A while back, I started initial conversations as I began to do some work for a large organisation, and in my discussions with various senior leaders, I heard some very different stories about what turned out to be the same incident. A Regional Director told me of a meeting he and some colleagues had had with the CEO and the Head of Corporate Services. The idea was to sort out some of the problems that the Regions had with Head Office – which, they said, were impeding much nee

In this blog post, I want to broaden the focus from the exploration of stories in an organisational context, to consider their use in society as a whole. I will explore how people use stories to offer interpretations of current affairs that accord with their existing philosophy. I will point out that people sometimes use stories in that way explicitly and deliberately; and sometimes they do so implicitly and without realising that they are doing so. I also note that there ar