Humans need narratives in order to make sense of their world - we're hardwired to respond to stories.  If your change initiative doesn't provide a strong 'story' that your employees can understand, internalize, and communicate to others, I can guarantee it won't work the way you want it to.

"But," I hear you say, "I'm not exactly J.K. Rowling over here.  How am I supposed to come up with a 'story'?"

Don't worry - storytelling isn't about writing a novel about your business.  It's about creating a narrative that puts the new information in a context that helps people make sense of the change and understand why it's important.  Here's how to get started.

OPTION 1:  Tell the story from the employee’s perspective

In this approach, the business story is told from the employee’s point of view, and should include one or more of the following elements:

• Use the employee as the protagonist to demonstrate why the new model makes sense (“Employees in X department were finding that processing new orders was taking more than 24 hours, which made it difficult to meet deadlines.  The new system will cut the average employee’s workload in half.”)
• Describe how the new model will solve customer problems (“By cutting the 24-hour processing time in half, customers will get their orders faster and with less time spent on CRM.”)
• Communicate how the new model or approach will make better use of resources, activities or partnerships compared to the old model (“By partnering with Acme Inc., we’ll gain new markets for our product line which will increase sales and help the company grow - which in turn will deliver benefits to all our employees in the form of greater job security, better career opportunities, and increased compensation.”)
• Demonstrate how the change will better reflect the employee’s values, beliefs or ideology and thereby increase their job satisfaction (“By changing to the new system, we’ll cut our energy use by 25%, because we believe that companies have a responsibility to look after the environment and we know our employees believe that, too.”)

OPTION 2:  Tell the story from the customer’s perspective

In this approach, the story is told with the customer as the protagonist.  This approach is particularly useful for businesses with a strong customer focus and where employees are already inclined to identify with customers.

• Describe specific challenges the customer faces and how the new model will help address these challenges (“We know our customers have been hit hard by the recession, so our new a la carte pricing helps them manage expenditures more effectively.”)
• Use some drama and emotion to help the story resonate with employees (“Our products are used by 3400 childrens’ hospitals across the country.  Our new process will ensure that our products do a better job of making children’s surgical recovery times easier and less painful - which means they can go home to their families much sooner than they did before.”)

Remember:  Stories which are perceived as patronizing or overly simplified can backfire:  “They told us X in the meeting, but I saw on the news that our share price is down due to Y.  I guess they’re lying to us as usual.”  Whether you go with Option 1 or 2, keeping the narrative honest, transparent and authentic is crucial to organizational buy-in.

Adapted from Business Model Generation [ link to http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/ ]  by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.

Sometimes, memos just aren't enough

The supply chain department in a global healthcare organization was given a clear directive:  Cut $50 millin in costs in the next 12 months or there are going to be serious cutbacks, and this department won't be immune.

Mid-level supply chain manager Adam was both ambitious and smart, and had all kinds of ideas for saving $50 million.  In weekly meeting after weekly meeting, he presented his ideas using carefully prepared PowerPoint slides.  Everyone around the table murmured appreciatively, but nothing ever seemed to happen.

In his researches, Adam had discovered that the company purchased latex gloves in all 22 countries in which it operated, and it always purchased the same brand.  The problem was that the prices from country to country varied widely:  Gloves that cost 10 cents a pair in, say, Canada, were costing as much as 40 cents a pair in other countries.

With a total spend of more than $250 million in latex gloves every year, Adam figured the company could easily save $50 million just by reducing the number of suppliers they used around the world, and established a consistent pricing structure.

However, knowing that another memo or PowerPoint deck would fall on deaf ears, Adam tried a different approach.

He contacted all 22 of the company's offices around the world, and asked them to send him a pair of gloves and the price they were paying per pair.  In the next weekly meeting, he bypassed the PowerPoint presentation and instead laid out all 22 pairs of gloves on the table.  To each pair of gloves was attached a price tag indicating the cost of the pair in the country in which they'd been purchased.  Then he wrote '$50 million' on the whiteboard at the front of the room.

As other staff members filed in, they looked at the gloves on the table, looked at the whiteboard, and started to ask questions.

The result?  Adam had approval to move forward on his glove purchasing rationalization plan within 10 minutes, after weeks of geting nowhere.

Why?  Because his 'display' was more engaging than yet another email, memo or PowerPoint presentation; because it didn't require his co-workers to read through paragraphs of text to understand; and because most people realize that any concept which can be explained that simply is probably a good one.  He'd hit all the right notes:  He'd increased engagement, reduced effort and generated in-the-moment consensus.

The lesson for change management professionals - and, indeed, for anyone who wants to effect change in their organization but is meeting roadblocks - is that it's easier to engage people when you can demonstrate your point in a more compelling way, and engagement is the first step to effective change implementation.

Telling the right story is the first step.

I don't know about you, but the moment I lost interest in mathematics was the day in 9th grade when, struggling with an algebraic formula, I asked the teacher what it meant and what it was for, and her answer was a curt and dismissive:  "Because it's on the test."

That didn't help me understand how x2 + 3y = 72 was relevant to my life.  As far as I was concerned, it was just a bunch of random numbers.  And in 9th grade, my first year of high school, "it's on the test" didn't help me do anything but panic.  Needless to say, my grade reflected that.

My friend's physics teacher had a better approach:  By telling stories about sailing ships headed for cliffs ("calculate the angle") or balloons taking off from earth ("calculate the velocity"), she was able to put the numbers and formulas into context and make much more sense of it all.  The teacher didn't claim that she'd need this information for some nebulous event in the future, either; he pointed out ways it could be useful to understand events in her daily life.

The same thinking applies to change management:  When you tell employees that they have to make a change, but your explanation never gets beyond a vague "because it's good for the business" and you don't help them see how it will be relevant or useful to them, you end up with a lot of confused, reluctant and possibly downright mutinous employees.

I've talked to senior leaders who insist that the average employee doesn't understand and doesn't need the details about the big picture; that it's pointless to try to explain it to them because they're not interested in anything outside of their own little job.  Sure, there are some employees like that.  But in a successful, growing organization, there are far more people who want to be engaged in the full picture, who want to know how they fit into that picture, and who really want to know what it takes to be successful within it.  These people are prepared to make changes - as long as they feel like they're making those changes as part of the team, not because they're peons who're forced to do The Boss' bidding.

So how do you get them engaged?  It starts with telling the right story

If you're making changes because you have research that says the next 5 years will bring revolutionary change to you industry and you need to make sure you're ready, tell that story.  Show people the research, walk them through your thinking, demonstrate how the changes you're making now will ensure business success in the short, medium and long-term.  Tell them how it's going to become part of your culture, your brand story, your sales strategy - and how it's going to give them more opportunities to shine.

If you're making changes because the business is in trouble, it's even more important to tell the right story.  Your employees already know there's something wrong; making unexplained changes will only increase the feelings of panic.  Instead, create a story that recognizes the current challenges and explains how the changes are designed to transform the business.  It's okay to acknowledge that some of the changes will be difficult for some people, as long as you're honest and logical in your narrative.

People don't get engaged in facts; they get engaged in stories.  When you create a narrative for your changes, you'll find your people are more willing to become part of the team rather than a roadblock to the process and the company's ultimate success.