Storycatcher :: About the Book

This material is edited from a much longer chapter with hopes it will intrigue you to discover the fullness of the book, Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story, by Christina Baldwin. Each chapter is carried by a tale about people, family, or community, intertwined with philosophical and practical instruction about the nature of story, how it works and how we can practice it in our lives. The Storycatcher reading group guidelines show the list of questions that appears at the end of each chapter.

Every human endeavor is grounded in story. Story is how we call each other together and explain what we are doing in each other's company. "Come on over to my house, or office, or cubicle..." immediately raises the question, "Why?" We see the question in each other's faces and fill in the gaps as creatively as we can, working to convey our excitement, wanting to bring people "on board," to gather energy and collaboration around whatever has excited us to put out the call. Nowadays, the call may appear in the email inbox, but the energy behind it is that of the runner who dashes into the heart of the village, or the rider who gallops into camp with news. We look up expectantly. Shift is in the air; routine is broken open to possibility. At least that is how it should be. We blow a new invitation into each other's lives on the winds of story.

One of the masters in this art of blowing on the winds of story is a man named Toke Paludan Møller. A citizen of Denmark, Toke travels throughout Europe, Africa, and North America practicing what he calls, "the martial art of story space." Tall and still lean in midlife, with eyes like sea-blue marbles, Toke speaks with a resonant baritone voice in Danish, English, German, and Swedish. Folding up his long legs like someone tucking away his height, he composes himself in a chair at the rim of a circle, but he always seems ready to spring into action, to leap toward the flip chart and sketch his latest insight, or record what he sees emerging from the speaking of a group. He is a spiritual warrior of what it takes to hold the space for story.

Gesturing broadly with an Aikido stance, he says, "To me, the martial art of story means to crack open the unconscious space. The space that can shift our awareness is already present in the room, but we are most of the time asleep to it. To wake us up requires martial strength for just a few moments. So there is this warrior in me who likes to crack unconsciousness like an eggshell and hold open a conscious space for people to jump in and find the story." ...

The work of storycatching in organizations starts with the search to discover how the original groundwork has survived within the swirl of influences that have shaped the organization so far. We look for the interplay between the founding values of purpose story and the innovative mutations of organizational life. Toke and I call this the dance of the now and the purpose. The now consists of real people working together in real time. The purpose is the basis for the now; it is the initiating energy that set the organization into being.

Toke tells the story of a long-respected Danish union that had fallen into a pattern of infighting that was damaging the quality of its work and inhibiting the staff's ability to function. When a union representative telephoned Toke and asked if he and Monica Nissen (Toke's wife and cofacilitation partner) would offer a two-day seminar to help the staff address their problems, Toke assessed the situation by listening for what had happened to the purpose and the now. "Nobody was telling the purpose story anymore," he noticed, "because nobody was remembering it. Their source was lost. People were working for their own egotistical needs and making up stories that supported partisan thinking rather than unifying around the purpose of the union. The loss of the purpose story had ruined the environment of the now to the point where people were in open conflict and resigning. But I knew we couldn't work with them if they were going to stay focused on their 'problems.' Solution is not in the problems; solution is in the story."

Before Toke and Monica agreed to work with the union they asked to meet with everybody on the staff who would be coming to this seminar. They requested only a one-hour meeting, but with the condition that everybody would be in the room. So the union set the time and place and everyone gathered. "We wanted to see," said Toke, "whether or not people would come out from behind their problems and participate in remembering the purpose."

Toke and Monica asked the union staff to interview each other, to choose people they had not talked to in a while, or even people they weren't sure they liked. A great squeaking of chairs and calling out of voices filled the room as people shifted into pairs facing each other knee to knee. The first interview question: What are you proud of and what do you really appreciate about working in this organization? They had ten minutes, five to talk and five to listen. The second question: What do you dream is still possible for this organization if we decide to go for the next level? Again they had ten minutes. And the third question: What do you personally feel should be the purpose of these two days? And in the babble of voices that filled the space, through these interviews, people began to remember the forgotten story of the purpose and the unconscious story of the now.

In just these few moments of conversation, the alienation between coworkers began to lift. "These people had been wobbling in their problems for four years," said Toke. "We asked for very little time because we wanted to show them how swiftly a shift could occur. Not because we made the shift occur — but because they allowed it to occur. They allowed the possibility for their real story to come back into the room."

What happened here was that purpose story was glimpsed again by a group of people who had wandered away from the core meaning of their work. No one intended this; it just happened. In the busyness and demands of the job they forgot why they were doing it. They forgot to keep telling their story. And once the purpose story had been lost, day-to-day stories began to dismantle rather than support organizational functioning. If these day-to-day stories are not connected to the purpose story, they have no organizing principle. They become stories without context and telling them or listening to them sets people adrift. The purpose without the now is history: the now without the purpose is chaos.

One of the most empowering aspects of how story functions in organizations is that anyone can initiate shift and realignment. Remember the fairy tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes"? It is not the emperor who realizes the folly of his ways, nor the fawning courtiers, but "a child." It is the person lacking social power or status: perhaps an hourly wage employee, a floor nurse, a line worker, an administrative assistant, a new recruit. The ability to crack open what Toke calls "the unconscious awareness that is already in the room" is not dependent on position or rank. This ability is something else: courage to trust one's own perception, willingness to break the spell and challenge people to test reality for themselves.

In the climax of the fairy tale, all the inhabitants of the city are lined up along the streets to applaud the emperor as he parades by wearing his new set of magic clothes. They have been told that all good and loyal citizens of the realm will be able to see this finery, and that only disloyal ne'er-do-wells will see anything wrong. So everybody "sees" what they are supposed to see and hides from others — and perhaps even from themselves — the suspicion that they are participating in a fraud. But somewhere in the crowd is one who stands with a free mind in the middle of group unconscious. Somewhere the voice of the disenfranchised, the one who is willing to lose approval, calls out, "Hey, the emperor has no clothes!" Dang. Now we have to wake up.

Storycatchers can be valuable assets to any organization trying to move forward in a thoughtful and ethical way. The organization might be a multimillion-dollar corporation, a school PTA, a neighborhood watch group, or your own family business. The Storycatcher can help to preserve the original purpose of the organization, while helping to shape the current environment.

Once upon a time, somebody started this endeavor in which you work today.
Let's start there.
Tell me that story.

Click here to respond to this question with a story from your own life >>