The story‐driven organization

Abstract

The old metaphors for business-war, science, the machine-are distancing and constrain an organization's ability to envision possibilities for action. Understanding motivation and behavior in terms of story-character, objective, and conflict-enables leaders to better engage both the minds and hearts of employees and manage change. The authors explain the elements of story and present six guidelines for tapping its power. Applications include connecting employees to the organization's mission; understanding and managing the cultural implications of system and process change; and marshalling the tension inherent in conflicting objectives, such as product performance and environmental stewardship, as a source of energy and innovation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Futurist Rolf Jensen, writing a decade ago, foresaw a paradigm shift with significant implications for organizations:We are in the twilight of a society based on data. As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place more value on the one human ability that cannot be automated: emotion. Imagination, myth, ritual-the language of emotion-will affect everything from our purchasing decisions to how we work with others. [Organizations] will thrive on the basis of their stories and their myths. 1 Story is increasingly the language of the twentyfirst century across so many domains in our lives. Stories are central to how we perceive the world, how we communicate our world to others, and how we situate ourselves collectively in the world.Inside organizations, however, storytelling is often viewed as the proverbial icing on the cake, a more "user-friendly" way to engage employees in the company's mission. Certainly we tell a lot of stories inside organizations, but rarely do we think in terms of story.Stories, like brands, often have their roots inside the marketing department of organizations, where they are viewed as externalized objects, commodities to be packaged and presented. While important, this view fails to account for the critical role of the internal experience and the social construction of meaning in understanding the power and purpose of stories in organizations-the key, perhaps, to addressing the fact that 71 percent of employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged with their jobs (according to the Gallup Management Journal's semi-annual Employee Engagement Index). 2 We see the notion of a brand as a useful way to think about the story of an organization as it is experienced and shaped by employees. In looking at brands as an internalized process, we recognize that the first questions an employee asks of his or her company's brand is, "What does this brand mean to me? What's in this brand for me?" From a narrative perspective, we can see these questions as, "What story am I a part of? What is my place in that story?" This article will explore what it means to use story as a root metaphor to more deeply engage employees. We will look at the common principles that underlie story as a system of thought, and then...

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