In his recent TED Talk, Princeton professor Uri Hasson investigates what he calls “a device that can record my memories, my dreams, my ideas, and transmit them to your brain.” Drawing on his research, Hasson argues that this “game-changing technology” already exists—that it has existed for thousands of years, though we are only now learning to understand how it works.
The technology is “human communication” and, most important, “effective storytelling.”
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We were delighted to participate in the first annual Cleveland Humanities Festival, in partnership with the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. Supported by Ohio Humanities, the Festival hosted speakers and events around the city over a two-week period in early April. Linked by the theme “Remembering War,” the Festival sought to “engage the public in addressing some of society’s most challenging issues and pressing concerns” in partnership with the region’s major museums, educational institutions, and arts organizations. For us, the Festival provided an opportunity to bring Books@Work beyond the workplace, and use diverse narrative representations of life experience to challenge assumptions and appreciate the memories, stories, and courage of others.
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Man is a storytelling animal—we tell stories to preserve our past, record our legacy, and to teach our children. And we have done so in writing at least since the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BC). By using high quality stories about the human condition, Books@Work gives our participants a lens through which to examine the whole of human behavior, in ways that provide for rich and relevant conversations. We know that when we read narrative literature, we identify with characters and reflect on their relationships. We see ourselves in the stories of others and we share our stories.
This is why we don’t read business or self-help books: they tell people how to behave rather than provide an opportunity to explore and learn about themselves and each other.
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What’s a story? In response to that question, many of us might think of a tale with a beginning, middle and an end, or maybe a literary classic of short fiction like Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” or Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.”
But stories exist beyond the page. They’re part of our everyday repertoire for coping with existence.
One way to define the term “story” is any attempt—written, told, or perhaps most commonly and powerfully, thought—to impose a narrative on life.
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At Books@Work, we recognize (and constantly emphasize) that the opportunity for reflection with others shapes our learning and our performance. We are always learning—about our participants, our company and community partners, about the books we use to spark reflective conversation and the benefits of reading and talking together. In this spirit of self-inquiry, we’d like to take moment ourselves to look back and reflect upon what we have observed in 2015.
Over the past year, Book@Work did not slow down. On every metric, we have grown, from the number of programs (50% growth from 2014) to the number of companies, participants, books and professors (and the colleges and universities in which they teach).
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