How to construct a story of your organisation? Before - now - after
People outside the project ask me – what do you mean, you need a changemaker? Aren’t you a changemaker? Let me explain it with a story.
For better understanding, we use story structure as the analog of the change-making process. Different storytelling theories suggest names for the story structure. Some call it “the arch”, some “the circle” or “the journey”. We’ll use the hero's journey. It is borrowed from Christian Wolgler's book “Writers Journey”, who glides through work of comparative mythology by Joseph Cambell “A Hero with thousand faces”, who takes Carl Jung as his main influencer.
In “I_Improve” our organizations are heroes. We step out of our comfort zones, leave the ordinary world, and meet the challenge (or, in our case, a changemaker(CM)). We adapt to new situations that CM throws us into. We gain knowledge and master new skills. And then, we returned changed.
Let’s break this out
In the beginning – the hero needs change. There must be something that the organization wants to change. To tell the story that the audience will care about is to make them feel the way you feel. We tell them about the things that we want desperately.
The challenging part – the hero faces the challenge. That's why we have to work with a strong changemaker. Someone, who would not only believe in us but also, give us some hard push to make what seems impossible. During the project, some organizations struggled and even failed at their goals (including us). That’s what makes the story interesting – conflict and resistance.
In the end, we’ll return stronger. After the journey things are never the same. Organizations will return after the “I_Improve” experience to their ordinary world with new competencies, and things that looked hard or scary will be their new strength.
Julius Narkūnas, Laimikis.lt
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