Blog Post

By: Ken Embley, MS

Every day we make sense out of reality by connecting facts together and interpreting those facts to create stories.  Suppose I describe what happened on a particular morning as follows: “At 5:00 a.m. I got up.  Then I exercised, ate a bowl of cereal, and cleaned-up.  I left for work at 6:20 a.m. and arrived at 7:00 a.m.”  This straightforward recital of facts involves little interpretation and thus little meaning.  Compare it with the following account of the same morning: “At 5:00 a.m. I arose still tired from too little sleep because I had stupidly stayed up too late watching the Jazz lose a late game on the West Coast.  Because of that, I only had time to run two instead of the five miles I planned to run.  Hurrying to catch my bus, I forgot to bring the Moneyball DVD I promised a colleague.”

To create a story about my morning, I chose some facts and left out others and provided some interpretation of the facts I chose.  The result is an account that has meaning; it suggests that my morning was frustrating, disappointing, exhausting, and embarrassing – qualities that do not come through in a simple rendering of the facts.  I made sense of the facts I chose to include, not necessarily how others might choose which facts to include or how to make sense of those same facts.  For example, I might think, “Boy, I ran only two miles.”  But a colleague listening to my account might think, “Wow, only two miles!  A two mile run would kill me.”

In stories you tell about the challenges facing your organization, or about a change initiative you want to lead, the same process of making meaning unfolds.  “Because you choose which facts to highlight and include in your story and what those facts mean to you, your story is just one possible “truth” about reality.  Other people will construct different stories by selecting the same facts as you,but by interpreting them differently.”