Archives for 2011

Narratives are getting to be a hot topic, so you’d think I’d be pleased that I’ve just published a book where they play a central role. A few people have even congratulated me on my timing. They think it is deliberate. Sadly, I am not so smart. In fact, if I’d seen this coming, I’d probably have picked something else to work on.

You see, I don’t like working on popular, trendy things. I get anxious and irritable when I discover that others are working on the same ideas that I am. Call it intellectual agoraphobia, being an unsociable jerk, or just plain lack of competitive drive. So I haven’t exactly been happy about narratives suddenly becoming a hot topic. It feels like I just went on a lovely solitary hike through some beautiful wilderness, and arrived at a great camping spot, only to discover that a whole noisy, partying crowd had also gotten there by a different route.

Yeah, these are mean, turf-grubbing, selfish, uncharitable thoughts. It’s not like I own Narrative National Park.

Fortunately for my sanity, the big crowds seem to be headed along trails that don’t interest me. In business and politics, much of the attention is on marketing and motivational narratives. In the broader cultural sphere, there’s a lot of interest in identity narratives. There is also an anti-narrative movement focused on the problems of narrative approaches. If any of these topics interests you, here are some good starting points:

1. Marketing narratives: Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
   
2. Motivational narratives: Squirrel Inc. by Stephen Denning
   
3. Identity narratives: The Redemptive Self by Dan McAdams
4. Anti-narrative movement: The Black Swan by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Tyler Cowen’s blog

My own interest is pretty narrowly focused on decision-narratives. The raw stream-of-consciousness story you tell yourself as you actually live through an experience and make your live, real-time decisions.

The book is primarily about the fundamentals of the idea, but in this post, I want to explore an application of those fundamentals to the problem of crafting strategy narratives (the post is stand-alone; you don’t need to have read the book). In particular, I am going to examine the limitations of existing varieties of strategy narratives, and argue that we need a new variety, thick strategy narratives.

[Read more…]

Post comments on the original post on the Tempo blog.

I haven’t liveblogged much of the last week of the road trip, primarily because I was doing broader ribbonfarmesque things, rather than meeting readers. Expect to see some blog posts out of my travels between Omaha, NE and Jackson, WY soon, both here and over at Tempo blog.

I am now in Vegas, and I’ll be here for a few weeks before hitting the west coast. All our stuff is currently in storage, and we are subletting a part of our in-laws’ house for a few months while we figure things out.  Arriving in Vegas felt strange. It wasn’t like coming home because it isn’t my home. Over the years, I’ve moved so many times (14 times in the last 14 years, across 5 cities, so an average of once a year) that my sense of place and home has mostly been about a few possessions that have traveled with me through all of them.  Getting used to true nomadism and living out of others’ homes for the last 3 weeks has deepened that sense of comfortable rootlessness. Now I am going to be living in limbo for about 6 months.

These thoughts reminded me of one of my favorite chapters in The Wind in the Willows, “Dulce Domum” (Sweet Home), which is about the sudden attack of homesickness that descends on one of the characters, the Mole, after he’s been on the road having adventures for way too long. Sample this chapter.  You don’t need to understand the plot or characters to appreciate this chapter. Here’s a particularly eloquent chapter.

Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day when he first found the River! And now it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on that bright morn ing he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.

The call was clear, the summons was plain. He must obey it instantly, and go. “Ratty!” he called, full of joyful excitement, “hold on! Come back! I want you, quick!”

“Oh, come along, Mole, do!” replied the Rat cheerfully, still plodding along.

“Please stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart. “You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please come back!”

The Rat was by this time very far ahead, too far to hear clearly what the Mole was calling, too far to catch the sharp note of painful appeal in his voice. And he was much taken up with the weather, for he too, could smell something—something suspiciously like approaching snow.

“Mole, we mustn’t stop now, really!” he called back. “We’ll come for it to-morrow, whatever it is you’ve found. But I daren’t stop now—it’s late, and the snow’s coming on again, and I’m not sure of the way! And I want your nose, Mole, so come on quick, there’s a good fellow!” And the Rat pressed forward on his way without waiting for an answer.

HT: Hosh Hsiao, Apple of my eye? US fancies a huge metaphor repository.

In the end the program should produce a methodology, tools and techniques together with a prototype system that will identify metaphors that provide insight into cultural beliefs. It should also help build structured framework that organizes the metaphors associated with the various dimensions of an analytic problem and build a metaphor repository where all metaphors and related information are captured for future reference and access, IARPA stated.

“For decision makers to be effective in a world of mass communication and global interaction, they must understand the shared concepts and worldviews of members of other cultures of interest. Recognizing cultural norms is a significant challenge, however, because they tend to be hidden.  We tend to notice them only when they are in conflict with the norms of other cultures. Such differences may cause discomfort or frustration and may lead to flawed interpretations about the intent or motivation of others. The Metaphor Program will exploit the use of metaphors by different cultures to gain insight into their cultural norms,” IARPA says.

The Metaphor Program is divided into two phases, totaling 60 months, and is intended to begin in November 2011.

HT Justin Pickard, Timepass and Boredom in Modern India.

This seems very similar to Robert Levine’s The Geography of Time in spirit, but more of a drill-down into a particular regional kind of time.

Boredom is experienced in relation to modern clock time.  Time drags because it seems to pass much more slowly than the clock or calendar says it should.  The ‘traditional’ time of pre-modern India is different, however, and Nita Kumar, who worked among artisans in Banaras in the 1980s, has captured it as well as anyone.  Banaras people, she says, are notorious for their unpunctuality and never care about waiting.  But that is not because ‘time has no importance for these people.  It is rather that time is too important; it cannot be sacrificed for this or that purpose arbitrarily; it has to be lived to the full, every bit of it …  There is no hurry, no sense of time slipping or flying by, or rushing by like a stream: there is no such thing as “time”.  It is not an external that controls you.  It is inside you in that it is a way of feeling.  The way you feel, what you are moved to do, is what time it is.’^[11] At first glance, the Banaras artisans’ outings and recreations look like old-fashioned forms of timepass.  But they are not; not only is timepass about time dragging, rather than flying by, but more crucially it is about time as pointless, external and controlling – which is exactly the opposite of the traditional sense described by Kumar.

The article is about the idea of “timepass” in India, what Americans might call “killing time.” The author traces the term to around 1990, but I vaguely recall hearing it well before that. In Bombay at least, in the specific context of peanuts sold as an idle-munching snack (the street vendors call out, “timepass” so it is a synonym for roasted peanuts), I think it goes much further back.