By Ian Rodwell, Head of Client Knowledge and Learning at Linklaters LLP

20 April 2022

Storytelling is the life blood of any organisation’s culture which is why it is so important to knowledge managers. Here Ian Rodwell, Head of Client Knowledge and Learning at Linklaters, explains why this makes buildings matter more than we think.

HAVING started my career in the libraries at Imperial College and then as a business information officer at the Institute of Directors, I have spent the last 30 years working in Knowledge and Learning at the global law firm, Linklaters.

One thread that runs through my entire working life is an abiding interest in stories — those informal examples and anecdotes that emerge in everyday organisational conversations — and how we use stories to build relationships, solve problems and share knowledge. Indeed, having completed an MBA in the early 2000s, I decided to translate this interest into part-time doctoral research at the Department of Library and Information Science at City University.

Organisational storytelling is a well-researched field. And this research has recognised storytelling as a valuable activity. It helps people learn (Swap et al., 2001); share what they know (Snowden, 1999); diffuse organisational culture (Wilkins, 1984); affirm or question identities (van Hulst and Ybema, 2020); release emotion (Tangherlini, 2000); instil a sense of leadership (Humphreys, Ucbasaran and Lockett, 2012); build trust (Auvinen, Altio and Blomqvist, 2013); and make sense of the world (Patriotta, 2003).

But my interest was somewhat particular. I was curious about where storytelling takes place in organisations. And strangely, there is little research on the spaces that encourage and support the most effective storytelling and ‘how stories and storytelling vary across different settings’ (van Hulst and Ybema, 2020, p. 366). This omission is one of the ‘main concerns raised on storytelling as we know it today’ (Fotaki, Altman and Koning, 2020, p. 18). There is some evidence, however, that marginal or liminal spaces (cafés, photocopier rooms, corridors, colleagues’ homes, canteens, car parks) are linked to storytelling (Smith, Pedersen and Burnett, 2014) (Fletcher, 1996) (van Hulst, 2017) (Tangherlini, 2011) (Fayard and Weeks, 2007). These are spaces that hide in plain sight. The spaces that rarely feature in proud tours of our buildings to new joiners and important visitors. So, my research was designed to explore and potentially build on that evidence. For, if indeed, storytelling (with all its attendant benefits) was attracted to these seemingly insignificant spaces, perhaps we might see them in a new light. Maybe these are spaces to cherish, to value and to protect? And this might have implications for the ways we work, design and privilege space and encourage knowledge sharing and learning.

Having completed the first stage of my research, the unexpected then intervened. In March 2020, the country — and many of our workplaces — went into lockdown. As I reviewed the transcripts and photographs, a curious parallel emerged between the things that my participants valued from those storytelling interactions and what people said they were now missing in a world of remote Zoom and Teams exchanges.

Suddenly, my research gained a contemporary resonance I had not anticipated. The question of where we worked — and what this enabled us to do or not do, to feel and to experience — became a constant topic of discussion in both the workshops I was running at Linklaters with colleagues and clients, and in the wider media.

The story begins

But, let’s start, as all good stories should, at the beginning. Why my interest in workplace stories? I suspect it began with my father. He started work on his grandfather’s farm in Suffolk when he was 12. And I loved to hear his accounts of the old labourers, the horses they worked with and the tales he’d heard — some stretching back generations. It was clear such stories were used to diagnose and solve problems, share farming knowledge, vent frustrations and provide an understanding of ‘how we do things around here’.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a muddy field or state of the art office building, people tell stories. They can’t help it. When, in 1992, I moved to Linklaters, I found lawyers were inveterate storytellers. They swapped tales of the deals they were working on, the client relationships they were trying to build, and the legal problems they’d encountered and solved. And it struck me that this knowledge was, in its own way, as important as the knowledge that I was collecting, indexing and searching as part of my day-to-day role.

Stories comprised the tacit knowledge that provided context, richness and depth to the explicit knowledge codified in letters of advice, research notes and specimen clauses. And this uncodified, narrative knowledge was unlikely to be captured in formal ‘know-how’ systems. Perhaps here the role of knowledge management was to encourage conversations (and hence stories) and find ways to evolve the environments — the organisational ‘eco-systems’ — that act as the natural habitats for such conversations? For my initial, doctoral research I worked with two organisations: a law firm and a professional institute. I selected a small group of participants at each and asked them to take photographs of the five organisational spaces where they heard the most interesting, meaningful and memorable stories. Importantly, I stressed that as our interactions with colleagues are not always confined to the buildings in which we work, these might not necessarily be in the office. I then used the photographs as the basis for a semi-structured interview with each participant.

So, what did I find?

