4. How to Get to the Right Place the Right Way—Outcome Narratives
Chapter Contents
How Were Outcome Narratives Developed?
How “New” Are Outcome Narratives?
Overview
This chapter describes the thought processes and activities that led to the creation of Outcome Narratives, the structured mini-stories used to define expectations. It also compares Outcome Narratives to related thought leadership and techniques. Definitions, examples, and benefits are provided. This is a core chapter, and readers may want to refer back to it when they use Outcome Narratives on their own efforts.
Introduction
Our first development was Outcome Narratives. As we clarified expectations in the complex, global business unit we were creating, we drew on storytelling to make the task easier. We found a way to structure the stories in a particular way that enabled us to see the systemic changes needed for success. Finally, and most important, we found a way to overcome a key problem with culture change: evaluating progress along the journey.
“Stories create spheres of influence and fields of engagement. A good story or narrative provides an opportunity to remind us that we are human beings. In highly industrial and post-industrial societies, unfortunately, we need to be reminded about our basic humanity on a regular basis. Stories and narratives are opportunities to find coherence, express our authenticity, and share our humanity.”
Carolyn Kenny, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Development and Indigenous Studies
Antioch Ph.D. Program in Leadership and Change
What’s the Problem?
Culture change is a notoriously difficult challenge. Imagine this scene and the detailed issues become clear.
A company’s top executives are discussing regulatory changes in their industry and how they will respond. The company has been successful to date, but their market has been closed and new regulations will now bring competition.
They have a big concern: They are risk averse. How can everyone at the company learn to take more risks—but not just any risks, mind you, the “right” risks? They hire a culture change consultant to help.
The consultant begins by clarifying expectations. “Do you want to be risk takers?”
“No. We can’t be risk takers.” All the executives are in agreement.
After lengthy discussions, they have their definition: They want to be “measured risk takers.” Sounds clear enough, and to make it even more clear, they identify the behaviors associated with measured risk taking. Each behavior is targeted at overcoming past reasons for failing to accept appropriate risks. For the executive team, this meant the following:
When consensus is not possible, proposals will be decided on the basis of a simple majority of the executive team.
The executive team will request additional information from the proposal team no more than twice before making a decision.
All proposals will be discussed and decided within one month of original submission.
To further clarify the meaning of “measured risk takers”—and to understand the nature of the gap—the consultant looks for a situation where the behaviors were in play. Although not a perfect example, she locates one and presents it, one on one, to the executives.
“That’s a great example of measured risk taking,” one executive responds.
“That was reckless and irresponsible,” another executive exclaims.
Others are in the middle about how well it demonstrates “measured risk taking.”
So they go deeper on what they mean by “measured risk taking” before they move forward with their culture change. They work through more definitions of behaviors, and seem to be in agreement. However, something is nagging at them: When applying these definitions and expectations to real life, will they still think it is the right thing to do?
These executives learned something very important early on: They were not in agreement and needed more clarification. In our experience, companies often move forward with assumed agreement while their visions are not grounded in the realities of the business context. This is unreliable at best and contrary to what is desired at worst.
It is difficult to ground culture definitions in the business context. There are different “kinds” of culture (for example, mature vs. start-up, bureaucratic vs. informal, risk averse vs. risk seeking), and different types of situations where culture displays itself—often in differing ways (for instance, problems that involve customers, issues across suppliers or partners, personnel conflicts, funding and resource decisions).
We hearken back to Chapter 1, “Introduction—An Overview of Tangible Culture,” and Harvard Professor John Kotter’s second reason why culture is powerful—because it “... exerts itself through the actions of hundreds or thousands of people.” This means potential problems on at least two fronts. First, if the culture propels people to act in ways that are contrary to the desired result, the company has a huge barrier to its objectives. Second, if people address the same problem in inconsistent ways—a real likelihood in new, complex and changing situations—the results will be inconsistent, at best.
So how can a company communicate its expectations effectively, especially if there are many, many people involved?
How Were Outcome Narratives Developed?
