#Stories about change full#
Most strategy/mission/vision statements are full of words like ‘deep collaboration and connection’, ‘win through disproportionate share of digitization and innovation’ or ‘embracing technology and inclusive innovation’.
There are two main reasons why this happens: abstract words in the strategy/mission/vision and the ‘curse of knowledge’. Yet, most companies follow the usual routine of annual conferences, cascades and town halls followed by posters and screen savers only to be confronted with the frustration that most people in the organisation don’t get it. In fact, I am yet to meet a CEO who hasn’t said that the success of such messaging is dependent on whether the last person in sales and the last person in the factory truly gets it. Unfortunately this is often not the case.Īfter spending a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money to come up with a new strategy/vision/mission/transformation agenda, no senior leadership would say that these were only for the consumption of senior management.
Studies across the world have shown that in most companies less than 5% of employees can answer the question, ‘what’s your company strategy?’ or ‘what’s your company’s mission/vision?’ or ‘what is the essence of Change 2020 that the CEO recently launched?’Įmployees can only display new behaviour if they really know what is expected of them. Let me explain each of these story structures. Each new success provides evidence of progress and a jolt of motivation. Success stories are the fuel to keep the system going. Story skills provide the communication capability that helps leaders explain what needs to happen and why it matters. Finding and acknowledging the anti-stories quells the nay-sayers. The clarity story sets the direction and inspires action.
#Stories about change how to#
a process to regularly share stories on how to do it right (here we use success stories).Īll three parts are needed to succeed.the leadership team’s ability to engage, influence and inspire people (this is where story skills come in).an inspiring purpose (for this we use a clarity story and tackling anti-stories).It could be your corporate strategy, your culture transformation programme, your merger strategy or even one of your business line strategies-anything that involves major change. My last three years of work with stories have proven that in at least four of the eight challenges using stories or story structures can be enormously powerful.Ĭhange is most acceptable when one understands both what the change is all about and the reason for the change. After studying over a 100 companies that had attempted transformation, the eight major challenges he identified are: generating a sense of urgency, establishing a powerful guiding coalition, developing a vision, communicating the vision clearly and often, removing obstacles, planning for and creating short-term wins, avoiding premature declaration of victory and embedding change in the corporate culture. Moving from comic to reality, John Kotter, the guru of organisational change, published a paper in 1995 on the eight largest errors that can doom a change exercise. Then employees would embrace change.” The point haired boss replies “That sounds harder.” I remember reading a Dilbert comic strip once where the pointy haired boss informs everyone in a meeting: “We’re hiring a director of change management to help employees embrace strategic changes.” To this Dilbert says, “Or we could come up with strategies that make sense. This is clearly an area of struggle and concern for most leaders. As I write this, Amazon.in throws up 28,775 search results for “books on change management” in the Business, Strategy and Management section alone.
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