Hey, Megan, let's do a podcast.

Great idea.

What should we talk about? One of the best parts of my current state in my career is that I have an opportunity to meet and talk with all sorts of interesting people about their work, the kinds of things they're thinking about, and it's a great way to gather new ideas. And the cool thing about the podcast is that then I get to share a bunch of those conversations with a broader community because, like, that all to myself.

Right.

It's part of. And you'll hear this in this conversation, it's actually part of our generous collaboration culture, and it's one of our core values that we freely share a lot of what we do on the job. And that's where I'm really excited to have this conversation with Joe Bastian or Josef Bastian. We've known each other for solidly over 20 years, and we've been network connections. He's actually worked at TorranceLearning for a little while. He's been a mentor to me, and we've been business collaborators. He's an L and D guy, an entrepreneur, an author and creator at Folkteller Studios, and an artist. So I'm really excited about kicking off this conversation with Joe Bastian.

You know, Megan, we've. How we've known each other for. It's rolling into actually 25 years. I'm gonna say it, there, 25 years.

Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Certainly over 20. It's between 20 and 25. And so I was giving Dean sort of like my. My. My journey, right. So as I started as a tech writer and then instructional designer, and then into a consultant and then writing kids books and starting a studio and working on the entertainment side. And one of the things, I think the cross where we've stayed in touch is a lot of the. The discipline and rigor of instructional design and how that's mapping into entertainment with AI being the disruptor.

So that's where my head space has been. So that's kind of. I think that's a very compelling place to start. And I think what we had talked about earlier was narrative design and narrative architecture. And so for people that don't know what that is, is really taking a systematic approach to storytelling. And in the business world, it usually manifests in, like, brand. In brand storytelling, internally, like in our space and organizational development, it manifests as culture and all the internal activity, the human activity within an organization. And with AI now there's this big sort of aha.

That you could actually take a systematic approach using AI as an enabler or an amplifier to build out these types of programs internally for culture and externally for brand. And people are smack dab in the middle of that right now. And in the very early. I think it's. We're in the very, very early stages. I'm. As a consultant, I'm working in that space now. And as a.

As a creator for an entertainment studio, I'm working in that space as well because we're building out an entire story world across media. So that's where my. That's where my madness lies. It's like there's an old. I have to find it. I'll send it to you. Someone sent this to me. They said, joseph, this is how I picture your brain.

And it was like an old Muppet skit. It was called the Windmills of My Mind. And it was either Sesame street or the Muppets. And basically the guy's singing the Windmills of My Mind. And the windmill is spinning and the wind picks up and the. And the windmill starts spinning faster and the guys. And then it's like it ends up a tempest and every. Everything gets blown away.

That's kind of. And I was like, well, that's a pretty fair assessment. I'm going to stop now because, like, I just threw all that, all that against the wall. And like, does any of that make. Even make sense?

Yeah, it totally makes sense. It totally makes sense. Let's dig in on narrative architecture, because we blew right past it.

And I was like, I think I

got what it is. What do we actually mean by narrative architecture? What are some of the bones and the structures and the frameworks for this?

Sure, so I will speak in business language first about narrative architecture, not about entertainment. And let's start with brand. Right? So people that work in establishing a brand or reviving a brand or rejiggering a brand, they work in brand storytelling because it's all built around what is the story of the brand. So now you're getting into sort of like the why the. The vision, the value, who the audience is, all those. All those things. And those things already exist. But when you bring AI into it, when you have these large learning models, it becomes even more critical that you can't guess.

I mean, again, like someone said, this is like, it's still a computer, so you need to be precise. And typically, brand was. I mean, there's people that have. There's. There's basic brand disciplines, but there's a certain sort of magic that they've. You know, it's like the wizard behind the screen, like there's certain things and this is what agencies, how agencies kept running was like, oh, well, we're bringing this creative in and we're doing this and we're doing that. And yeah, there's, you're going to have all the, all the pieces, but the way we do it, like, we can't really, we can't really tell you because, you know, we're the, we're the experts and that's our bread and butter. I think what's happened now is people are using AI and AI demands preciseness and clarity.