The plot thickens

The participants confirmed that storytelling was a valuable activity and they identified a range of different stories: problem stories, frustration stories, warning stories, solution stories and, even, ghost stories! And the work these stories performed was equally various. They assisted the diffusion of organisational culture; helped people ‘get things off their chest’; and, most commonly, enabled the exchange of information and knowledge. But this wasn’t just work-related knowledge. Perhaps the most commonly cited benefit was the way stories surfaced personal knowledge about people (their family lives, challenges, fears, ambitions). In these cases, the story became the storyteller.

Now, our reaction to this might be ‘so what?’ Surely this is merely insignificant gossip? My participants proposed an alternative view. They argued that such stories ‘cement that relationship’ helping you ‘feel more at ease with each other’. And this ‘rounded picture’ of colleagues could enhance team performance. Or as one participant put it: ‘we work well together because we know each other’. Consequently, I would argue that such knowledge carries a high organisational currency. And the stories that transmit it realise considerable social, affective and cognitive benefits. They comprise the social glue, the ‘connective tissue’, that enables us all to collaborate and work more effectively.

So where were these stories told? The photographs I received depicted receptions, kitchen areas, changing rooms, toilets, a colleague’s BBQ party, pubs, work cafés, smokers’ corner, ‘pet wall’, home offices, music rooms, car parks, the train home and the street outside. These were not the grand spaces we usually associate with organisations. Rather, these bore all the characteristics of liminal spaces. Perhaps it’s worth pausing here to reflect on the term ‘liminal’ — a key character in my research story.

Enter a new character

The word ‘liminality’ derives from the Latin term, limen (a threshold). It therefore implies a margin or edge between two states or spaces and the possibility of transition between the two. It is this sense that anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (van Gennep, 1960 [1909] referenced when applying the term to the middle stage of a rite of passage. As a ‘betwixt and between’ phase it is ambiguous and paradoxical. Think about how you felt when you started a new job or role (often cited as a liminal experience). Did you feel confused, anxious and uncertain as well as simultaneously energised and excited by the possibilities and opportunities ahead? If so, welcome to the world of liminality.

Van Gennep’s work was developed by a later anthropologist, Victor Turner, in a series of studies between the 1960s and 1980s1. The concept of liminality has subsequently been applied across a range of academic disciplines — including literary criticism, sociology, psychology, political science and business management.

But you may wonder what has this to do with space? Well, the term ‘liminal’ has been attributed to a range of locations —urban wastelands, hotels, beaches, prison waiting rooms, motorway service stations — along with more prosaic organisational settings: corridors, fire escapes, bathrooms. These are mundane, marginal and border spaces where things are easily blurred. And this theme of ‘blurring’ came out loud and clear in the research. Several participants noted how these spaces, for example the gym changing room, blurred distinctions and hierarchies. These were places where anyone spoke with anyone — resulting in conversations that might not have occurred elsewhere (and one feature of liminal spaces in rites of passage is communitas — the fostering of social connections and support within a group of equals).

Others noted how these storytelling spaces also blurred identities. For one participant, ‘crossing a threshold’ and leaving the building to go to smokers’ corner enabled her to ‘switch on a different part of yourself that you don’t necessarily have in the office’. While for another, the evening commute on the train is where she transitioned from ‘work self’ to ‘home self’. And this transition affected the nature of the interactions and the stories exchanged with the colleagues that travelled with her. But the most consistent theme was that of blurred ownership. A number of the spaces were not ‘owned’ by any particular group. They were neutral spaces, often on the border between different teams. Participants spoke about kitchen areas as places where you could meet anyone from the office — a space for ‘gatherings and paths crossing’. The encounters here were often serendipitous — the changing room, the toilets, smokers’ corner, the café where you ‘bumped’ into people. And there is a long thread of research that recognises such random encounters as valuable for transmitting ideas and stimulating creativity — especially where these ‘incidental information exchanges’ occur across diverse groups.

So, space, particularly liminal space, seemed to play a key role in stimulating the interactions that lead to storytelling. But then, for many, the pandemic completely transformed the spaces where we worked.

A twist in the tale

Back in the summer of 2020, as I studied my participants’ photographs (which, due to the University’s ethical research requirements, were absent of people), they struck me as an eerie, unsettling portent of what was to come. Our vibrant office spaces, full of social interaction and congregation, now empty and denuded of life. Consequently, I began to reflect on what was happening to organisational stories now we weren’t, physically, in the organisation. Had they migrated to new spaces — the virtual spaces of Zoom, Teams, instant messaging and email? Or were stories, deprived of their natural habitat, now faced with potential extinction?

