I have had the privilege over the last few days to spend time with my Dad and, per usual, we have had heated but good natured debates about any and every topic under the sun. At the heart of each debate, though, is a story about some experience my Dad has had that influenced his view or shaped the way he sees the world.

His reliance on stories made me think about what we may be gaining or losing in an information ecosystem where we measure conversations in the number of characters. How do we communicate a narrative across generations, providing the cultural glue as the younger generation ages and becomes the senior cohort? Put another way, how would Homer have tweeted the Odyssey?

If I shift the context a bit and think of this question in a business environment, I think we have to move beyond the rote approaches of finding information management tools that appeal to the Millenial generation, or of making sure we capture the knowledge of the Baby Boomers before they retire. Rather, we need to find a way to reconstruct narratives which have now become fragmented, distributed across the information ecosystem.

As an example, let’s consider a Sales team that just landed a significant new account. They overcame stiff opposition from several competitors, built new relationships, and crafted a winning proposal which accounted for the current tough economic environment. Now, let’s suppose the company wanted to use this success as a case study to train new Sales team members. Where would they find the content, and how would they assemble it?

The final proposal certainly would be a critical artifact, but there could also be countless emails, instant messages, drafts in the collaboration workspace, and the tacit knowledge present in each team member. This information needs to be collected, integrated, and reconstructed in the representative narrative of how they achieved this success. Without such an approach, the company loses a valuable opportunity to reinforce its culture as it strives for even greater success.

This approach moves us beyond knowledge management and technolgoy solutions to look at how meaningful cultural narratives are created when information artifacts are reassembled. The results may not be equivalent in artistry to Greek epic poetry, but they will play an important role is shaping the culture that drives business performance.