Creating a great change story
Whilst the ‘need for change’ may be driven by the numbers and the reason for change might make sense from a purely rational organizational viewpoint, it may not yet resonate with the workforce at an individual level. Up to this point, some of the change messaging may have been quite abstract making it difficult for the audience to understand the relevance and immediacy of the ‘need for change’.
Adding your own personal change story can serve as a way to share relevant experiences and learnings, which can be used to help your team understand from a personal viewpoint of what it will mean when the organization transforms from the current state to the desired future state.
This will make the ‘need for change’ more concrete by illustrating an abstract change concept with a real life example so that people can see how the ‘need for change’ relates to something tangible.
This post is a guide on how to create a change story to support your improvement program.
Change story - structure
Every story needs a good story arc. A good structure is the ‘Situation, Conflict and Resolution’ story arc.
This natural narrative framework will ensure that your story flows both from a timeline view point but also in the emotional telling of the story.
- Situation: Start with the context. What was the position of the company at the time. Were they doing well ? Include your own situation at the time – or key colleagues in the story.
- Conflict: What was the threat that needed to be overcome ? Competitive forces at play ? Globalisation ? Were there warning signs ?
- Resolution: What was the solution ? How did you overcome the threat ? What did people have to do differently ?
- Ending: What was the final state of play ? Was there stability ?
Note that your story does not necessarily have to have a happy ending! If your story is relevant and has a sad ending, it can actually serve as a warning or motivator about will happen if the proposed Improvement program does not go ahead. There are many salutary business case studies that provide lessons learned for what happens if no action is taken or action is taken too late (e.g., Polaroid, Nokia).
Change story - tips
Some useful change story tips:
- Use the situation, conflict and resolution story arc: Set the context and then talk through the challenges being faced – and the ‘hard’ times before talking through how you got through the challenges (the resolution)
- Personalise the story: Talk through the key characters of who was involved – and the struggles they faced. What were your thoughts and fears at the time ?
- Highlight the end solution: Spend time talking through the final outcome and the impact on you, your colleagues, community and overall organization
- Mention relevant lessons learnt: Talk through the key takeaways that you and others at that time learnt from this and that you think apply to the current situation
Cascading change stories - Ownership and authenticity
As the change message is communicated down through multiple levels of the organisation – ideally each level of the organisation embraces the change and effectively communicates the need for change directly to the next level in their own words.
Each leader should bring their own views and experiences into their own change story – giving them ownership and authenticity.
This is in parallel with the messaging being sent out by the executive leadership team. In other words, employees will hear the ‘corporate’ message from the executive leadership team but they should also hear the message being sent by their own, direct leaders. And these messages whilst slightly different will reinforce each other.
Allowing each level to define for themselves their own change story and explain why they believe the organisation needs to change is much more likely to lead to commitment and motivation to make the change.
Motivators
A change story should ideally resonate with the listener and motivate them going forwards.
However, research has shown that work motivators vary widely across an organisation’s employees. In other words, what motivates one person to work at an organisation may have little meaning or influence for another person.
There are at least five sources of meaning for people to work based on who is impacted. They include:
- the person themselves – in other words, ‘What’s in it for me’ – which might include employment, salaries and wages, working conditions, hours of work and so on…
- the team the person is working with – how will they be impacted…
- the organisation itself – will the change allow the organisation to survive or thrive…
- the customers – is the change good or bad for customers…
- the impact on society – the wider community – how is the organisation helping the community generally…
These motivators are not mutually exclusive; people are quite likely to be motivated by several factors but attribute a different level if importance to each factor. For example, a person might be highly motivated by money but also be motivated by the team they are working with – these motivations are not exclusive.
For any person in the organisation – these motivators vary widely. Additionally, depending where a person is in their career, the motivators might change as well.
A successful change story that resonates and motivates employees needs to bear this in mind and the message needs to incorporate multiple motivators to appeal to as wide a base of employees as possible.
But… a single change story is not going to motivate everyone – so remain authentic and tell the change story that is true for you.
So this leads back to the first point of cascading change stories. Enabling each leader to tell their own story helps reinforce the overall change message and by using different motivators will appeal to more people.
Combine threat and opportunity to the organization
Lastly, the change story should combine both the threat and the opportunity.
In other words, the change story should talk about 1) what could happen if the organisation does not make the required change (the ‘threat’) and then 2) what could happen if the organisation is successful at making the change (the ‘opportunity’).
This gives a more complete view of the choices open to the organization and follows a story ‘arc’ – with an ending that shows what is possible if the organization chooses to make the required change.
Conclusion
This guide hopefully gives you a good understanding of why change stories are used, and how to create your own change story for your own improvement program.