Aristotle said: “The greatest thing by far is to have mastered the metaphor.” And the Spanish philosopher and writer Jose Ortega y Gasset added, “The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.”

We've been accepted to present, alongside some sharp thinkers, our approach to Narrative Change Management at the 29th Organisational Development World Congress.

The Congress will take place on 20th and 21st July 2009 in Pretoria (info here). 

In our presentation, we'll profile how a narrative approach to change management can be applied within change programmes to improve engagement, resilience and awareness. In particular, we'll be looking at a case study of how we developed a Change Story for the Turnaround Strategy within the Department of Home Affairs.

Hope to see you there.

The turnaround of Xerox is an important case study in today's global economic situation. Here's a Fast Company article that outlines how important stories are in this context. The article also shows how litte "s" stories becomes Big "S" stories:

Storytelling is hugely important. At our town meetings, the most frequently asked question wasn't whether we'd survive, but what we would look like when we did. I got great advice: Write a story. We wrote a Wall Street Journal article, because they had been particularly nasty about us, dated five years out. It was about where we could be if we really stood up to the plate. And people loved it. No matter where I go, people pull that article out. They personalized it.

Stories exist at all levels of the corporation. You talk to tech reps, and they'll tell you what they did to help turn this company around. Whether it was saving a buck here, or doing something different for customers, everyone has a story. That creates powerful momentum -- people's sense that they're able to do good things. It's much more powerful than the precision or elegance of the strategy.

In general, our products fall within two categories:

1. Narrative in Business

We apply a range of narrative techniques that gather real, experience-based stories from your staff, management, clients and suppliers to help you understand your business better.

2. Complexity and Sense-Making

We use the Sense-Making Framework as a strategy lens to help you develop practical strategies for the complex problems you face.

In particular, our expertise lies in the following offerings:

• Thrive! through Effective Adaptation - our brand new offering that uses complexity and naturalistic management techniques in assisting organisations to adapt effectively amidst the economic meltdown. Read more here.

• Narrative Change Management

• Narrative Culture Audits and Climate Surveys

• Narrative approaches to Health & Safety

• Corporate Histories

• Complex Strategy Development

Our expertise is also applied to:

• Narrative induction programmes

• Narrative Exit interviews

• Narrative-based Employee Life Cycle Management

• Enneagram Personality Workshops

• Knowledge Management Strategy

• Knowledge Management Coaching

• General facilitation

Contact us should you wish to get a quote or find out more ...

Here's my argument: we need to move from methods of measuring organisation culture that are static, towards methods that allow for dynamic assessment. This argument comes out of experiences where static approaches have failed to provide relevant information during the life-cycle of a change management project. 

When embarking on an organisatinal intervention project, one can normally anticipate the inclusion of a "discovery" phase as the first of the project. This is where an "as-is" assessment/audit of ­the context in which the intervention needs to take place is captured. While this important step is often dealt with as a mere step in the process, and not as a key indicator of the context and how that context may inhibit or support the broader project, I am finding a more perturbing assumption about the discovery phase made by project sponsors, managers and many facilitators.