From the first day of planning for the integration of IBM’s BIS business unit with PwCC,[1] members of the Change and Culture team discussed how to clarify expectations. BIS and PwCC had different ways of operating. How could we rationalize this and communicate the new expectations for BCS crisply?
We settled quickly on storytelling. We had used narratives in the past, such as “Day in the Life” descriptions (that is, description of a typical day from one role’s perspective), but we needed more. We needed to deal with overlapping responsibilities, which would be the norm, and with situations where reasonable people could disagree on what to do.
“I recall in the early 90s when an external executive was hired to initiate IBM consulting. He wore a color shirt with loud stripes to meet IBM’s chairman, despite IBM’s strict ‘blue suit and white shirt’ environment. We feared it would spell disaster for consulting, yet his meeting went well—and we went shopping. This story was told and retold—becoming legend and a contributing factor in changing IBM’s culture.”
Nirmal Pal
Former Executive Director, Penn State eBusiness Research Center
Former Executive, IBM Consulting Group
Author of The Agile Enterprise
Moving forward with the idea of mini-stories, we began to identify likely problems people would face regularly and where BIS and PwCC had handled things differently:
After approval of proposal terms, the client requests some last-minute changes outside of the partner’s level of authority to approve. What should happen?
Two leaders, a partner from BCS and an executive from another IBM business unit, both hold responsibility at an account. They cannot agree on how to handle a client situation. What should happen?
A professional hire joins BCS with extensive experience. It is important to train her on the official approach, but there are people with less experience who need the training to be eligible for projects. Who should receive training first?
Because of some project changes, a consultant’s previously requested vacation is coming at a difficult time for the project. The vacation is especially important to him, and he communicated these needs well in advance. What should happen?
Then we began to craft desired outcomes and looked at how BIS and PwCC would have handled the situations to identify gaps and needed actions, as shown in Table 4-1.
Table 4-1. First Iteration
Good start, but we knew we needed more to clarify what people should do.
The next generation of mini-stories added roles and behaviors, as shown in Table 4-2.
Table 4-2. Second Iteration
Now we felt we had what we needed—and we called them Outcome Narratives to emphasize the focus on outcomes. Here are some things we like about them:
Outcome Narratives focus attention and action on business outcomes, and help people know what to do within identified boundaries.
Outcome Narratives help people get to the right place the right way—especially for sticky issues where multiple people need to make decisions and take action together.
Outcome Narratives are flexible for complex requirements, such as justifiable differences across geographies and business units. For instance, for BCS, we defined Outcome Narratives globally, and then let regional teams revise them for local regulations, customs and business priorities.
The Outcome Narrative format enables us to integrate important information, such as leadership competencies, operating principles, and value statements, and apply them to daily issues (thus making them more than abstract concepts).
Outcome Narratives provide the foundation for systemic gap assessments and an objective evaluation of progress, as you will see in future chapters.
In short, Outcome Narratives make culture definition more than a “soft and squishy, feel good” exercise.
How “New” Are Outcome Narratives?
Standing back, we recognized that Outcome Narratives were related to several important concepts in a business and nonbusiness context. Some were known to us when we were creating them, and some we learned later. For example:
1. Stories are a rich way to convey meaning and help people retain vital information.
Religions frequently use stories to communicate important topics. For instance, Jesus told many parables to His followers.
As with other cultures, Native Americans used storytelling to communicate history and aspects of their cultures before written language. The importance of storytelling continues today through songs, art and crafts.
“Day in the Life” narratives have long been a technique to define future state requirements. These narratives tell a story from one person’s perspective in the future performing the new requirements.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School is a masterful business storyteller. She uses stories to convey business concepts and help companies shape change efforts. Kanter is collaborating with IBM on an effort called Reinventing Education, and has provided vignettes to demonstrate the use and results of certain concepts. The vignettes, which are delivered via automated tool, convey rich meaning and provide examples of her method in action.
