Do
you have any "narrative theory" case-based examples?
Anchoring
Leadership Values
A
global telecommunications company has defined its values and their
implications in leadership – called leadership
values. The challenge was to articulate what this means in
practice.
The
organization used narrative theory's storytelling as a method to
describe leadership values and
how they are actually expressed in the workplace. Storytelling was
integrated as part of a training process where participants were
invited to share their experiences of a leadership situation by using
the Storyteller web tool.
During
the training session participants discussed how these stories comply
with the leadership values.
The best stories were published in a corporation-wide Story Bank of
Best Practices in which the stories were arranged according to a
specific leadership value.
Clarifying
an Operational Excellence Program
A
global steel company implemented an international excellence programs
in which the challenge was to describe what excellence means in
practice.
The
entire organization was invited to tell stories of problem-solving in
different situations. The best stories were published in a Story Bank
web site, in which the stories are edited, illustrated and arranged
according to different topics. The Storyteller tool served as a method
to collect stories, inspiring participants to share their experiences
by reading others’ stories. The best stories were also published in
an internal magazine and given an annual reward.
Sharing
a Sense of Change
The
chemical industry is undergoing a major change in Finland as in many
other counties. The Finnish Chemical Industry Federation is conducting
a program in which employees of the different chemical industry
companies are sharing experiences on change, with the aim to make
change more visible.
The
Federation is collecting these stories of change from several
companies’ employees by using the Storyteller web method. There are
different themes of change in which people are invited to tell their
stories – such as change in leadership, change in safety and
innovation.
The
stories will be published in a book and used in different media –
corporate magazines, web sites and presentations – to illustrate
change. The overall purpose of the exercise is to generate change by
describing it through the narrative contributions of each of the
participants.
Analyzing
Corporate Culture
A
major steel industry company has redefined their corporate strategy
and positioning in the market. This turnaround, by its very nature,
requires a different way of operating and imposes major changes in the
product and service offering of the company.
It is evident that the current corporate culture must aligned
to the new strategy. In
order to understand which issues are facilitating required change,
senior management wanted to analyze current culture for fit and
alignment.
A
select group of participants were invited to tell a story of the major
problem or recent crisis in the organization. Each
participant described his or her own case by responding the seven
questions presented in the Storytelling toolset.
The resulting narrative was analyzed by using Edgar Schein’s
framework in which key values of the organization were extracted and
dominating orientations defined. Management received a comprehensive
report consisting of conclusions on elements that will drive the
change, issues that may generate obstacles for change, and
recommendations for development.
Facilitating
Out-of-the-Box Thinking and Scenario Building
An
oil company wanted to scan their business environment systematically
and apply scenario planning as a part of the strategy procedure.
The top one-hundred managers were invited to join the
environment scanning using our Signals toolset. The
process collected and evaluated over five-hundred different inputs on
changes in business environment. The
analysis extracted over thirty weak signals of change that could have
a prominent impact on company’s future.
The outcome presented new potential drivers of the future in
addition to key mega-trend and trend drivers.
Identifying
Drivers of Customer Loyalty
An
insurance company has been analyzing the behavior of their customers
over a long period and suddenly the company was loosing clients for
reasons that could not be uncovered with traditional survey
methodologies.
As
an alternative to relying on traditional customer satisfaction surveys
(quantitative data), the senior marketing team wanted to conduct a new
and innovative study. One
that would be based on gathering perceptions and attitudes through
actual customer stories (qualitative data).
To facilitate the process, the company used the Storytelling
toolset.
One-hundred
customers were invited to participate in the study. Customers
were divided into three groups and asked to tell a story about one of
the three issues: (1) an interaction with the insurance company when
everything went satisfactorily; (2)
a story about a situation where everything went wrong or; (3) a story
about the role of safety in their family and their life.
The
three sets of stories were analyzed and drivers of loyalty were
identified and classified into three categories; (1) communications
(cognitive) dimension, (2) behavioral dimension and (3) attitudinal
dimension. Key loyalty
drivers and threats were defined in these dimensions and corrective
actions for increasing communications, encouraging different behavior
in the customer interaction, and enforcing certain emotional aspects
in marketing communications were defined.
