Stephen Billing’s Blog

Our experience of the past is not simply a recall from long term memory. And this affects how people respond to organisational change.

When consultants start to talk about stories I usually switch off because to me, stories = fairy stories or fiction. To me, stories are made up, and don’t have much to do with my experience working in organisations.

If I translate the word ’story’ to the word ‘narrative’  I can better get my head around how we have narratives about the past that represent past events, and these narratives become the present day experience we have of those past events.

The term ‘narrative’ doesn’t seem so ‘made up’ as the word ’story.’ To me, the term ‘narrative’ has continuity – plot line that continues over time, and this is more relevant to our organisational experiences, rather than ’story’ which to me is in the realm of fantasy.

I want to argue in this post that we develop narratives about the past that we retell to others, each time with slight changes or embellishments. In this way, our experience of the past is constantly changing, even though the past events themselves only happened the one time.

As Stacey points out, we do not simply recall from long term memory what actually happened, like a computer. Rather, we tell a narrative of the past to ourselves or to others, and these narratives are always changing, even if only in minute ways.

So we are constantly in the present moment creating our expectations of the future based on our experience of the past. In this way our narratives about the past subtly change and these subtle changes affect our expectations of the future and our experience in the present. For example, your narrative might be quite critical of your boss’s actions when talking to your colleagues, but when talking to your boss it can change its timbre. Your boss may then give you information which enriches your understanding and perspective of the events, and this can then change the narrative you have when talking to your colleagues the next time. In other words, the narrative about a certain event in the past changes its tone in subsequent retellings, in response to events of the more recent past. This is the process of making sense of our world.

It is a wishful thought that “when this current uncertain period is over life will go back to normal.” The current uncertain period is actually life as per normal, and it is always going to be uncertain. Organisational life is always full of uncertainty and unpredictability.

So, don’t take people’s initial reactions (e.g. "this sucks, I want redundancy") to your change proposal as a final one. In the ongoing narrative of organisational life, as people talk to each other and make sense of what is going on, their reactions can change. The key is to keep engaged with them through this changing process of reaction.

Then you will know how best to respond.