Storytelling in Change Communication: Why It Works

‘In a time of dramatic change, it is those who learn to change that will inherit the future; the rest find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists’
Eric Hoffer – US Philosopher

Few people would argue that these are not times of dramatic change. Fewer still want to find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Learning to change and inheriting the future. Now that sounds much more appealing to me, and I’m sure it does to leaders around the world too.

Now all we’ve got to do is persuade the entire workforce to learn to change. And in my experience, nothing is more persuasive in doing that than a well-crafted and well-told story.

In this blog, I explore how to harness the superpower of storytelling through the lens of communicating change.

The Change Communication Challenge

Of course, persuading individuals, teams, functions, countries, and ultimately the entire global workforce to do something differently is not without its challenges…

For a start, the old familiar ways of working have a gravitational pull the moon would be proud of. We know that the first responses to any change effort are denial and resistance. Employees have become increasingly cynical over the last two decades, and people frequently get emotional when asked to change.

Often, even your predecessors are working against you! They told everyone that their change programme would cure all of the ills of the business, but it didn’t, and then they left.

Little wonder colleagues report change fatigue, as wave after wave of change washes over them. The tide of change comes in, the tide of change goes out, but that big rock on the beach, your workforce, doesn’t budge.

Communicating change is challenging. Having read the above, you could be forgiven for thinking… I’ll pass on this one.

But change is now a constant, and the pace is only increasing. We simply have to get better at communicating change. It is not an option, it is an obligation, and as Lauren Bacall told us:

‘Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world’.

What is the role of Storytelling in Change Communication?

Carefully constructed stories, or narratives as they are sometimes called, help convey what success will look like for the organisation in a memorable and meaningful way. And they inspire colleagues to see how their day-in, day-out work contributes to that success.

Relevant and relatable stories help build an emotional connection between the change journey and individual colleagues or teams. People hearing these well-told stories often have a good ‘gut feeling’ about what the business is seeking to achieve, and feel ‘a passion’ for the cause. Good stories resonate. People buy in when good stories are told.

Great change communication stories create the context in which logic, facts and figures fit. Facts and figures tell, stories sell. Wrap up a statistic in a story, and it is at least seven times more likely to be recalled. Stories add the human component to cold data. They help simplify complexity.

As John Kotter explains in his brilliant book, ‘The Heart of Change’, well-crafted stories help create a sense of urgency, an essential first step in successful change adoption. We want colleagues to be telling each other, ‘We can’t go on like this, we simply have to change’. And these days, if you get your story right, it can go viral all around your world. (Of course, this also applies to unhelpful stories, so I’ll address that later in this blog.)

Great stories help build trust, especially when colleagues become the authors of your future success, overcoming recognisable challenges together. Great stories unfold, chapter by chapter, providing a clear and compelling route for your journey to excellence – where we used to be, where we are today and where we need to be in the future. Most importantly, great stories inspire action, which is what you wanted in the first place.

In any event, stories are the real currency of human communication and have been for millennia. We are a storytelling species. People like telling stories; they like hearing stories, so you’re simply doing what comes naturally. Indeed, if you don’t give your people a story, they’ll make one up. And it probably won’t be an empowering one and could even drag your change effort down.

Storytelling is a powerful tool at your disposal when communicating change. Now, let’s sharpen it.

A proven change storytelling framework

Inspired by the work of Nancy Duarte from the US, I’ve been helping leaders tell effective stories using four chronological steps. If these seem familiar, they are. You’ve been reading stories constructed this way since you were a child, or watching movies constructed this way as you grew up, or seeing plays constructed this way in your adult life.

Here are the four steps and how they apply to change communication:

Step 1: Characters

Characters are the ‘heroes’ at the heart of your story. People the audience can identify with and feel empathy for.

In business change communication, this could be:

• Example a.) A typical colleague who is working hard to deliver outstanding customer service.
• Example b.) An engineer helping a customer complete a prestigious project using your components.
• Example c.) A Patient with an unmet medical need, waiting for a treatment that you are developing.

Whoever you choose, give them a real name, make them relevant and relatable; make your audience care.

Step 2: Plot

This is the journey that your heroes go on, which your audience is drawn into from the outset.

In business change communication, using the same example scenarios, this could be:

• Example a.) The implementation of a new complaints resolution process.
• Example b.) The introduction of a new range of top-end components, but at a higher price.
• Example c.) The delivery of a successful trial of a new personalised medicine.

The journey metaphor is particularly helpful in change management communication, as it frames progress towards a destination over time. And it is a common, recognisable, and accessible metaphor; everyone seems to be on a journey these days!

Step 3: Conflict

These are the clearly recognisable challenges or difficulties your heroes face on their journey, often many and varied.

