“Our conversations and your presentations on Shakespeare have also led to the insight that a lot has apparently been thought and written to be discovered and rediscovered, simply because we have experienced it before. History cannot repeat itself, but we can recognize analogies and then be sensible. If we do not want to relive the fourteenth century, we must set high standards for the quality of the decisions we make. It helps to reconsider our value system and take responsibility for it together. . We need independent thinkers, and we need cooperation, because we cannot leave it to politics. I agree that Shakespeare can help, and I think many other writers, philosophers, and musicians can help too, because they capture our emotions. Let’s use them to find new routes. I keep asking myself the question: how can we develop Lean & Green, and what can we learn from everything that has been written before?”

“Use Shakespeare in a value chain presentation to a group of logistics managers and you’ll immediately get their attention, because that’s just not what they expect. Then show them that Shakespeare worked with recognizable patterns, and they’ll be wide awake. The reflection exercise helps them to think of more sustainable ways to grow their business. You’ve shown us that there’s nothing new under the sun, just that we often forget it. Didn’t Shakespeare write, ‘All the world’s a stage’? That’s a cliché, but it’s true. If you see this, you can lift yourself up and take on a broader perspective so you can make long-term decisions, preferably together. That’s what happens in Lean & Green And Shakespeare helps explore our transition arena.”

“RWS employees are practical doers. We usually do not reflect so easily, but given the hectic pace, we quickly move on to the next project that has already started. Every now and then you also have to take a moment to reflect. The narrative method gives us insight into more perspectives and the coherence between them. This makes us aware of common threads and how they influence the complex set of relationships at the individual, organizational and network level. The narrative method invites us to consciously pause and reflect and really delivers in-depth conversations, richer learning experiences and mutual understanding. That also helps enormously in subsequent projects.”

“With the narrative-based learning approach, Iris and Mike introduced us to a great application of organizational learning. The stories illustrate what those involved in a case face, how they can meet those challenges. We can learn from this to adapt our processes. We see opportunities for broader application of narrative learning within our organization.”

“I am used to work with pattern recognition in my mind. What is power? That is when you recognize a pattern and you can predict how such a pattern will behave. Shakespeare and many other writers do a lot of pattern confirmation or pattern recognition. The moment you put those things next to each other – Shakespeare’s play and reality – then you can learn from each other. In my experience, that pattern recognition contains an enormous amount of sociology. It is about understanding human behaviour. The world is a series of patterns and if you can interpret those patterns, especially socially, then you can really manage that.”

“When you start talking, I always wonder where you are going. Then at some point it suddenly clicks. Your approach to Shakespeare and sustainability makes me think differently. It trains my brain because it is unconventional, and I like that. You invite me to take a step outside my own company, so that I can look at my company from a fresh perspective and encourage me to think of relevant connections and gain new inspiration.”

“In the narrative method you keep the questions more open, you give the interviewee more space to formulate and elaborate on ‘own answers’. The word ‘interview’ should actually be replaced by ‘retrieving stories’. After all, it is about personal experiences: employees and other involved parties receive personal attention during such a narrative conversation. The total of retrieved stories provides a complete story. It provides a view of all actors in a large, complex force field. This is comparable to the ‘wholeness’ of a play or allegory, in which all characters must be represented to create a true-to-life image of reality.”

“I think people like to work with Shakespeare in the way you propose because these parallels tell them a lot about who they are and what they value. Yet it’s not scary: they don’t have to identify with the characters of the play, because a play is not a mathematical, self-evident model; it is lifelike.”