, rather than trying to invasively assert some vague corporate identity.

During Dreamwork events, we often explore Possibility Space where glimpses and fragments can emerge into reality.  As part of last week’s event we took our dreamers to Rosslyn Chapel, possibly one of the ultimate realisations of possibility space.

After reading about contemporary quantum physicists travelling to meet the MicMac Indians, I was keen to explore the similar journey undertaken by Prince Henry Sinclair over 600 years before in 1398.  Around one of the windows that illuminates the South Aisle are carvings of maize.  Maize is a native American plant and these Indian corn motifs support the story that Henry, first Prince of Orkney, sailed to Nova Scotia in 1398 with Antonio Zeno, the Venetian navigator.   According to historical record Prince Henry and his comrades wintered with the MicMac Indians where they shared their boat building and net fishing skills.

Henry Sinclair’s native language was Gaelic, and the phrase used by Gaels for ‘beloved son‘ is MicMac.  A neighbouring tribe of the MicMac were known as the Penikuk which echoes the Scottish town of Penicuik, close to Rosslyn, and the main town of Henry’s domain in Scotland.

These historical fragments are reflected in the MicMac legend of the white man-god Glooscap, who came from the east on a floating ’stone island with tall trees’ which is a wonderful InterObject description of a sailing ship.  The MicMacs still make pilgrimages to Rosslyn Chapel to pay homage to Glooscap, a supreme exponent of possibilty space.

Often when we recall our dreams, the primary recollection is a visual one, full of imagery and colour.  However, my clients usually report dreams where they recollect experiences from their other senses, perhaps recalling voices they heard or the taste of some food they ate in the dream.

Recently a client shared a series of dreams in which her most vivid sensation was a fresh and powerful scent.  As we explored her dream episodes, it became clear that she was experiencing this olfactory event when she was feeling anxious in the dream.  My client has suffered from anxiety and panic attacks since her early teenage years and we were exploring her dreams to find a way to reduce and eliminate these anxieties.   I asked her if she could find out what the scent was.  She spent some days trying to find it, and then the answer came to her while she was having a shower.  The scent from the dream was a shower gel from Boots by the name of Sea Kelp and Water Mint. 

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