David M Boje Jun 24, 2021
‘Hi there’ — Learn about Becoming-Being-Becoming in Restorying!
This study guide introduces sandtray-world of Embodied Restorying Process (ERP).
We begin with the case study of Harley-Davidson. Please see the onto-story of SpaceTimeMattering to prepare for this case before you read on.
The Case Study of Harley-Davidson Losing its Story
In 1969, American Machine and Foundry (AMF) bought Harley-Davidson corporation. A tragedy.
There was this eventing I want to unpack.
The AMF motorcycles were expensive and inferior in performance. They handled poorly in comparison to Japanese cycles. Sales and quality declined, and the company almost went bankrupt. The “Harley-Davidson” name was mocked as “Hardly Ableson”, “Hardly Driveable”, and “Hogly Ferguson”, and the nickname “Hog” became uncool (source).
In February 1981, a group of Harley-Davidson senior executives purchased Harley-Davidson from AMF. 13 investors led by Vaughn Beals and Willie G. Davidson for $80 million (IBID.).
Driven by passion and a true storytelling belief in the brand, the executives were able to rescue the company from debt.
How it happened? Why the turnaround?
The executives left their ivory corporate tower and took a ride on the AMF bikes across the country to visit dealers, customers, and workers, doing the process of BECOMING, remaking the bikes that did not work into ones that did.
First time to the site? Start here
I will tell you the story of February 1981, when Harley-Davidson executives actually got on the cycles the corporation was making, and found out two things. First, the AMF bikes were awful. Customers and vendors hated them. The customers loyal to Harley, rebuilt them with after-market parts. Second, the executives had close encounters with the workers in the factory system production sites. They learned that several Little Wow Moments (LWMs) (from BEFORE) had already been there, were now all but forgotten. A mile and a half conveyor line had replaced the LWMs. Workers had not forgotten the old process that worked to make bikes that lasted, and experienced the new process of Bikes-BECOMING that no longer worked and was a BAD BET ON THE FUTURE. This was an opportune moment of BECOMING for executives to get out of their IVORY TOWER and do TRUE STORYTELLING DIALOGUES with the workers.
Becoming of the Heart of Care in True Storytelling is connected to BEING. All four Hearts connect to BEING. We focus here on two Eventings of BECOMING in their inseparability to BEING-in-worldhood. There are seven antenarrative processes supportive of the True Storytelling Principles (More on antenarrative at Antenarrative.com).
What is Antenarrative in seven sentences?
- Beneath are the grand narratives of organizations, capitalism, and societies disciplining and punishing us to be an Abstract character that is not I.
- Before of many Rehistoricizing histories, often comes from Bets.
- Bets on the future prospective sensemaking, anticipatory resoluteness that changes the histories. There are multiple Bet all at once fashioning the futures
- Being (fore-getting) double meaning. First, we are fore-getting the worldhood, fore-getting the inseparability of SpaceTimeMatter. Second, we have the ‘fore’ (already there) of ‘getting’ the our emplacement & embeddedness in worldhood of the environing around us.
- Becoming the fore-caring for Being, our moral answerability to intervene in the Futuring troubles of living in multispecies storytelling
- Between the fore-structure, what is the infrastructure in advance, in the interplay between
- Beyond of fore-grasping the intuitive becoming, our abductive insight, the spiritual ecology
After their wild tour riding the bikes their corporation make, they actually took out the mile and a half overhead conveyor belt system. This is an example of executives in Ivory Tower, taking a ride, encountering work-world and consumer-world.The Harley-cycles were becoming awful. Instead, work-world was redesigned to bring back LWMs from the past. The Japanese (Toyota-ism) had visited old-style U.S. Ford factories, and were doing excellent processes of manufacturing work-worlds, to this day (see Harley-Davidson timeline).
LWM #1 – groups of workers assembled the entire cycle in team work stations instead of acting like dead robots on a conveyor line.
