A Narrative Commentary on the Story of Change for Organizations in Transition

As you read through company texts on leadership and the future, the Center for Narrative Studies offers you the following ELEVEN SIGNPOSTS by which you might hear the leadership texts as narrative constructs. To re-read the texts with these signposts in mind, just click this icon wherever you see it within the texts.

Signpost 1: Evolution or Revolution?

If after reading what  company  leaders are planning for their corporate future, you start to think that they sound the same,you would be right.  When it comes to telling the story of change in our culture, we have two deeply ingrained story-types, change by evolution or change by revolution and it is hard not to hear every story as a variation of one or the other.

Signpost 2: Chronos or Kairos?

The clue to recognizing the difference is the way time gets plotted. Evolution is a natural unfolding of time. Revolution is a disruption. Evolution is the way we expected things to go. Revolution is a reversal of expectation, something unforeseen. In evolution, time is chronos, meaning  change happens within clock time. In revolution, time is kairos meaning time is seized by an unexpected event that threatens to redefine time itself. Evolution keeps happening. So change means going with the flow. Revolution is a time of fate, where destiny is determined by whether one seizes the moment or not, "carpe diem."

Signpost 3: People or Structures?

Change, like any story, needs an engine of action, which can be character driven or plot driven. Hence, we talk about change as an inside job such as in conversion-renewal stories,(character driven) or as an outside job such as "restructuring."(plot driven) The story will emphasize that it is people who must change, or that it is the organization and its structures which must be transformed. If it mentions both, there is usually a recognizable bias towards one over the other. A story of revolutionary change will tend to focus on the external setting more than character or plot, in a tale of how the real story of change is much bigger than "what is happening to who."

Signpost 4: Regressive or Progressive?

The changes can only go one of three ways. Things will get better, get worse, or  stay the same. As for plot, the story of change looks back to a prior change as cause, and to a future change as effect, so that it moves  from bad to good, or worse to better or the reverse. It is progressive or regressive.

Signpost 5: Hi Drama or Low Drama?

The dramatic energy in the story of change can be high or low.  High drama is created by words such  as "crisis" or "emergency" that evoke extremity and urgency, and point to the unprecedented. "Never before has the company had to face..." is a classic high drama approach. Low drama adopts a more gradualist vocabulary, where change is seen as on-going and incremental. High drama is high risk and high stakes, life or death, survival or decay. Low drama is low risk where change means more going with the logic of history. "This is only doing more of what we have already been doing..." goes the low drama approach.

Signpost 6: The Change Metaphor

Attention  to the language of any story of change makes us aware of the images and metaphors employed and their  impact. A traditional motif is the Resurrection, rising from the dead, coming out of the tomb, being reborn, the phoenix rising from the ashes, all of which paints a life-death, high drama of change. Something is dead,dying or has to be put to death.  Other images may refer to nature, a new spring, a revival of growth after a barren winter, implying that change is part of a natural cycle. There are metaphors of change that speak to appearance, a new paint job, a make over, a toning up, a more attractive feel/look to an organization. Here, the gaze is from outside in. How will we appear to the world after the change? How will the world feel about us then? Other images speak of change at depth, not surface.  Each image can imply something about change that goes beyond the story in which it is embedded.

Signpost 7: The Preferred Genre Type

Stories can be identified by their predominant genre. If the end threatens disaster, and the characters move from a sense of fear for their survival, we have a tragic style. If the end is bliss, that everything is going to work out in the end despite the pain of the struggle, it is called romantic in style. If the story shows up the human frailty of the hero, and invites a gentle, non-judgmental attitude, and an optimism for the future based on solidarity, we have a comic mode. When the story sets up ironic distance, that all is not what it seems and the end is uncertain because the desire driving the story   is ambiguous, we have an ironic mode of storytelling. For companies in change, the story is expected to be a romance, that things will work out. However,leadership texts usually disclose more complex storying styles.

Signpost 8: What is the Core Business?

In business organizations, change is related to the core business.  The company is either  cutting back or expanding in order to strengthen the core business. It might even be inventing a new core business because the markets for the former product have died or been taken over by other competitors. For example, Smith Corona once sold typewriters. For them, change will no longer be about how to make new and better typewriters, but how to redefine the core business and invent a product that meets new needs.

