Here are three examples of how change leaders illustrate transformation through story:
A faculty member tells her colleagues at a university - plagued with crumbling infrastructure, environmental issues, and stagnant leadership - a very different story of the situation at her alma mater. She hopes the portrayal of how such problems can be solved will inspire a “Just imagine…” response in her audience:
I recently attended a reunion at my alma mater, Eckerd College, a liberal-arts college of about 1,700 students founded in 1958. A new president, Donald R. Eastman, arrived at the school three years ago. At the reunion in that, his first year, he unveiled a campus master plan that called for a complete rebuilding of almost every residential and classroom building more than 30 years old and eliminating cars from the center of campus.
During the past three years the college has significantly improved the landscaping on campus. In place of wet areas and drainage problems, there are now ponds with thriving communities of wading birds and plants. In place of sand spurs, there is now a world-class soccer field and a student recreation area called “South Beach,” where you can sunbathe, play volleyball, and watch your classmates kayak or sail by. There are beautiful trees, shrubs, and flowers everywhere.
They have placed a “freshman parking” lot at the perimeter of campus as the first step in the new parking plan.
Also in the past three years they have built a new library and a new dorm, and they are breaking ground on a second new dorm that will soon be open. The next step is to start rebuilding the existing dorms (about 34 beds each) one at a time. The next academic building in line is science, an estimated $20 million project.
The college’s endowment stands at $25-30 million, where it has been for many years. There were no plans for any of the improvements described above before the new president came.
I see an administration there that aggressively seeks out problems, searches for real, long-term solutions, and successfully finds the money to implement them.
A speech pathologist inspires younger colleagues with a story of how she sees their mutual patients:
I know that your education has not prepared you properly for what you see every day. I know from when I worked with head-trauma cases how harrowing it is to see someone near your own age injured in a car or motorcycle accident who is just never going to walk again, never going to talk again, eat again, and literally be in a vegetative state for the next 50 years. But you will also encounter patients who are resilient heroes. I have a patient who was born with no lower jaw. This little girl comes from an amazing, loving town, where she is surrounded by teachers and a delightful father. And she’s so spunky. To me, she’s on the upswing. She has a talking board, and we plan to teach her dad to sign better. And so I don’t get burned out on that. I get very hopeful and tenacious. I think some people might get burned out, but to me, there’s a great deal of hope and many tenacious, resilient people.
A new IT manager tells his staff of 10 technicians, who are frustrated by their 24/7 on-call rotation, how he addressed this type of stress at his former place of employment. In telling the story, the new manager enables the team to envision how he intends to improve their own situation:
The last team I managed was a lot like you guys and was going through many of the same frustrations you are when I came in. They were doing tedious, time-consuming work, running around fixing telecom problems based on a 24/7 on-call rotation. The first thing I did was get the group together, as I am with you now, to find out exactly what their issues were. I interviewed each of them as a group and individually. I realized that, just as it is with you, the biggest issue was the shifting on-call rotations. The schedule would be set up one week, and then the very next week it would change, because somebody wanted a change, and the manager would change it.
I set up a schedule for the entire calendar year. My only rule was that if you want to make a change, you had to work out a deal with one of your teammates to swap. So, I as the manager took myself out of the equation of making the changes; I let the team members figure it out. Sure, there were a lot of grumblings upfront because people could see six months in advance that they would be on-call over Christmas. But the benefit was that they knew that six months in advance, and if they wanted to make some changes or adjustments to the schedule, they could do that - it was their responsibility.
I also added a little fun and playfulness to the environment. I set up a putting green and invented a game called “Putting for Product.” Team members came to ask for a piece of equipment - whether a $2 patch cord or a $50 thousand piece of equipment. I gave them three free putts. If they sunk one of the three putts, they could take the product no questions asked. If they missed, they’d have to pay a dollar into our candy fund and putt again. Or, they could bypass all that and hire the local golf pro, one of the guys in the office who was really good at golfing, and pay him a dollar to shoot the first round for them. It was a great setting for having conversations, too. We also set up a fish bowl out in the main area so team members could acknowledge and recognize each other’s achievements. At the end of the month, at our team meeting, I’d go through this fish bowl, and the person with the most acknowledgements would be acknowledged and receive prizes, like movie passes or coupons for the concessions stand. Or, you could trade your prize, but it was like “Let’s Make a Deal,” so you didn’t know what you were trading for. It could be something really nice like clocks and watches, or silly things like gag gifts and pencils.
We also had the management team cook full breakfasts with scrambled eggs and pancakes for each team member and three of teammates of their choice.
So it was a really neat type of environment that we were creating, trying to lighten up the mood of the group. The team became more comfortable with the challenges they faced. The fun and playfulness really eased the tension that the team felt from the on-call rotation.
Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.