LWM #2 – push karts called Kanbams were used to push parts to the team work stations,
LWM #3 – parts arrived Just-in-Time instead of parts made in different months with slightly different tolerances that did not fit well together so AMF bikes always leaked.
LWM #4 – workers could stop the production, send back parts that did not fit to the vendor (supplier), and get ones that fit. Call it empowerment or worker-driven social responsibility to intervene in systems that did not work as promised.
These are examples of BECOMING and RESTORYING that are interlaced with BEING-in-the-work-world.
There is a deeper level. Helping Story Along links to ‘Little Wow Moments’ of
Steps 4, 5, 6 of Embodied Restorying Process. The work-world system is not primary to BEING-in-worldhood. Rather, the World is already-there, and work-world depends on the capacity of Worldhood.
Point: Work-world is not the primary authentic Being (Heidegger, history of time book, p. 199):”The work-world appresting both what is already on hand and what is immediately hand for the particular concern.” Appresent means that something else is already there that makes up the Becoming of work-worlds. Appresent means a co-presence. Both Worldhood of Earth planet and the work-world systems humans construct as Becoming are co-present. One is more primary and authentic. This is why sustainability of ‘what is true’ (principle 1) is so important, even to BECOMING and its relations to BEING-in-the-worldhood.
We will be doing RESTORYING PROCESS which interconnects (Double Looping) to connect the two BECOMINGs. BECOMING has two phases, one BEFORE of Little Wow Moments (all but forgotten), and the other, BETS of opportune moments. Harley executives learned their lessons about forgotten Little Wow Moments (LWMs).
Answerability Ethics
I am writing a chapter for Rixon’s new book, My chapter is onon answerability ethics. Here is the summary: In our approach to true storytelling (Larsen, Bruun, & Boje), the ethics of answerability goes beneath the signs, symbols, and references into our encounters with event-ness of Being. The value of answerability ethics is we can choose to move out of the bystander role and actually intervene in once-occurrent eventness of Being. Mikhail Bakhtin’s ethics of answerability has practical implications for storytelling processes and reflective practices that the chapter will explore. Exercises using material objects found in participants own environment will allow an exploration of work-world things and how those things refer to worldhood, the environment world-as-a-whole.
We use sandtrays of artifacts (material things) and actual excursions to study what Jane Bennett (2010) calls ‘onto-stories of things found together in the world. Some things are of Nature, and other things are human-made in work-world. The chapter explores this relation of work-world and worldhood of environing world.
Environmental record of Work-World making Cycles from Worldhood of Nature
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted emissions-certification and representative emissions test in in 2005. Then, Harley-Davidson produced an “environmental warranty”. The warranty ensures each owner that the vehicle is designed and built free of any defects in materials and workmanship that would cause the vehicle to not meet EPA standards. In 2005, the EPA confirmed Harley-Davidson to be the first corporation to voluntarily enroll in the One Clean-Up Program. This program is designed for the clean-up of the affected soil and groundwater at the former York Naval Ordnance Plant. The program is backed by the state and local government along with participating organizations and corporations (paraphrased from source.
SWITCHING FROM CASE STUDY of Harley-Corporation TO MY OWN BOJE-Worldhood, my Sandtray and Me
A Story about Harley-Davidson encounters with BECOMING (fore-caring)-BEING (fore-getting)
My worldhood as Harley rider (and Harley-builder of Green Harley in photo below) is my own relation to the wider world of Harley-Davidson history. In other words, my Onto-Story of SpaceTimeMattering and my:
BECOMING-BEING-BECOMING
The Turn around by RESTORYING in Together-Telling
Richard Teerlink, VP of Harley-Davidson was the keynote at Academy of Management (source). I was sitting in first row wearing my HAWG gear, including Harley boots and Harley cap, and buttons saying, “Harley’s are Postmodern.” I gave a button to Richard Teerlink.
At this same Academy of Management meeting, “Grace Ann and I began graffiting nametags, putting on labels of fruits and vegetables, of sayings, such as ‘be postmodern.’ Then there were the buttons. We would distribute ‘Harleys are postmodern’. We did this the other year when Academy banned dancing, buttons after (along with a storybook of different versions of why not, dancing).