Three typical Plots

A helpful template to read the texts of organizational change is to identify three typical storylines labeled by where the predominant focus for change is placed.

The story of leadership can  be cast inside one of these stories, where the character of the leader plays the change-agent of his particular narrative.

Signpost 9: We Need to Restructure the Firm

The Plot of  Restructuring will talk about rationalizing resources and re-defining roles,  calling for greater collaboration between departments and regions.  The leader will be scripted as a gifted administrator and communicator, one whose primary role is to co-ordinate all the various parts of the whole into their new configuration. He is not about re-inventing the soul of the company  but rebuilding its engine to make it run faster, more fuel efficient, and more environmentally friendly. No parts will be left out and none left over in a  smarter deployment of staff in relation to markets and profitability.  Emphasis will be placed on how effective middle managers need to be in organizing their sectors to mesh with the new structure. A tier of leadership will be eliminated because it is top heavy and wasteful, while a new tier is  introduced to "empower the " grass roots" and be a more effective channel between workers and management. The signature of this plot is a belief that " with applied common sense, forward planning and follow through, a company will inherit the earth." It is a story most companies adopt at least once in a business cycle, and the first resort for a company in a slump.

Signpost 10: We Need to Renew Our Own Lives

The Plot of Renewal  may also talk about better co-ordination between sectors, but it clearly identifies the engine of  change to be within the company's personnel rather than the way things are organized. In fact, this story of change will often claim that any other changes in the company will prove useless unless the staff themselves are converted or re-converted to the core values of the business, such as creativity or customer service. Change will occur at "Burger King" or "Friendly's" if staff can truly internalize the mission that  "Burger King serves YOU best,"  and "You'll meet friendlier people at Friendly's Restaurants."

The leader in a story of renewal is less the manager and more the inspirer, the challenger, the one who constantly holds up the vision, and lives out the ideal.  Like the holy prophet, he calls the people back from their mediocrity or mendacity,  their failure to live the values the company professes in its mission statement.  He will seek to build an esprit de corps to act as a cohesive culture built on these values. The motivational key for this leader is how to ignite that inner flame that will turn ordinary salespersons into supersalesmen, or low dividend recruiters into hot shots who will attract a new generation of staff imbued with the same  enthusiasm. A belief that 'only the pure in heart shall inherit the earth' is the signature of this plot. Often a company founded by a charismatic leader will tend to adopt this script as their preferred story of change, (particularly if that charism has become too institutionalized, to use Weber's phrase.)

Signpost 11: We Need to Refound the Company

The plot of the Refounding story is one that speaks about new beginnings, or relates the story of the company's first founder and how he got the business started as the paradigm for how this generation needs to start the business all over again. A refounding may look back to old values or old forms, but in its most radical form, it is a story of revolution. Because the outer and inner worlds have changed so profoundly, or because the market for the original core business has altered beyond recognition, now is  the kairos-time for starting afresh.  Acting with a new creative freedom that is unshackled from once hallowed traditions, this leader will empower his workers by a detachment that only comes from believing that there is nothing left to lose. The daring will inherit the earth according to this plot. A company that has determined that changes in structure or personnel will do little to change their corporate world will often feel  forced into this story of change. It is a path more often compelled by crisis than initiated by a leader's  good planning.

The leader in such a refounding story can get away with being a less than competent manager,(unlike the restructuring leader) and  a less than inspiring example of company values (unlike the leader of renewal) So long as he or she has a creative flair, a daring to explore, to try different paths and the ability to redefine what success and failure mean, this leader can ride the revolution, if not lead it.  Such a leader strives to encourage entrepreneurship inside and outside the company, to foster individual initiative over group loyalty. If the restructurer ushers in a new order and discipline, and the renewer inspires a new heart, the refounder invites the whirlwind of chaos to provoke creativity, to disturb people into possibility.

CONCLUSIONS:

Knowing the change story

This narrative description of the plots of organizational change may help us better understand why some mergers end in divorce, and some give rise to new corporate dynamos, why some leadership choices fail even in the best of companies and why some leaders turn  all that they touch into gold. A narrative understanding teaches how critical it is to know the change-story a company is in, and for the company to consciously chose the story that best mediates between its future desires and the necessities of the world in which it operates.