The early signs were not encouraging. From the workshops I ran within Linklaters, with clients and at various conferences, a recurring topic was the struggle to replicate virtually random, unplanned encounters. And this was experienced as a loss — a sentiment echoed by then Chief Economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane who, in his Autumn 2020 speech, cited serendipity as the ‘cradle of creativity’2. A similar theme was that of ‘information friction’ — denied the rich data we gain from face-to-face interactions, people talked about operating in a vacuum and consequently misreading situations. Some were finding it more difficult ‘to get things off their chest’, to retain a sense of proportion.

So, perhaps what some of us were finding challenging about working remotely —what we missed about the buildings we had relocated from — was our separation from those liminal storytelling spaces?

The final chapter…?

For the next stage of my research, I will return to my two research sites and ask what actually happened to the spaces of storytelling during lockdown? And how might these habitats change in a new world of hybrid working? I believe these are important questions. My research to date has confirmed that storytelling is a valuable activity — and that the spaces in which it occurs matter too. The findings have consequences for anyone working in organisations and, in particular, to those of us involved in knowledge management. The 2018 International Standard on knowledge management systems (ISO 30401) suggests that not only do stories and conversations form part of the ‘Knowledge Spectrum’ but that KM ‘focuses on managing the working environment, thus nurturing the knowledge lifecycle’3. I suggest the research to date has demonstrated that the term ‘environment’ should not be considered metaphorically but, instead, grounded in the material, physical world.

But will the pandemic — and its effect on where we work — mean that storytelling environments become increasingly virtual? And how might an appreciation of the role of liminal space in storytelling influence the virtual spaces we create? How can we best introduce serendipity, unplanned interactions between diverse groups or the creation of spaces where hierarchy dissolves? Or, to take a more pessimistic stance, will the predicted flight from offices to remote and hybrid working signal the decline of storytelling and, worryingly, the benefits it gives us all. Are stories now a threatened species in the changing habitats of organisational life?

Watch out for the next episode in this particular story.

Would you like to be part of the story?

I’m always fascinated to hear about the places in which people hear stories in their organisations. So, if you have ideas and views to share, please do contact me either at City, University of London or Linklaters. Where did you hear stories before Covid — and where do you hear stories now?

Check out my blog for those interested in liminal spaces.

References

1 See for example, Turner, V. (1969) The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction.

2 Haldane, A. (2020) ‘Is home working good for you?’ Available at: www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2020/is-home-working- good-for-you-speech-by-andy- haldane.pdf?la=en&hash=099975AB9B41135F1DC132D90C5466DDD4598218 (Accessed: 31 October 2020).

3 International Organization for Standardization (2018) ISO 3041:2018(E) Knowledge management systems — requirements. Geneva: ISO. p.vi

Auvinen, T., Aaltio, I. and Blomqvist, K. (2013) ‘Constructing leadership by storytelling — the meaning of trust and narratives’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 34(6), pp. 496–514.

Fayard, A-L. and Weeks, J. (2007) ‘Photocopiers and water-coolers: the affordances of informal interaction’, Organization Studies, 28(5), pp. 605–634.

Fletcher, C. (1996) “’The 250lb man in an alley”: police -storytelling’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 9(5), pp. 36-42.

Fotaki, M., Altman, Y. and Koning, J. ‘Spirituality, symbolism and storytelling in twenty-first century organizations: understanding and addressing the crisis of imagination’, Organization Studies, 41(1), 7-30.

Humphreys, M., Ucbasaran, D. and Lockett, A. (2012) ‘Sensemaking and sensegiving stories of jazz leadership’, Human Relations, 65(1), pp. 41-62

Patriotta, G. (2003) ‘Sensemaking on the shop floor’, Journal of Management Studies, 40, pp. 349-375.

Smith, R., Pedersen, S. and Burnett, S. (2014) ‘Towards an organizational folklore of policing: the storied nature of policing and the policy use of storytelling’, Folklore 125(2), pp. 218-237.

Snowden, D. (1999) ‘Storytelling: an old skill in a new context’, Business Information Review, 16(1), pp. 30-37.

Swap, W., Leonard, D., Shields, M. and Abrams, L. (2001) ‘Using mentoring and storytelling to transfer knowledge in the workplace’, Management Information Systems, 18(1), pp. 95–114.

Tangherlini, T.R. (2000) ‘Heroes and lies: storytelling -tactics among paramedics’, Folklore, 111, pp. 43-66.

Van Gennep, A. (1960[1909]) The rites of passage. Translated by M.K. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Van Hulst, M. (2017) ‘Backstage storytelling and leadership’, Policing, 20(5), pp. 1045-1064.

Van Hulst, M. and Ybema, S. (2020) ‘From what to where: a setting-sensitive approach to organizational storytelling’, Organization Studies, 41(3), pp. 365-391.