In change communications, this is your opportunity to show you ‘get it’, that you understand some of the challenges your heroes face at work, for example:

• Example a.) Customer Service is understaffed and has outdated processes that slow us down.
• Example b.) This is the third price rise we’ve been asked to explain in the last 10 months.
• Example c.) We are struggling to recruit people for our drug trials in key demographic areas.

It is important that you stay in this step long enough to openly acknowledge the challenges – to build connection and trust. It is even more important to involve the audience in co-creating ways to overcome these challenges and move towards Step 4; otherwise, you risk remaining ‘in conflict’ for too long.

Step 4: Resolution

We describe ‘Resolution’ as the result or outcome that happens at the ‘end’ of your story; a situation transformed.

In change communications, your story might end like this:

• Example a.) We’ve implemented the new complaint processes that colleagues themselves helped design. We’ve attracted new recruits and are seeing fewer stress-related sick days. Customer service is up, and customer complaints are down.
• Example b.) The customer has successfully completed the project using our new range of components. The improvement in quality was so appreciated by the customer that price was not a major factor. The project has won awards, driving up interest in our new range from other parts of the world
• Example c.) We’ve worked together as a team and found ways to attract people for our drug trials, which will also help future studies. We’ve had great results from the trials we have run, launched the product in key markets and now have Patients acting as advocates for our product.

It is at this stage in change communications that you can be super smart. We all know that when this change cycle is complete, sometimes even before it is, another change will be introduced. You need to be upfront about that, candidly acknowledging what you know to be true.

Your change programme is super important to you, but it may be just one in a long line of change programmes in your audience’s mind, going back years.

When you tell your change communication story, you must acknowledge what has gone before and leave the door open for what might follow. We can learn from Hollywood in this regard. They always leave the door open for the next instalment in a movie franchise, think Star Wars, Mission Impossible, Fast and Furious, etc.

One technique we’ve introduced with great success is to talk about your change programme under the banner of ‘The Next Chapters’. This helps you position your programme in the context of ongoing organisational change.

A fishy story

Earlier, I explained that this way of telling stories feels familiar. So, for light relief, here are the four steps again, this time used to tell the story of the Disney blockbuster, Finding Nemo. And we have to concede that Disney are rather good at telling stories!

Characters:

Marlin is a deeply traumatised, overprotective clownfish who wins our hearts because his suffocating anxiety stems from a desperate fear of losing his only surviving child, Nemo.

His vulnerabilities become even more relatable when his worst nightmare comes true, forcing this flawed, ocean-fearing father to risk everything to rescue his captured son.

Plot:

Marlin is plunged into an expansive, terrifying aquatic underworld where he must navigate the vast East Australian Current.

This exhausting odyssey ultimately forces Marlin to conquer his own crippling fears, allowing him to grow into the confident, trusting father his son truly needs.

Conflict:

Marlin must constantly outswim terrifying physical threats, narrowly escaping a prehistoric, sharp-toothed anglerfish in the pitch-black abyss and a massive, swallowing blue whale.

His endurance is pushed to the absolute limit when they get trapped in a vast, paralysing forest of jellyfish.

Resolution:

After a dramatic harbour rescue, Marlin finally reunites with Nemo and learns to let go of his control by trusting his son to save a trapped school of fish.

Back home, the once-suffocating reef is completely transformed into a joyful environment where a healed, confident Marlin proudly watches his independent son swim off to school.

Storytelling in times of change. What could possibly go wrong?

Back to the corporate world… We’ve been helping organisations tell change communication stories successfully for more than three decades. We’ve seen plenty of potentially costly missteps, all of which we’ve been able to put right before they caused irreparable harm.

• The story started with what, when, how, where, or who… Wrong

Your story must always start with why. Especially in change communications, you must explain why the business needs to change in the first place. Fail to do that, and no one will change anything, because you didn’t explain why the organisation needs to change. Linking the ‘why’ to your business’s Purpose is a good technique. It creates a golden (or red) thread that pulls everything together.

• The story is about the leader… Wrong

In a good change story, you are not the hero; your story should not revolve around you. It must revolve around your colleagues or a customer. Your resolution narrative shouldn’t be about you either, but about the business, colleagues, customers or stakeholders.

I once saw a publication that was about to go out explaining a change programme in which roles would be made redundant. The cover photograph was of the leader, standing next to his sports car, in front of his weekend country retreat. Really.

• The scenarios are ‘unreal’… Wrong

In this setting, ‘unreal’ is not a compliment! Make any examples you give as real and grounded as possible. Remember, your audience is likely to be cynical, so test your story before you go live. Stories go viral, good stories and bad ones, empowering stories and disempowering ones, inspirational stories and unconvincing ones. Make sure the right story is retold, your story.

Use real people as your heroes. Recognisable examples that your audience can identify with. You want them to say, ‘I feel I know that person.’ Give them names and a backstory.

Your people need to see themselves and their world in your story. Stir the emotions, generate a good gut feeling, fire the passion for excellence.