Matching leader to plot

A company that does not identify the change-story it is in is more likely to select the wrong leader for the wrong story.  For instance, a company in a refounding story doesn't want a  leader-as -manager (though it might still use good management) because no competent manager would be able to tolerate the creative chaos that any successful refounding inspires.

An organization in a restructuring story will walk a sure path to problems if it chooses  a refounder to lead them into new structures. Such a character will insist on ignoring the limits on resources that motivated the restructuring in the first place.

A company in a renewal story will sour quicker than milk if it is led by managers who see structures before they see people, or led by refounders who define success as coming up with bright ideas rather than a deeper conversion of heart and mind.

Five Questions to put to any text

Keeping this narrative perspective in mind, we might ask ourselves five key  questions as we examine texts  from potential company leadership :

1. "What  dominant story of change is being offered in this text?" Restructure? Renew? Refound?
2. What kind of leadership is thus enjoined? Manager? Inspirer? Visionary?
3. What is the company's core business, according to the text?
4. What is happening in that core business that engages leadership or membership in the desire for change? Has the product changed? Has the market changed?
5. Does the story the company is telling about change match the desire expressed around what the changes will accomplish? eg If the story is titled Renew,what is the desire   for better structures about?  

We will find traces of all three plots in most texts on company change because rarely does a story assume one pure form. However, if we read the distinctive language traits  of each text  carefully, they will yield enough hints about what predominant story of change is being imagined.

Three in one?

If a story tries to cover all three change plots, the leader caught in such a polyglot story  is condemned to lead in three different directions all at once.  How can you restructure a renewed company without first knowing what refounding might demand about what needs to be renewed and restructured? Inevitably the story you start with is the story you will end up with, regardless of hopes that it automatically starts a company on a path to deeper change. Restructuring or refounding doesn't automatically lead to renewal and vice versa.

A company must deliberately strategize how to  move from one story into another. This becomes the essential skill of leadership if a company discovers that it needs to shift stories, or that it is in the wrong story of change, like Smith Corona discovering that trying to sell better typewriters is not going to work in a computer saturated world. The core business has to be the clearly articulated reason behind the change. If the company is no longer sure what that core business is about, any change story is more likely to end up going nowhere except into a dispirited and uncreative chaos-unless that is part of a story of refounding that everyone understands.

Outcomes

Organizations need to understand not only the differences between stories of change and the leaders those stories create, they must also decide which story best honors their experience and intentions about what outcomes are being sought?

1. If it is about resource efficiency? Then restructure. Elect a good manager.
2. If it is about interior revitalization of the call to live the company mission? Then renew. Elect a deeply spiritual man.
3. If it is to reinvent the core business? Then refound. Elect a creative, unfettered artist.

Imagining is more than hoping

A company needs to articulate more than what are its hopes.  It requires work of the active "as if" imagination to place oneself in the transformed company already, and feel what is different. How do I know that something has changed? What do I notice is different? What feels different? Narrative practitioners like to quote Gregory Bateson's question ,"What are the differences that will really make a difference?" Hard as these questions might be, they are already there in the stories we tell or buy into, long before anything becomes company policy. The story of change is a prophecy we don't need to consult soothsayers about. All we need is to become storywise.

It might be restructuring rather than renewal. It might be renewal rather than refounding. However  the leader one chooses is already narratively self-defined  by the story of his or her own text. 

What's in a title?

A final caution from a narrative perspective  is to never take a title at face value. While the changes that are projected for  many corporations are titled  "Restructuring," rarely do such texts  conform to this title. Not content to speak only about  better ways to get organized, company texts will  describe the change as  a 'refounding' ' a new beginning'  'a revitalization', all of which should make storywise readers suspicious that the story might indeed be far richer than its title.

Shaping the Stories that are Shaping us

This commentary is offered to demonstrate  narrative analysis applied to stories of change within organizations, and their implications for leadership choice.  It is not intended to be read as endorsing any one story over another, or imply one choice is better than another. However, the clear intent is to invite interested readers into the role of shaping the stories that are shaping them and the future of their organizations. That is the mission statement of the Center for Narrative Studies.

A wise man said, "If you don't know  history,you are likely to repeat it." Storywise says "If you don't know the story you are in, it is proof that you are still caught in someone else's." If this were only a story, it may not be so bad, but  stories have their way of imprinting themselves on our lives. For us, the key to inspired selection of organizational leadership rests in knowing the stories of change, and knowing how to change the story.