Tool one
Change Type Reflection
Is the change you are in adjusting what the organisation does, or altering what it is? The distinction does not turn on scale, and getting it wrong is expensive in a particular way.
Incremental change adjusts what an organisation does; transformational change alters what it is. Where the first calls for an existing story to be executed better, the second calls for a different story altogether — the old one has stopped accounting for what people are now being asked to do, or to be.
A very large change can be incremental if it leaves the organisation's account of itself intact. A small one can be transformational if it asks people to inhabit a different story about what the place is for. The test is identity, not size.
If the reading is transformational
- Name the meaning void rather than papering over it — see Tell the story.
- Map what is already circulating with the Narrative Landscape Mapper.
- Work out who gets a role in the new story: the Character lens.
- Learn the markers by which a story can be recognised as stabilising: story stabilisation.
If the reading is incremental
Conventional planning, clarity and consistency are likely to be adequate, and importing heavy narrative machinery is its own kind of error — it inflates the stakes and can create the resistance it was meant to pre-empt.
Status: drafted from the manuscript · author review required · no validated scoring claimed