I recently read a riveting article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Storytelling that drives bold change”- which conceptualised (with practical examples) the poignancy of taking a narrative driven approach in decision making across any enterprise context. Here, the authors alludes to the well known conundrum that “up to 70% of organisational change efforts fail” in the absence of intrapreneurial activity which is a requisite in order to tap ‘front line intelligence’ through the interplay of tacit and explicit knowledge which is by law emergent.
Narratives as we know it are often metaphors, all with their own paradoxes and nuances but which can often be oxymoronic through their intro and retrospective lenses. Leveraging the power of story telling is a key trait that any stakeholder (internal or external) needs to take in order to drive innovation where innovation does not exist. Being the devils advocate is NOT recommended here as this will strain the messaging context under which the narrative is delivered and hinder any form of innovation!
To augment this, the HBR article delineates the resistance to change through the quintessential example of gatekeepers whom have deep institutional memory and hold trepidations about them getting ‘lost in transition’. Sure, this is a risk and fundamental component of Kurt Lewins force field model which plots the forces against and resisting change from a theoretical framework, however, the way forward is to nurture change through a model that dispels the fundamental uncertainties and anxieties that pervade incumbents!
This type of championing of the change imperative will drive thunderous applause across the full gamut of stakeholders. As the authors of the article purport “You don’t need to have all the answers to being addressing the difficult part of your company’s past. You do need to be willing to look at them unflinchingly and deal honorably with whatever you find”
It is imperative to therefore not only provide clear mission statements, but garner collective intelligence through the forms of distributed work teams that span multivariate cultures to provide heterogenous input back to the organisational system. This will provide you with blatant and often direct feedback that can be in nature contrarian but which exhibits a truth when studied and re-engineered through the lens of executive leadership as after all – it is front line intelligence that matters when solving customers problems!
Innovation happens in many places and has many faces. Enterprises are required to nurture internal processes that work in sync like ecosystems to encourage front line intelligence to feed ideas through to management so that services, products, processes and teamwork ensues collaboratively to deliver benefits to the Value Chain. This requires effective team work and a supporting methodology that aims to treat your team more like an agile soccer team if you think about it so that anyone can effectively take control of the ball and score the goal.
– Max Bhanabhai (contributing author to www.bioteams.com) https://bioteams.com/2019/11/24/customer-intelligence-and.html
Executive teams need to therefore make stories and narratives the chief currency of their leadership mandate whilst respecting the input from all tiers of the organisation. Fundamentally, it is prudent to leverage information systems with knowledge management toolsets to augment ideas from all corners of the enteprise.
In addition, remember that “evolution has taught us to pay close attention to one another’s feelings, particularly those of people with influence over our security and well-being”. The amalgamation of these concepts lead us to the conclusion that there is no other model out there apart from the one I delineate in this article will enable narratives to not only be communicated but also reciprocated back through a feedback system that will ensure the organisation invigorates and champions itself forward! After all, the leaders mood is always contagious and ricochets across every spectrum of the organisation whether its business, social or community!