Whenever someone asks me this question I tell them this story.

One of our first narrative projects was to help a government department assess their occupational health and safety practices to see whether their policy and procedures were being following and to determine their training needs. We formed two teams to collect our data, one used structured interview techniques and the other collected stories. At the end of the first day of data collection both teams got together to compare notes. “Well, looks like they pretty much have things together,” said the interview team. “They seem to follow the procedures and policies quite well.” The narrative team members looked at each other in amazement. “So you didn’t hear about the guys showering in their own urine because their recycling system is faulty or how in one workshop everyone wears protective shoes because a guy chopped the top of his foot off a while back but no one wears protective eye wear?”