Achieving true change and innovation depends on our ability to re-imagine and re-author the futures we want our organizations to have – and to open new perspectives and new ways of thinking, being and doing in the process. Narrative approaches and storytelling are powerful tools that can help us create a new future for branding and marketing, change, leadership, organizational learning and development.
Gathering contributions by scholars and practitioners from various disciplines, this book provides a unique overview of an emerging field of practice in organizations and communities. Rooted in a narrative conceptual framework, the respective papers describe a broad range of trans-disciplinary applications, tools and methods for effectively working with stories.
Table of Content
Introduction.- Change and Transformation in the Storytelling Organization.- Six Perspectives on the Role of Story in Creating Flourishing Organisational Futures.- Transforming Organisations Through the Re-authoring Lens and Practices.- Developing the Future Stories of Companies – Open and Closed Storyworlds.- Story Work – Facilitating the Transformational Power of Story in Brand- and Organizational Development.- Keeping Your Mythos Alive – How to Nourish and Nurture a Business’s Mythos Through Corporate Transformations.- Learning Histories – Re-authoring the Future in the Mirror of the Past.- Storytelling as a Guiding Leadership Principle – a Framework for Co-creating Narratives with Leaders.- We Become What We Talk About – How Experimenting With Dialogue Can Change an Organization’s Culture.- ‘Disruptive Story-Work’ as an Intervention for Organizational Transformation.- We Are All Chimeras: Promoting Unity, Diversity and Ingenuity Through Metaphorical Storytelling.- How to Look up When You’re Face Down – The Rising Strong™ Process in Organizations.- Re-authoring the Future of Travel and Hospitality – An Inquiring and Generative Re-authoring Practice in Tourism Flanders.- Re-authoring Careers – Changing the Narratives Around Work for Individuals and Its Impact on Organizations and Society.- The Magic of a New Beginning: A Personnel Development Department Reinvents Itself.- Cultural Approaches Towards Time in Gllobal Organizations.- The Sun Is Still in My Eyes – Reflecting on the Constructiveness of Life.
About the author
Jacques Chlopczyk is an organizational psychologist, systemic consultant, facilitator and author. He works internationally with profit and not–for–profit clients to ignite, facilitate and sustain change in their organizations and teams. He lectures on systemic consulting and change management at the Centre for Systemic Consulting and Research, The University of Trier (Germany) and other institutions. He is initiator and catalyst of the Beyond Storytelling Network and its conference, and is the editor of the book ‘Beyond Storytelling – Narrative Ansätze und die Arbeit mit Geschichten in Organisationen’ (Springer, 2017) .
Christine Erlach studied psychology and systemic therapy. In her past experiences as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Munich (Germany) her studies dealt with power of narrative methods for finding and transporting tacit knowledge and cultural values and beliefs. For the last 20 years she has been using narrative methods to make implicit, experiential knowledge and beliefs tangible, and she advises organizations in knowledge transfer processes.
She is founder of NARRATA Consult, a network that is specializing in narrative knowledge- and change management. She has authored numerous publications on narrative methods in organizations.