Storytelling in Support of Change: It’s great except for when it isn’t.

by Patrick Farrell

Storytelling in Support of Change: It’s great except for when it isn’t.

The idea of storytelling—or narrative—to present past, present, or imagined futures has been around probably for as long as folks have had spoken, drawn or written communication. In many communities, storytelling is a primary way in which history is ‘recorded’, unexplained events are made understandable, and even future scenarios are envisioned. Moreover, stories are remembered, recounted, maybe embellished or altered…but can spread a view of the past, present, and future well beyond what a heavily researched and footnoted text might do. No wonder storytelling is also common in organizations, and is often intentionally or accidentally, part of any change initiative in organizations.

I want to write a bit about what I see as the enormous benefits of storytelling, and some substantial problems that can come along with the stories. I do not claim to be an expert storyteller—in fact I am not particularly good at it and envy those who are. I also claim no expertise in the psychology of storytelling.  A very readable start might be Storytelling in Organizations: The power and traps of using stories to share knowledge in organizations by D. Soule and D. G. Wilson (1). Soule and Wilson note a number of kinds of knowledge that might be shared through storytelling; in this note I am focusing mostly on organizational views, particularly in relation to organizational change.

Storytelling in a change initiative can be powerful and engaging…

I have observed stories very helpfully promote new perspectives and introduce a review and reframing of foundational principles in ways that would likely have incited vehement opposition if presented otherwise. I have also seen stories, some having graduated into lore, intentionally or accidentally perpetuate organizational ways of thinking that are narrow, exclusive, and may reflect a single perspective among many relevant ones.

As an aside, storytelling is often characterized as a means of knowledge transfer—which it clearly can be. From my viewpoint, stories are examples of how specific situations may be generalized as part of our learning to help explain or predict a different situation—what we would call inductive learning. Most of K-12 and higher education relies on deductive learning—taking well-established and codified results of other people’s inductive learning and getting students to apply these generalized ideas to a variety of specific situations. Beyond all the attractive attributes of stories, they are also learning challenges to develop our inductive learning muscles. One might further note that inductive learning has numerous error paths—generalizations from a few observations that turn out to be wrong, and might require some skills and guidance to test and figure out whether a generalization is on a good path or leading to absurd and probably wrong extrapolations.

Storytelling is a natural way to embed an organization’s values and beliefs into a context that resonates with listeners, and that we remember and are often eager to retell to others. The best storytellers not only hold our interest, perhaps by showing abstract values applied to people like us, but also anticipate our eagerness to make sense of what we see and hear in ways that builds confidence in the future. Also, the best storytellers know we’ll repeat the story, and will embed short key phrases that are easy to remember, that we’ll use in our retelling– a clever way to keep us from distorting the story as it gets retold.

The result of stories well-planned and well-told is clear communication of what we are about as an organization, told in a way that most of us can find ourselves somewhere in the story. Stories about our past, present and future, can help frame how we make sense of what we have seen and heard. At their best, they can help us put our own observations into a bigger picture, perhaps changing our perspective of what might seem like random and unconnected events into a more ordered and understandable whole.

Storytelling can also reinforce limited perspectives and a cultural status quo.

Most of these terrific outcomes from great storytelling also have a different side—one that can overplay our commonality, oversimplify past actions brought to the present, and suggest that present and future hold less uncertainty than they actually do. Further, we often offer one canonical story about a set of organizational traits. Inevitably, that story has embedded in it elements of culture, perspective, and history, and usually one culture, one perspective, and one history. Despite a storytellers’ best efforts, my earlier suggestion that the best stories allow us to find ourselves in them—is misleadingly true for those who do resonate with the embedded features of the story (misleading because the universal story suggests we all have the same story), and it may be distressingly untrue for others.

I am not advocating abandoning storytelling. I am suggesting better awareness of what stories can do really well, and what they don’t do so well. In fact, carelessly constructed stories may reinforce the thinking of some parts of the organization, and lead others to feel they are not really a part of the organization at all, as they not only don’t see themselves in the current story, but may see their organizational history dismissed as not part of the ‘real’ story.

How can we make best use of storytelling to support change?

Soule and Wilson show a variety of organizational learning actions and suggest which might be better addressed through storytelling and which, by other means. One suggestion I’d make is to think through an organizational change with this information or something like it in mind, choosing when and how to make best use of the attributes of storytelling. I have heard from a number of leaders who feel they are natural storytellers, and perhaps get the most positive feedback when they are in that role. I’d hope this discussion as well as more fundamental research in this area would encourage us all to recognize how valuable storytelling can be, and that it is not always a best approach even if it is one we might be most comfortable with. We will need a repertoire of approaches, and a plan to know which to employ when.

I’ll make a second suggestion focused on storytelling itself: continue to use stories and narrative and take advantage of all those great attributes of gaining attention, carrying messages in ways direct statements could not, and being repeatable, so transmission is probable—while recognizing that usually there is no singular story, but multiple intertwined stories. I suggest storytellers encourage other stories to emerge, whether they complement or contradict the starting story. A goal might be to build a fabric of stories that are related to each other, but not in competition. All can be true, yet none need to be Truth.

Are there other perspectives on Storytelling?

My colleague Katherine Sanders and I have decided to write on a common topic, each from our own experience and perspective. You can find Katherine’s post on this topic at (Blog by Katherine Sanders of Sanders Consulting). We are starting a discussion thread on LinkedIn on this title, and invite folks who would like to comment or contribute their own view to go to either of our LinkedIn profiles and look for the post you want to comment on or add to.

References:

1. Storytelling in Organizations: The power and traps of using stories to share knowledge in organizations Deborah Soule, LILA Harvard University and Daniel Gray Wilson, LILA Harvard University, Lila Proceedings, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2002.