Three Amigos

What happens when four independent consultants get thrown together and are told they are now a team? Sometimes, everything clicks and a wonderful new relationship begins. That’s what happened in Riyadh this week. Four of us were invited to work with a relatively new governmental organization focused on renewable energy, K.A. CARE:

“The world depends on energy and is moving inexorably towards more sustainable sources than fossil fuel as they are a non-renewable resource. Saudi Arabia is no exception  to this; it has the vision and drive to ensure the introduction of renewable sources of energy. To provide a sustainable and efficient energy future for the Kingdom, KA CARE has recommended a sustainable energy mix taking into account: the economics of the hydrocarbons saved; electricity and water demand patterns; technology choices; regulatory and physical infrastructure requirements; human capacity development; and value chain enhancement.”

Coordinated by Alan Kantrow, a seasoned professional, the remaining three of us were challenged to work together to weave together a single narrative on institutional memory and storytelling over two days. On the third day, it would be presented to the executive leadership. The three amigos improvisational team — Alex Barrera, David Hutchens, and myself — had to quickly understand each other and then develop a coherent narrative that made business sense for the client. Needless to say, there were many things to take into consideration, including the client’s cultural context. So a Spaniard, an American, and a Canadian walk into a Saudi organization, and …. [see the photos]

As Alex and David presented, I learned a lot about storytelling from these experts. First of all, don’t confuse story with narrative, said Alex, as stories contain emotion. Stories are how we best remember and a story can be thought of as what happens in the gap between expectations and results. David provided an excellent structure for stories, discussing story mining, crafting & telling, and sharing & sense-making. It reminded me of PKM‘s Seek-Sense-Share.

My presentation was based on several of the posts on institutional memory & knowledge management that I’ve shared here over the past few weeks, particularly looking at the different ways to deal with implicit and explicit knowledge. Our client commented that implicit knowledge is the glue that connects explicit knowledge together. I think our gluing together of the explicit knowledge that we presented was aided by the fact that we could spend several days together, get to know each other, and try to share some implicit knowledge, such as our perspectives on life, the universe and everything. The answer of course, was 42 ;) After our presentation to the senior leadership on Wednesday, one participant asked to confirm that we were not all from the same company and had never worked together. He did not believe that three individuals, from different backgrounds and countries could come together so quickly and speak with a unified voice. I think our collective participation in social media made this a lot easier, as were were able to integrate our networked thinking into a larger network. It seemed quite natural to all three of us.

The End (for now)