Position one
Tell the story
For anyone constructing and stabilising a narrative during transformational change — often while standing in the meaning void themselves.
Chapter Seven asks what changes on Monday morning for someone who accepts the book's argument. The answer depends on where you are standing, and this is the first of the three positions it sets out.
The chapter does not offer a method. It sets out the questions worth answering.
From the IntroductionA leader who understands the narrative dimension of strategy, and takes this seriously, is in a position to ask questions that other approaches do not foreground: what story are we currently inside, and who authored it? what makes the strategy story we want to tell novel and compelling? who are the main characters in this story, how do they interact? who in this organisation does not yet have a role in the new story?
Part One: Telling the Story
Seven sections, in the chapter's order:
- Understand what stories are already circulating
- Identify what kind of change you are dealing with
- Name the void
- Emplot the change
- Help people see themselves as characters
- Craft and deploy aphorisms
- Defamiliarise, break with habituation
Work with it
Start here: Change Type Reflection · Narrative Landscape Mapper
Cases: NHS transformation · Measuring which stories circulate
Status: section headings are the chapter's own · framing is site-written · author review required