(2011-06-11) Rao Thick Strategy Narrative

Venkatesh Rao thinks that Business Book-s should be written as a Thick Strategy Narrative as a way to merge the messy details with some theoretical structure. (See recent 2010-10-11-RaoGoodVsGreatAndOpportunism and 2010-05-15-RaoKiechelLordsOfStrategy.) 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.... 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.

Nice bit on the history of competition between the "People" and "Positioning" schools of thought. What bothers me is that this arms race between structural theories derived from economics and organizational/motivational theories derived from psychology has led to an overall strengthening of the role of theory over the role of narrative.

Nice criticism of Case Study and War Story (typical Business Book) styles.

In both thick description and model-driven faction, the quality of the story that can be told serves as a measure of the fertility of the theories that are mixed in, either organically, or as meta-commentary... Rather than thinking of thick strategy Narrative-s as a specific kind of construct, I prefer to think of as a predisposition to react in certain ways to new information, let’s call it think-narrative thinking. What do I mean? Here are some examples... Some of these ideas have already started percolating into the business world (simulation exercises and role-playing games are already common) but the problem is that without a broader understanding of how and why such practices strengthen Decision Making skills, and without mechanisms to integrate the experiences into everyday business thinking, they remain mere stimulating sideshows or end up serving other purposes such as trust-building in a group.