Our most popular button ever, “Harleys are postmodern” when Richard Teerlink, VP of Harley-Davidson was the
keynote at Academy of Management” (Boje, Tamara-Land Journal, 2014, source). I was mobbed by Academy people wanting one for their relative or their own self. Some context of my story of Harley and me in Harley-world.
“When Richard Teerlink joined Harley Davidson in 1981 as chief financial officer, the company had U.S. market share of 15% and had reported a loss of $15 million. The U.S. icon was facing steep competition from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers, such as Honda, and it was struggling. Named CEO in 1989, Teerlink returned the company’s focus to increasing quality, improving service to customers and dealers, and producing world-class heavyweight motorcycles. By the end of Teerlink’s tenure, Harley Davidson recovered its U.S. market share to 50 percent and posted annual sales of more than $1.7 billion. Teerlink left his post as CEO in 1997, and served on Harley Davidson’s board of directors until 2002” (source).
The Academy session took place sometime after 1989.
Next I switch to the MATERIAL ARTIFACTS of HARLEY ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND MY OWN SELF-Harley
Edgar Schein’s Triadic model of Organizational Culture
Telling stories with observable artifacts BEING-there, gets at the visible manifestations of organizational culture, which can elicit people’s expressions of espoused values (What is True, fore-conceptions of BENEATH). The more basic assumptions can be very intuitive (BEYOND language concepts).
David, Boje, Henry Mintzberg and Richard Swedberg, in the first conversation-salon. Theorizing in Organization StudiesInsights from Key Thinkers
Process Video Click Here or
https://video.ruc.dk/media/t/0_qqsq7xtp
How Guides can Use Sandtrays in working with BECOMING-BEING-BECOMING
“I can never jump over my own shadow, because with the jump the shadow jumps ahead of me” (Heidegger, History of Time book, p. 232).
My interpretation is that my True Storytelling is my primary spatiality and temporality and mattering relation to the environing world, it is the worldhood of BECOMING-BEING-BECOMING Harley-guy that I constantly am is in my doing and Being and Becoming. To restory is to change what Frank Sinatra calls Do-Be-Do-Be-Do, includes Becoming. I am doing and being, both are co-present for me in Becoming (fore-caring), my Harley-selfhood.
Guide Question One to Participants: Choose material artifacts without thinking of your story in advance, just pick 6 to 20 artifacts to depict ‘your life in this area from Birth to Now.
I answer the First Guide Question, in silence (very important rule, no talking), in the next image is my sandtray of birth to now, in the problem of my relation to motorcycling and to cycling. I have been riding motorcycles since I turned 14. I am 73. I built one that is like the Green artifact in 2004, and rebuilt it in 2006 in a gold model with foot rests since I am older than I was. Now I am contemplating a turn away from Harley, to riding my carbon fiber bicycle that I bought when I retired from New Mexico State University in 2018.
My point is the sandtray-world is helping me unpack my ‘living story’ problem in cycle-world. You will see I put in the earth, at center, ever-the-ecologist, I am looking more at the sustainability of my lifestyle, and Harley for me is coming undone, and I am un-worlding, turning to bicycling. It is a good time for restorying my sense of Self. The two hearts are two of the four hearts (see above), that I will explain below. I externalize the problem as CYCLEs and I externalize me as the bald head man (though I have hair). I am the man with hands raised, ready to grasp cycle handle bars, but of what, HAWG or BICYCLE? Choice?
This is an EMBODIED RESTORYING PROCESS (ERP). ERP is a way participants can layout material objects (artifacts) in a sandtray. Here I placed two hearts (BEFORE-the-already-there and BETS ON THE FUTURE), the two BECOMINGs in relation BEING, to what is at center, the Earth, with animals. You can see the sun (in yellow upper right) shining. There is water with a silver fish, and animals surrounding the Earthly worldly, worldhood. That worldhood is already there, and out of the world-elements (fire, air, water, earth) cycles are made in work-worlds, then driven in consumer-worlds.
