« Proposed Learning Glossary Additions | Main | 800 Offers of Employment in a Single Day »
“Cavemen With Briefcases”
By Richard Nantel | October 11, 2007
Compared to many other species, humans have a long lifespan. Whereas geneticists can study more than 50 generations of fruit flies in a single year, the human species is more difficult to study from an evolutionary standpoint. Since a new human generation comes into being every 20 years or so, our rate of evolutionary change is significantly slower than that of fruit flies.
Evolutionary psychology aims to explain human behavior by considering the fact that the human brain has not changed very much in the last 10,000 years. Although technology is advancing at an exponential rate, we are, as Alan Kay, co-founder of Xerox PARC describes, “just cavemen with briefcases.”
Evolutionary psychology does a great job of explaining human behavior, from marriage, divorce, competition, war, etc. We may feel we are enlightened compared to past generations, but, in reality, we are still driven by the same urges that influenced our behavior 10,000 years ago.
Looking at humans from an evolutionary psychology viewpoint may explain why telling and recording stories is becoming an important part of formal knowledge management and learning strategies within many organizations. Telling and listening to stories has been at the very core of human communication since the dawn of time. As technology has advanced, our stories are now more likely to come from books, television, film, and the Internet, rather than from fellow tribe members seated around a campfire. But, stories still remain central to human life.
According to Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, organizations such as the World Bank, NASA, and 3M, among others, are implementing “organizational storytelling.” Mr. Pink reports that:
“Xerox—recognizing that its repair personnel learned to fix machines by trading stories rather than by reading manuals—has collected its stories into a database called Eureka that Fortune estimates is worth $100 million to the company.”
Organizations have for years been wondering how to capture the knowledge of their employees. Unlike traditional knowledge management solutions, organizational storytelling may be the most human approach to solving this problem.
Time to turn on the video cameras.
Topics: Evolutionary psychology, Organizational storytelling, Stories, Talent Management |
