A Story We Agree to Live In

Organizations are Alive.

This is not a metaphor.

I mean alive quite literally, but not in the same way that you are.
Organizational boundaries are too porous for that.
Yes, I know that your boundaries are scientifically fuzzy too, but your experience is distinct. So's mine.
You stop there, I begin here. Separate.

At least that's the story I tell myself.

When we decide to do something together, though, we share a story.
It isn’t just in my head or yours.
It lives between us.

When we agree to form an organization and invite many others to join us, we create an even bigger story.

Organizations Are a Story We Agree to Live In.

In this way, organizations are alive.
They are formed from an initial story and grown.

Their story attracts people, shapes culture, and drives behavior.

Organization stories exist beyond the component people.
They have opinions and momentum. They change the world around them.

Where Do Stories Come From?

You may as well ask, Where do thoughts come from?

Scientists can detect simple decisions in our brains seconds before we’re aware of them.

If awareness is informed of our choices rather than making them, who’s really driving the bus?

Physically, you and I are made of the same stuff as oceans and puppies.
At the subatomic level, there’s no difference.
So what makes matter configure into the experience of you?

Debates about consciousness, free will, and the true nature of the universe remain unresolved.

Whatever the deeper truth:
You are a story the universe agreed to tell.

So are organizations.

Sentience = a configuration of space-time capable of experience.
Humans and organizations have experiences. They hold perspectives.
Interpreting those perspectives creates meaning.

Meaning manifests as story.

True Stories are Still Stories.

Birds built a nest above our BBQ. They hatched chicks—noisy, messy, delightful.
We love cooking outside in summer. It's getting hotter every day.
I hope the chicks leave soon.

All of that is true.

It’s a snapshot of now, how I feel about now, and a mini-dream for the future.

• Contentment = enjoying the story as it is

• Goal = a story we intend to make true

• Happiness = a story that comes true

• Delight = an unexpected happy truth

That's my frame on the birds in both fact and narrative.
I'm sure your frame is different and also true.

Strategy Is a Story.

I love Vivid Visioning.

It’s a strategic practice where a group writes a story about the future after they’ve succeeded. It might begin like this:

Sometimes it's an epic, full of fame and fortune.
Sometimes it's a cosy story about a product that makes people happy.

Vivid visions tell us a story we can agree to live into.

I also love Premortems and Future Backwards, which invite darker, more bizarre narratives. They help us agree on what we don't want.

Strategies may be handed down from leadership to the rest of the organization, like Moses with his tablets. Moses carried important truth.

But even the truest stories are not all the way true.
Every strategy is limited by the storyteller’s perspective.

Strategies shaped by listening across the organization carry more truth.
They’re harder to write, but easier to believe.

Collaborative Overload Signals Clashing Narratives.

Quick syncs. Touch base. A chat.
Microsoft recently reported that 60% of meetings are now ad-hoc.
This number has been climbing for years.

I’ve researched and catalogued the types of meetings where decisions are made, issues resolved, and plans formed.
Our taxonomy details sixteen ways to run quality meetings that move work forward.

Ad hoc syncs didn’t make that list.
No clear output. No obvious progress.
We label them "wasteful."

But I missed their role.

An ad hoc sync literally gets us back in sync when:

• I don't get the strategy. How is that supposed to work?

• Plot twist! The story changed.

• I forgot. What was that again?

• Oooh! But what about...

• Wait. What? I wasn't listening.

This is narrative repair. Lots and lots of it.
When stories drift, fragment, or confuse, we gather to reconcile our sense of what’s going on.

Pain Reveals a Mismatch Between Our Story and Our Experience.

I should be. But I'm not.
Thin. Fast. Successful. Strong. Still. Polished.
Wise.

As individuals, we feel pain when there’s a gap between the story we tell ourselves and the reality we live.

Organizations feel pain when their stories don’t line up.
We say we care about quarterly profits and inclusion, and sustainability, and innovation, and well-being.
But when people’s experiences don’t match these claims, the pain gets new names:

Disengagement. Friction. Misalignment. Dysfunction.
Conflict.

Stories Change.

Startups don’t need a lot of meetings or processes. They’re chasing one story.
And while they’re constantly testing and rewriting it, everyone’s crashing on the same draft, usually in the same room.

A startup is an organizational first draft.

As organizations grow, their story grows too.
It branches, deepens, and accumulates lore.
How we started.
→Who we are now.
→Where we’re headed.
Why the IT crowd is secretly cool.

Stories evolve:
Article → Short story → Novel → Series → Universe → Wiki of fan fiction

Growing a company is real-life world-building.

We ask people to believe—imagine—that the organization has a future worth paying attention to.
We need them to want to see how the story turns out.

Leaders are Story Stewards.

Tom Nixon observed that in the most progressive organizations—where authority is distributed, teams are self-managed, and the mission is alive—there’s usually one person at the center holding the story.
Too often, that story dissolves when leader leaves.

When that happens, it’s tempting to blame the structure.
“Self-managing organizations are fragile,” they say.
If a single person’s departure breaks the structure, how good could that structure be?

But it’s not the structure that’s fragile.
It’s the story.