And so the narrative architecture is that it's really now going back and with a designer discipline, with an architect's discipline, with a software developer's discipline, with creativity, putting that, investing in that design phase and that architecture phase. Because once you do that, that actually becomes the prompts to whatever AI tools you're using and it becomes the source of truth for any brand work moving forward, for anything you develop. So I just had this conversation this morning. Is the, the model of. Or the value proposition has flip flopped because it used to be like design is always important, but people always focus on the end product and the assets and whatever. Now if you invest the time in the design, in the architecture phase and really get it precise, the outputs are much more manageable. They're not, you're not guessing anymore because it's all, you know, that, that, that design, that architecture, that blueprint becomes the source of truth. And so that's what, that's what narrative architecture is.

Narrative architecture provides you that systematic approach to a brand. All right? And again, I'm using business language now. Internally, it's culture, right? It's the same thing that narrative architecture, but it's looking at the organization from within and saying, okay, you know, whether it's HR or operations or leadership or all, you know, all the things like from a learning, performance standpoint that you, that you touch within an organization, anything that's around that sort of, that, what I would call the worker or employee life cycle, which is, you know, how are you attracting, recruiting, onboarding, developing succession, planning, all these, all those things that are happening simultaneously in an organization that culture impacts, narrative architecture comes to play there too. It's the same, it's the same model, it's the same concerns internally. And then the reality is, and not a lot of people have talked about this, but AI is accelerating. These conversations is culture and brand need to connect. At some point. It really should be a seamless thread.

And in most organizations it's not, you know, sales and marketing does not talk to hr. In a siloed organization. There's no, in. Most people say there's no need for it. We're outward facing, we're selling, we're promoting our products and services internally, we're managing the workforce. Why would, why would we talk to each other? Well now that's why, because it's driven by the story, the story that the internal organization embraces and say, I believe in what we're doing and that's going to manifest in our product and service offering to our clients. And the narrative architecture is the system that can manage all this. And again, like we're in the really early stages of it.

This is like thought leadership stuff. People are trying to figure, figure this out.

So do you have any examples of an organization that has a really coherent narrative architecture that their, their external face and their internal culture are really well aligned? And what are some of the things that that organization can take advantage of because of that?

I would say no right now. No, because there. But, but so you look at, okay, so you look at Apple, right? And what I'm saying is you step back and you look just at a philosophical level. This is an organization that has really aligned their internal workforce with their external product and service offering. And they've done it on purpose and there's probably some systematic approach there over the years. But it's like they're recruiting and hiring the right type of Apple person and they're training them up, they're incentivizing them in the right way and that becomes representative in, in their, in their product and service offering. There's other companies you could, you know, I think Google used to do a good job at that. There's companies that do a poor job at that.

I think Amazon does a, does a very poor job. But the reason they're successful is because they built the, they built the internal infrastructure. They're putting all their money in the user experience. Getting the stuff to your house as quickly as possible for the convenience at the expense. Now you're getting my spin at the expense of the, the worker. But I said it there, I said it. So, but I think what people are tuning into this now and so on the service. Yeah, I'm a service provider, I'm a consultant.

So what we're seeing now is people, the, the buyer, the client is beginning to see the need for this because now the gap is getting, the gap is getting bigger. And if you don't have some sort of narrative architecture or structure or system that you're that you're building or that you're relying on, you're going to be. You're already behind. And I think people are starting to feel that anxiety. It's almost like the anxiety when the Internet came out in the mid-90s. And I remember companies just saying, we need a website. I don't know what a website is, but everyone else is getting one and we need one. It's.

I feel like it's kind of like that with AI. It's like we need to be using AI. We need to be using it more. We need to train our people on it. I don't know what any of that means, but I just know we need to do that.

Well, and I can see where cohesion between the external brand and the internal culture affects certainly the internal component, right? So I can envision when there's misalignment, and I work really hard at Torrance Learning, right, to make sure that we are aligned. And that's a constant effort. It's not just something you do it once and you move on, because alignment, it's a constant tweak. But I can envision where there's not alignment, then from a culture perspective, the culture could suffer.

Right?