How Guides can use the Embodied Restroying Process Tool
Phase 1) Ask participants to ‘Characterize’ their situation or journey, by picking material artifacts, from Birth till Now. Configuring Worldhood, participants choose artifacts to place in the sandtray.
Hold space of silence, no talking during artifact selection. Invite participants to select one artifact to represent themselves (externalizing problem is the problem, not the people, is important for Guide to give as instruction). Starter question: depict your life from birth to now. Pick artifact to characterize the problem, and name it (not as person). Pick one or more object to represent you along the way (this is externalizing you, and name it other than your name, e.g. Cycle Chooser). Ask participants to choose several artifacts without having a pre-determined plot. Just pick material things that seem to have a spark of interest. Participants then move artifacts around until each one is emplaced, belonging to a ‘where.
Rule imposed by Guide: Participants can choose to tell about their configuration of artifacts or keep silent. If and only if, they choose to tell about it, guides can invite telling about how participants organized and placed artifacts into regions. In the above photo, vehicles (cycles and bicycle) are in a region cutting through, separating a region of sun on table with the man, and another region of earth and animals and fish.
Phase 2) Guide Question: Redo the sandtray, who helped you along the way? Take away, bury, remove, and/or add artifacts missing.
This is the phase of 4, 5, &6, Revise Strategize, & Restory. Participants move and remove artifacts, and identify Little Wow Moments (LWMs) of exception (when something worked). Gathering LWMs is a way for participants to develop their own ‘new’ story. It has to come form them (guides can not enable it for them). Guides can ask participants to move and remove items so that a path to new BETS on the Future become possible with ‘new story’
Phase 3) Finally, ask the participant to build their support group (who can help reinforce the ‘new story’ so it does not revert).
To publicize, is the Staging Principle #6 (and the BETWEEN Process).
There is a “process of ‘unworlding'” and re-worlding (Heidegger, p. 228 in History of Time book). The transformation of the sandtray configurations, is a re-motion-ing of the environment. The point is space-time-mattering are together-telling as each ting is emplaced in a region of the tray. Items are moved, removed, and this is part of unworlding. Each thing is placed in a region meaningful to the participants, and belonging to the place (region). This sets directions (directedness) of “concern as Being-in-the-world” (p. 228 IBID.). In Embodied Restorying Process (ERP) there is successive rounds of re-motion, re-moving, moving as regions take shape in relation to one another. Initially adults may be quite linear. Younger folks move a lot of artifacts about in non-linear patterns.
In is important that Guides avoid cardinal directions, or using metrics (rulers) to measure distances, or use some Jungian expert typology or dictionary of a priori meanings of objects, or get into chronology building (linear plot-lines). Rather, the participants create their own True Storytelling, their own discovery of world-regions, and relations between regions, so that “spatial whole” (p. 229, IBID.) is arrived at by the participants themselves. Sandtray is not a mirror of geography, not metrics, not chronology, or expert interpreting worldhood for participants. Rather, it is the participant doing Relational Process Ontology (RPO).
What is near or far (re-motive) is not standardized or what experts say, it is the participants own restorying using RPO. BECOMING (fore-caring) is about the participant connections to BEING-in-the-world fore-getting (getting what is already there for them). BEFORE-BECOMING-BEING-BECOMING-BETS.
There are two aspects of BECOMING (fore-caring) in relation to BEING (fore-getting).
In my sandtray, I depict the evolution of me building and riding Harley-Davidsons. I am now moving more toward electric-Harley, an electric-motorcycle called LiveWire. Or, I might BET on the Future of the carbon fiber bicycle in my garage, and ride it more often.
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About Me
Hi, Im David Boje I am a process person. I bring a process understanding to True Storytelling! Read more
Antenarrative BLOG - David M. Boje, Ph.D.