The business world hasn’t yet told itself that self-management is a viable way to work.
So when a leader leaves, no pool of obvious successors shares a narrative for what happens next.

New leaders bring their old stories with them.

The same disruption plays out in traditional hierarchies, too.
New CEO, new org chart, new playbook.
The difference for hierarchical orgs is that both old and new CEOs believe in org charts. That story stays intact.

Whatever story leaders hold shapes the organization.
So what happens when the CEO’s vivid vision is focused entirely on profit?

I think we know.

Supplier-Induced Demand = an Outsider’s Story About You That You Believe.

Maxim Sytch recently noted that consultants and thought leaders share many narratives about what your organization is probably doing wrong.
Then, they (we) sell you fixes.

Of course we do. You call a consultant when you're in pain.
You ask us to dig into it, name it, and make it better.
The view outside our window is full of leaders and teams with problems.

We tell stories based on what we see. And it’s not wrong. It’s just… filtered.

Read our research, and it’s clear. Things are complex.
There’s nuance, context, and layers.

But nuance doesn’t sell. And thought leaders gotta eat.
So the message gets distilled.

Marketing and media exist to spread stories.
The short, emotional ones go farther, faster.
Tiny CRISPR snippets of the original story’s DNA—extracted and delivered straight to your feed.

We say these ideas go “viral.”

So—how many of your organization’s problems are homegrown?
And how many were injected from outside?

Try this:

• List your organization’s key problems.

• Ask: Who noticed them first? How were they identified?

• Count: how many only became obvious after an outsider taught you how to see them?

When We Stop Believing and Sharing Stories

Ours is a pattern-matching intelligence.
2 + 2 = 4. That’s a bird. That’s a bully.

We feel certainty when what we experience is congruent with the story we believe.
When the patterns line up enough, the story feels true.

Thirty years ago, most of the stories we heard were congruent with our experiences.
MTV was the coolest thing ever. Butter would kill you.
Personal computers were for hobbyists.
Even if you weren’t allowed to watch MTV, you knew it was cool. (Thanks, mom 🙄 )
We shared enough context to believe roughly the same things at the same time.

Since then, culture has fractured.
AND we rely more heavily than ever on the media to give us context.
But not on the same media.
My husband and I don't even read the same news.

We rely on the same media that exists to distribute viral ideas for profit.

All this fracturing means we have fewer shared patterns.
More and more, the stories we hear don't ring true.
They aren't congruent with our experience.

This is obvious in our politics, but also applies to the stories organizations tell.

The Bizarre Gospel of AI

Many organizations now seem to believe they must integrate AI into everything.
They take it on faith that:

• AI will increase productivity.

• AI will free people from tedious tasks.

• AI will make companies more competitive.

• AI will solve intractable problems.

And somehow, all of that is supposed to benefit everyone.

But these claims feel incongruent for many, because:

• Productivity gains of the past made richer rich people and poorer poor people. Why should we support that?

• Productivity of what, for whom? We’re already drowning in stuff and info.

• Who determines tedium? And what replaces it? Constant engagement? Performative creativity? Exhausting.

• What do ALL the people freed from tasks do? No one seriously believes we'll all manage teams of AI robots, do they?

• Do companies need to be more competitive? Is that what helps build a better society?

• Intractable problems - cool!
  If AI solves cancer, will the cure be freely available, or sold to the highest bidders?

The story doesn’t ring true yet. So, where did it come from?
Who started the rumor that universal, rapid AI adoption is both mandatory and good?

And maybe it will turn out great.
I really hope this starts to make sense, because I love working with AI.
But as someone with very blue-collar roots, the story from tech-bro land isn't yet congruent with the patterns I recognize.

Also
Our popular imagination is full of good AI intentions gone wrong. Many, many Star Trek episodes show us that there's a good reason the United Federation of Planets banned sentient computers.

I just can't square how what we're doing now is so different from what the stories foretell.

Maybe that's just me? But I don't think so.
Things feel off.

The new AI gospel is just one example of what seems to be a pervasive dissonance.

We need a better story to live in.

One that feels hopeful.
And TRUE.

Stories End.

Stories can be rejected. The Earth isn't flat.

Stories may be lost.
Who built the pyramids? Who first lived below Cappadocia?
How did Grandma make her gravy?
We'll never know.

Every failed organization began as a failed story.

Big companies grow, sprawl, and lose the heart of their narrative, making them easy prey for a sharp competitor.

Startups tell a story that fails to spread.

Organizations die when we stop believing they should exist.

But then...
this leaves room for a new story.

A Note on Influence
This article felt like something I should jot down as it arose. It sits in the shadows of other people's stories, which in tiny ways here are retold, recombined, merged into, evolved out of, rejected, befriended, and lightly swirled together.
Appreciation and apologies to Maxim Sytch, Ari Weinzwig Norman Wolfe, Frederic Laloux, AllSides, Yuval Noah Harari, Gary Klein, Tom Nixon (via Stowe Boyd), Dave Snowden, Annaka Harris (via Helen Edwards), Ajay Reddy, the AI Tinkerer's Club, Jennifer Garvey Berger, and Gene Roddenberry.