• The story airbrushed over the tricky bits… Wrong

You have to be honest about the challenges. Your audience will appreciate your candour and will see that you have your finger on the pulse.

If this change is not going to be good news for everyone, you must say so and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve. But make sure you also give focus to those who are part of the future. They need reasons to believe and be inspired to deliver success. Bizarrely, they are often overlooked in change communications, but they are key to your future success.

• The story slipped into management speak and jargon… Wrong

You were speaking plain English over coffee moments ago, and then you stood up to explain a change programme and started talking like a policeman, spouting corporate nonsense and peppering the content with acronyms. Short words in short sentences work best, especially internationally. Keep things clear and simple.

• The story was really, really ‘clever’… Wrong

Your story must be relatable and told using language colleagues will understand and can readily repeat in their own words. Stories about Sun Tzu from ‘The Art of War’ tend not to be understood by colleagues on the frontline. It is not that they lack education; in truth, you do. Education about what will help you connect with your audience and what won’t.

• The storyteller was super slick… Wrong

You should come across as professional, without being overly polished. This can sometimes come across as inauthentic. Your audience will be comfortable with the odd stumble, even more comfortable these days when you show you are vulnerable and don’t have all of the answers. But working with the audience, you will co-create the best way forward.

• The story was delivered as a monologue… Wrong

Good stories create dialogue. You want to spark conversation about the topics that matter most and what to do about them. Don’t be afraid to include carefully thought-through and meaningful interactivity. Get them asking questions, sharing insights, building on what you’ve put forward.

I once helped a leader get the audience to write the ending of the change story… about what success would look like for them and the customers they serve. That worked really well, much better than being told, via bullet points in a PowerPoint.

• The storyteller presented a spreadsheet… Wrong

When Kennedy said, ‘We will put a man on the moon by the end of this decade…’ he didn’t then whip out a spreadsheet to prove his thinking, or show a Gantt chart to explain the dependencies. I’m not saying data doesn’t matter; it does. But get people excited and inspired by your story first, and then you can introduce the details, for those who need them, in context. Meaning first. Data second.

• The story was told as a one-off… Wrong

Get it right, and your story can stand you in good stead for years. Telling it just once at a conference or all-hands would be a missed opportunity. Keep coming back to your story and get it repeated in multiple channels over an extended period. Create the conditions for your story to spread like wildfire and then fan the flames.

Case study: How Axiom helped a leading Financial Services player share their change story

Working with a high-profile institution in the UK Financial Services sector, our role was to excite and inspire a cohort of over 100 senior leaders who had experienced significant volumes of poorly communicated change over the years.

They were cynical to say the least. And they were responsible for exciting and inspiring a workforce in the tens of thousands to learn to change and adopt new, more modern ways of working.

Enter storytelling in change communications…

We made their clients the heroes of the story, and used storytelling to support business transformation across the organisation. We linked everything back to the traditional customer-centric values that have stood the organisation in good stead for over 100 years.

To make the story stand out from anything that had gone before, we carefully chose an accessible and memorable metaphor.

The organisation’s journey was to become the most admired business in the marketplace, to serve its clients in new and innovative ways, and to enhance its reputation as an organisation that can be trusted with its clients’ money. This was going to be a long journey, so we deliberately stopped at regular intervals to see how far we had already come, re-energising the workforce along the way, with their own success stories.

The challenges the organisation needed to overcome were many and varied, including non-integrated systems and processes across the various legal entities that made up the group. These were discussed openly, with colleagues involved in prioritising the biggest issues and co-creating solutions.

Whilst there were, of course, corporate goals to achieve, leaders were charged with breaking the targets down at a local level, in essence writing the end of the story for their departments, and then working towards making it happen.

The results were outstanding, as measured by the client’s own employee opinion survey data and specially commissioned research, delivered by Axiom, to independently measure the success of the change programme.

We kept that story running for more than four years – and people in the business are still talking about it to this day.

Storytelling pays dividends in change communications

As this blog has shown, storytelling has a place in successfully crafting your change communications.

It provides a familiar framework that is powerful enough to shape your approach and flexible enough to adapt as the winds of change whistle through your business.

Storytelling is the ‘currency’ of human communication; spent wisely, it is an investment that will pay dividends for years to come and create compound interest over time, as your colleagues learn to change.

What is your story? What change story does your organisation need to tell?

As you kindly reflect on this blog, perhaps ask yourself, ‘What is the change communication story I need to tell?’

• Who are my heroes going to be?
• What journey are we all going on?
• What challenges are we going to face, and how will we overcome them?
• What will great look like in the end?

Your story matters to you, your colleagues, your customers and your organisation, so it is worth spending time to get it right.

And if you’d like some help, this is a space we know well, as I hope this blog clearly illustrates. We’d be delighted to partner with you and play a small part in your success story.