Like there's, there's. It's one thing to be treating your, your customers and saying, saying we're one thing, but when I see what's under the hood inside and it's not the same, that feels icky or not aligned or, or morally harmful. And that I can envision that leads to burnout, resentment, a lack of agency. It's a lot of frustration. Does it go the other way? Do brands suffer if we don't have a culture aligned internally? I mean, Amazon seems to make a lot of money. I'm not picking on, but.

Well, okay, no, that's a really good example. So you look at, you look at the culture, especially at, you know, on the, you know, sort of the worker B side, like working in the distribution centers and high turnover rates and lack of job satisfaction and all those things. That's one of the things where the value of the product and service is still outweighing the negative portion on the internal side. But eventually, over time, it ends up catching up with you. What you see, if Amazon is an example, those are sort of the, the first chinks in the armor, right? And internally they feel that a lot more. And I'm sure they talk about it, you know, about how they don't like working here and they want to find another job. And like you, you know, that's Probably a lot of the, a lot of the dialogue, but out to the consumer, it will eventually get to you. You can, you can believe if we're starting to hear that, it's much louder inside.

Yeah. So what does, what does the average person in learning and development, what can they do to bring to connect to the narrative architecture and those cultural touchstones within a business?

Yeah. So I was just having this conversation today. Is that because the fear now is like so AI, the we have reached a point and we will continue where producing deliverables was the time consuming part of. I'm talking specifically just in, in learning and performance. Right. Developing, developing the assets for any sort of program. That was, the production was what took the most time. Now because of AI, that has been completely accelerated.

And now clients like, well, we can do it ourselves. But what they're missing is the human component is now being elevated and the role of the architect and the designer is now being elevated. I think for anyone who is an instructional designer or is in sort of the strategy architect role, one, they need to be aware and they need to lean in because I really believe moving

forward

we're going to have to retrain the client on how they buy our services because the cart's before the horse now. And I really think we're going to be spending a lot more time and this goes back to narrative architecture. We're going to be spending a lot more time in that discovery and analysis and design phase of anything because the production of it is going to be so much quicker and across, across media. And that is a huge, huge change in everything, in the way we position our product and service offering, in the way we, the way we develop things, the way we produce things, the way we deliver things. And I think that awareness is going to be really, really critical because every company is going to have to reposition their value proposition.

Well, and it occurs to me, right, the majority of people who are listening right now work inside organizations. They're not service providers, they're not consultants other than within their organization. What's the mindset shift for them or some of the strategies or tactics that you would encourage them to adopt as they go about their lives and their work.

Yeah, I would, I would say it's, and this is really, it begins with sort of awareness and a consciousness of the importance of human centered design. Because one of the fears that is out there right now across the board is, you know, AI taking over and you know, us, us losing our sense of self. And I, I think those conversations go all the Way down to the personal, into the professional level and then at an organizational level, at a group, at a group level. And I think inside an organization, especially leadership, needs to have their eye on everything we knew do needs to be human centered in, in as far as our approach. And that really needs to be. Everything needs to be grounded in sort of that human centered design. If you haven't looked into what human centered design is, look into it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff out there and.

But if that approach is the right approach, because that's going to give the grounding that we need as we move forward into, you know, into this, our unknown future here.

Well, and what strikes me and you, and I've had conversations around this, is that this is a mindset that really taps into your creative genius as a human being. Jo. Right. So like you are an author, you are a producer, you're incredibly creative. And what's your, it strikes me, I'd love to know what's your creative process like, how do you describe what goes on inside your brain?

Well, the only this, my grounding. So my grounding. And when I create, you know, I call it imagination grafting. And I, you know, I do a lot of, I do a lot of writing, so I'll use writing as the example. But in that creative activity, what I like to do is when I end a writing session, I use the analogy of if you had to create a mile long rope and you only had 6 inch pieces to do it and it had to be seamless, imagination grafting would be your writing session. At the end you leave with it, you leave it open, you don't close it and you fray the end of it. And then the next session you come back and you have this frayed end and you have to figure out a way, okay, how am I going to connect this with this next session that doesn't exist yet, this thing that I have to create. And so what it does is it draws you back to your previous thought, allows you to connect that thought with your new thoughts and to continue that process on and on.

