Documentary Intelligence™
A practice of ethical, non-extractive storytelling, built over fifteen years of documentary work.
Documentary Intelligence™ is the fancy name for something I practice as a documentary filmmaker, and now teach and deploy for organizations that want help finding, shaping, and crafting their own stories — with equal concern for the both process and the product.
At the core of it is Attention (with a capital A) — the kind I learned across hundreds of conversations and interviews, with people in some of the most challenging circumstances of their lives. Part lens, part method, it cohered into a teachable approach: to interviews, to rooms, to organizations.
And organizations, it turns out, need this way of working as much as filmmakers do. Almost none of them have access to it.
The practice has four parts.
Self as Director
The biggest mistake people make is showing up as a cosplay-ed version of who they think a professional interviewer is. Do this, and people can't meet you — which means you can't meet them either. The work starts with knowing your own lenses, your baggage (real or perceived), and the impact of your presence. You are never a neutral instrument.
Deep Noticing
When people have some say in how their story unfolds, they feel safe — and in that safety, the real story emerges, sometimes one neither of us saw coming. That's a generative interview, and it takes a particular kind of attention: reading the room, noticing what isn't said, asking the question your curiosity actually wants to ask. Attention as the highest form of care.
Relational Ethics
The people you're interviewing, on camera or not, are not resources to be mined. (They're not resources to be mined nicely, either.) Right relationship is what lets you see what's actually there, instead of a confirmation of what you already suspected.
Narrative Rendering
Synthesizing what people gave you, faithfully, into narrative — whether for a film or a clearer picture of what's really going on here. When the first three parts are done right, this has the capacity to transform how people see themselves, and how organizations understand their Work (in a capital W kind of way).
Why it Matters
When an organization has access to this practice — whether that results in a film or an honest read on your culture — things become visible that weren't before, to leadership and to people themselves. Depending on how I'm hired, the practice takes different shapes: sometimes I do the work myself, sometimes I teach it to your team, sometimes both. Done well, the whole thing is a gift to all parties: what was stuck becomes actionable, in ways that honor the organization and its people.
The practice emerged from Essential Storytelling, my broader philosophy of narrative power and the ethics of witness. EssentialStorytelling.com
Curious what this could do for you?