Storytelling and its Importance in Delivering Change in Digital Age

What is Change Management?

There is a lot of discussion about change management, but at its most fundamental level, change simply refers to bringing a group of people inside an organisation from point A, or the beginning, to point B. One essential part of that element is storytelling. You won’t be able to convince the individuals you need to accompany you on the change management journey if you can’t create a compelling and fascinating story. The concept is that when technology is used, you are just halfway there. Storytelling plays a crucial part in the change management process.

It enables you to sort of link long-term goals with the immediate change that must take place at go live. Once your life’s story helps bind the individuals who must continue the journey after the project is finished, you only take the people within an organisation a portion of the way along the path. Additionally, project participants have left to ensure that there is a bright spot that serves as a sort of goal for them. What therefore constitutes a good story?

The Ingredients of a good story

Well, straight out of the Disney playbook, The concept is that there is always a hero, a villain, and a guide in any successful story. This is right out of the Disney playbook. There is also a local narrator. The notion is that by applying these fundamental ideas to a business case, often a dry financially motivated document—that justifies a recent investment in technology, you might make some progress. You can start presenting the tale or invoking the change in a more compelling way if you kind of take these fundamental elements and try to apply them to it. 

End User – The Hero

The end user is always the hero when implementing a system as I do with my HR or financial systems. Your attention is constantly on the person who needs to be modified. What are you expecting of them? What specific duties do you require them to carry out? What activities do they need to alter? In order to help people comprehend why they must change and why it is crucial, you need to turn that great business case into a captivating story. You can begin to understand that your responsibility is to make sure that the experience is interesting for those people if you picture Luke Skywalker wearing a pair of chinos or a button-down shirt.

Additionally, it is crucial that you use it as a guide when making design choices for your project. I see HR and finance personnel all too frequently in architecture or design sessions, but these individuals frequently forget their roles or the impact that their design choices would have on the end user. It frequently involves transferring jobs and activities that HR and finance previously provided to the end user. That method is ineffective. In the context of an IT installation, the goal of storytelling is to comprehend what the end user needs to perform. then make an effort to convey the narrative from their perspective.

HR – The Supporting Artist

You need to position HR slightly differently if you want to reap the benefits of a cloud-based SaaS solution and if you want to kind of understand how HR can provide the strategic goals that a daily solution intends to achieve. Similar to how Yoda supported and guided Luke, the role of HR is to inform the end user that, in the case of a typical implementation, a line manager or employee is trying to position themselves as the enabler rather than the doer, the strategic guide rather than the transactional, deliverer. It’s crucial that HR positions itself in a slightly different way because not only does this help the end user, but it also helps the organization.

The Narrator

The narrator is the character who unites all the many characters and plotlines in a story and serves as the glue that holds the message together. In this aspect, the project team’s contribution is crucial. If the person in charge of the project from the perspective of sponsorship is at the front of the room, whether it be the project manager, program manager, or even the CFO or CEO. Your approach is flawed. The notion is that the project and the key participants in it should be managed from the back of the room, ensuring the plot, and the narrative enthrals and engage the main actors in the story and that the interplay and understanding of the numerous plotlines. When a project manager seems to be “hogging the limelight,” this is always the job of the project.

The Villain of the Story

We have the protagonist, the guide, and the narrator, who serves as the body. The body, in my opinion, is not always an individual, but that would be simple. And that is frequently the case with some of the simpler stories. But when you perform a digital transformation, the change is frequently more about access. It involves giving end users access to their information so they may do important transactional tasks. Bureaucracy, paper, and the frustrations brought on by having to use numerous sign-on methods, different password variations, and being unable to answer the phone are the adversary of the hero.

These are all the adversaries that, ideally, a cutting-edge technological solution will enable the user to utilize on a daily basis. Therefore, the objective behind barely is to think, to think more conceptually, and to comprehend what the challenges are that you’re trying to address. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Darth Vader-type figure pacing around the room waving his lightsaber. How will the project proceed? Or how will the solution, with the project’s assistance, help the end user overcome the difficulty and generally perform their duties more effectively, allowing the guide to the sort of operate in a different way and helping the end user, your story’s protagonist, operate in a different way?

Selling the dream Vs living the reality

Okay, so once you’ve established your major characters, the most crucial thing is to establish a basis for reality and the story you’re telling in order to effect any lasting and sustainable change. The truth is that if you act like Ripley from the movie Alien and fire off 1000 bullets without pausing, your hero will quickly realize that the idea you’re selling or pitching isn’t grounded in reality. To ensure that people can buy into a notion but also feel like they can achieve it, you must ensure that there is an aspirational message that is grounded in reality. Thinking about what can be accomplished on day one, for instance, the system’s launch, what can be accomplished after a year, and even some of the things you will be changing may not be possible until they go live, which could be two to three years from now, should probably be one of your first tasks. You can embark on these trips to allow yourself to daydream about the future or to set milestones that will help the final user see where progress has been achieved. Yes, don’t guarantee a paperless workplace right now. However, if you have a system that prevents you from doing that, what you could accomplish right away is giving individuals access to their information, giving them the power to alter their information, and making simple transactional transactions smooth and successful. Once that has been accomplished, you can build on it and begin to gradually remove some of the transactional operations that an antiquated or out-of-date system would have previously prevented over the course of the following year. Utilizing the data in your system, you can begin to track and comprehend trends that will enable your guide HR to implement new strategies and empower the end users. And then progressively develop the story, reminding your audience of what you’re saying while reassuring them that the shift is actually taking place.