I did that because I never thought I could write anything. I started, actually started as a writing poetry. I never thought I could write anything longer. But through that, through that process, you know, I've written a lot, I've written a lot of books.

So say how many books have you written at this point? Can you even count them anymore?

It's like 25.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. And, and we'll make sure that we, we put some Some links in with the show notes to, to some of your work. But one of the things that as you're talking about imagination grafting that occurs to me is. And you can tell me Megan, you are drawing a connection here that makes no sense and was not what you intended. But I'm thinking of the narrative architecture of a culture inside an organization can have little grafty points where you can then tap in with particular programs or particular deliverables or particular approaches to say like ah, I can tap into, you know, you know one of, one of Torrance Learning's core values is generous collaboration. Right. And part of this podcast actually is that. Right.

So that's almost like a graft point where. Oh, podcast, podcast. How do we do podcast in a way that is generous collaboration. Right. And so I can, I can stitch that together. Of course this is only a, this is an audio only podcast. So people can't. It's see me doing the.

Making my fingers like a graft hair. Does that work?

So what you're talking about is a branching universe, right? In, in the world of story world building. So the br. You have a branching universe but it's all connected to a main branch, right. So everyone can, can, can envision that they did a really, really good job of that. If you've, if the Marvel the Loki series is all about branching universes and it's very, very cool the way they, the way they interpreted that. But yeah, I mean that's exactly. It is. And this goes back to the narrative architecture.

What the narrative architecture gives you is the source of truth, the canon, the main branch. And if you're building off the main branch, you really can't go wrong. And it's the job of. And this is the back end of everything, right? So after the architect and the designer designs the narrative and has creates that main branch, the source of truth. There's a thing called narrative drift. And AI does this too. They call it hallucinating or whatever. But as soon as you establish that main branch or that canon, the tendency is there'll be drift because there's all these outside forces, right.

We live in the real world. And so this is what other people will internal to organizations and external if they're doing brand is you're going to have to manage the drift. So someone's going to have to be an expert in the canon and say oh, we're getting off point here. We're getting, we need to bring it back in. We need to bring back in. And that's going to be a new Role that's going to be a new or multiple roles within an organization for someone to do that and a new service offering on the outside for. For service providers. So, yes, you're spot on.

You're right. I love, I wish I had taken like anthropology and sociology and all those things are like, oh, super cool. I love this. Okay, Joe, one of the things, because I spend so much time at work and I talk to people about their

work,

I. I like to ask because answers are always fun. What's a work habit or a quirk or some sort of productivity ritual that's. That's yours. Like a fidget, a weird trick, a snack. You always eat. What's your jam, man?

So I write every morning. I block out an hour every morning at the same time. And I do it seven days a week. I've been doing that for 30 years.

Wow. That's how you crank out 25 books.

Yeah.

Or so.

Yeah.

Outstanding, Joe. Thank you. This has been fantastic to reconnect. A great opportunity. Excuse to reconnect. And I can't, can't wait to. To share some of these ideas with that broader, broader community. So thank you.

Thank you so much. And where is a good way to connect up with you? What's the best place we can point people?

Yeah, go to. You just go to folktellers.com, all our stuff is there. You can get a hold of me there. Link. I'm on LinkedIn, so yeah, not hard to find.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, friend. Take care.

All right, bye.

So how'd that go, Megan?

That was interesting and fun. I was thinking that narrative architecture must be something big and hard. And I'm sure there are structures around it and methods for doing it. Right. But also it's a concept that makes sense. Right. And if I can bring that from, especially the Marvel. Right, of course, Big fan of Marvel.

But the bringing that analogy in helps it make a lot of sense. Right. Maybe things won't get quite as weird as the Loki series, but, you know, having that continuity, I think is. Is really important and interestingly, something we're doing right now at Torrance Learning. So we have a whole culture and values kind of reconnection project going on. And we're going back and we're looking at what are our values and what does it mean to live our values. And to me, it occurs to me that's a component of narrative architecture.

This is Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance, and this has been a podcast from Torrance Learning Tangents is the official podcast of Torrance Learning as though we have an unofficial one. Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance. It's produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild, engineered and edited by Dean Castile, with original music also by Dean Castile. This episode was fact checked by Meg Fairchild.