Storytelling is an old oral tradition and it is the core of cultural heritage. The past is a precondition for the present – there is no present, without a past. I find it reasonable to say that companies can express themselves in the present by focusing on their traditions.
The other day I talked with a friend of mine about what storytelling really is – and what defines a story. Do stories have to have a beginning and an end? Do they need to have a certain length or moral? Ernest Hemingway once got the challenge to write a complete work of fiction in six words. And so he did. I want to end this blog post with his story – to let it stand alone – because it really got me thinking, which I believe makes a good story.

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
- Ernest Hemingway

Last week I was doing interviews for one of our customers, to gather information for further evaluation of different authentic strengths and values. The interviews were split into two parts; the first part was an open narrative conservation, and in the second part the informants were asked more specific questions. It was a really interesting work and a got a lot of remarkable opinions out in the daylight.

The method applied, narrative conversation or interview, is in my belief a very relevant and honest way to get information from your informants. Within these open conversations there is no hidden agenda, or at least there should not be, and therefore you get a relatively deep insight in your informant’s version of the truth. If you let people talk, and you take your time to listen, you will reveal what great things they really have on their minds. It doesn’t matter if interviewing is a part of your job or not, but do yourself and your friends a favour; ask an (open) question and listen to the answer…

Within the recent couple of weeks a discussion about CO₂ emissions from IT service providers has attained considerable media coverage. It is said that two searches on Google use the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle of water. This is worth giving an extra thought the next time you google at work, or at home. Working at a communications bureau, and everywhere else, you use the Internet to gather information to support your working process, or as a source for inspiration. Using Google, for example, to search the web uses much more energy than you probably are aware of. Surely, opposing arguments about the validity of the conducted research on Google’s energy efficiency have been presented, but this does not affect my point; we consume a lot of energy that we are not even aware of.

A couple of weeks ago I heard about Blackle. Blackle is a search engine build upon Google’s databases, but provides an eco-friendly interface to the information. The background color is black, which uses less energy, than the normal white background color you usual see on web pages.

That made me think – if it really does use less energy, should CSR-minded companies, and everyone else, add a black version of their website so the environmental-minded visitor have the opportunity to choose an eco-version, and there by reduce their personal CO₂ emission?

According to the creator of Blackle it was the blog ecoIron that inspired him to the development of Blackle. You can read more about this and how to reduce the energy used by your computer on Google’s blog.

To my last post I got a really interesting comment from Andrew Smart.

It is a motivating question that Andrew pose – is it really possible to talk about a collective personality or identity? Isn’t identity something that people construct so they don’t become a part of an anonymous mass? On the other hand, I believe that people today need to be a part of a community, where they develop a feeling of collective identity. This collective identity is, the way I see it, a more abstract identity that people for example find in different social groups. Work-life could be an example of a social group, where people get together around a collective identity.

The urge to express authenticity and uniqueness is a strong motivation for people, but in the same time this soul-searching and questioning about who we are can make people insecure. In my opinion identity is more a process than a position one has. Therefore, I think that it is possible to approach a kind of collective identity when you are studying a social group – which in this case is work-related.

In our work process in Stagis we value and map companies by doing observations, where we look at unwritten routines and carry out interviews with the employees. The questions we are asking concerns, among other things, the three dimensions of authenticity. By analyzing their answers and behaviour we define the core-values, and (often) non-spoken values of the company. I believe that the authentic values already exist within the company, but that these values not automatically are an explicit part of the culture of the organization. By mapping this implicit knowledge we make it explicit, which makes it possible for the company – both internally and externally – to communicate there authenticity. In this sense we are mapping the collective personality of a group and helping the company to make sure that there is consistency between the culture inside the organization and the way they communicate.

There could be many other anthropological studies of different kind of social groups – take for example the two groups that are fighting each other around Nørrebro in Copenhagen right now. What kind of collective identity dominates these kinds of social groups? In one way these social groups make the members unique from the rest of “us” and I’m positive that the members get a feeling of collective identity.

In short, Stagis is a company focusing on the connection between the three elements; Design, Communication and Culture. My function as an anthropologist is to contribute to the Culture part.

With knowledge on classical anthropology, from my BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Aarhus, I have explored different perspectives on cultural understanding and gained an insight in the importance of dichotomies. What really interest me are the modern aspects in the field and I have studied subjects such as social psychology, social relations and culture of organizations in the modern Western world. To pursue my interest in especially culture of organizations I studied Sociology at University of Lund in Sweden. Here, I became known with concrete tools to approach the subject and performed several case studies to fine-tune specific methods.

As an anthropologist in Stagis I analyze the degree of authenticity, based on Nikolaj Stagis’ work about authentic companies, by mapping and valuing companies in three dimensions:

1. Historic and heritage authenticity
2. Reflexive and action authenticity
3. Image authenticity and presence

Friday the 20th of June at 4 PM we are inviting our clients, colleagues and friends to cool summer drinks and funky feel-good music. At 6 PM we present our new identity. Exciting!

Check your e-mail or facebook for more information about STAGIS’ ;DBAR