The Cynefin Framework is a “sense-making device” for unspecified and intractable problems, using new ways of thinking and “group sense-making.” The approaches use narrative methods to collect, consider and communicate information. (Kurtz & Snowden)
Storytelling is an active part of workplace culture. In Talking About Machines, work anthropologist Julian Orr shows how stories (often during supposed “nonwork” times) are the key means for copier repair technicians to demonstrate expertise and experience, and create and share knowledge. Theorists of apprenticeship learning (see references in John Seely Brown and others below) often point to storytelling as a key means of learning.
In addition, here are a few authors and works that emphasize the importance of storytelling for a business context (not an exhaustive list by any means!):
• Stephen Denning has published a number of works on the importance of storytelling for organizational change and knowledge management, including The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative in 2005.
• John Seely Brown, Stephen Denning, Katalina Groh, and Larry Prusak published Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management in 2004.
• Peg Neuhauser has published several works on storytelling, including Tribal Warfare in Organizations, which applies storytelling to increase the work effectiveness of people from different disciplines and backgrounds. Corporate Legends and Lore—The Power of StoryTelling as a Management Tool examines storytelling for strengthening culture and shaping organizational destiny.
2. Beginning with the desired outcome helps to focus efforts and increase understanding of the resolution process.
Stephen Covey’s seven habits include “Begin with the end in mind.” Creating an image of the endpoint helps people to understand what they are seeking to achieve.
Rubin, Fry and Plovnick’s works on effective team functioning reinforces the importance of clarifying expected outcomes and roles. Their “Goals, Roles, and Process” framework validates the elements of our Outcome Narratives.
3. Modeling how things are supposed to work ahead of time helps to ensure consistent action and success.
Use cases, a technique used in systems development, are similar to Outcome Narratives in that they define how things need to work in particular situations. Similar techniques are often called scenarios in a business or process context.
4. Structuring information makes it easier to use for job aids and reference.
Organization development disciplines, including our own Organizational Change Strategy and Human Capital Management consulting groups, often develop aids to help people perform their work effectively. Structuring the information makes it easy to quickly identify the needed details.
You may see additional connections, too. So, Outcome Narratives are new in some ways but grounded in thought leadership, which validates them.
Definitions
The elements of Outcome Narratives are as follows:
Situation statements—Descriptions of likely problems
Desired outcome—Problem resolution statements, based on reconciled Right vs. Right (see Chapter 5, “The Good Thing That Can Cause Big Trouble—Right vs. Right”) and other input (for example, values, principles, policies)
In-scope roles—Identification of who is needed to achieve the desired outcome (which helps to ensure that the right people get involved at the right time, and avoids the confusion of too many, or the wrong people, getting involved)
Role behaviors and actions—Explanation of how each role should contribute to the desired outcome—which is the key to achieving the outcome the right way
Other considerations—Additional information to help users understand how to handle situations with somewhat different details than those in the Outcome Narrative, which establishes boundaries yet flexibility
Reference—Any information to help explain the content, such as Right vs. Right categories, value statements, competency definitions, guiding principles, and so forth
Outcome Narratives can be used in a variety of settings and for multiple purposes, such as those described in Table 4-3.
Table 4-3. Example Uses for Outcome Narratives
Examples
Defining an Outcome Narrative begins with the situation statement, which represents a likely issue people will face. For communication and job support, the situations need only represent issues that are likely to happen repeatedly across the targeted group. For gap assessments and progress evaluation, they should also represent major ongoing aspects of your change or integration effort and reflect requirements where multiple people need to get involved and where the best answer is unclear.
There is an art to defining a situation for Outcome Narrative purposes. They need to be brief yet actionable, detailed yet broad enough to apply when the circumstances differ somewhat. Table 4-4 shows some examples to help you evaluate yours.
Table 4-4. Example Situation Statements
After the situation statements are defined, the rest of the Outcome Narratives can be built. Table 4-5 includes some thoughts for creating definitions for the other elements.
Table 4-5. Guidance for Creating Outcome Narrative Elements
Benefits
Outcome Narratives can be likened to using a map when traveling to a place you visit infrequently. You may want to review the map before starting your journey. The map shows you the destination and a suggested route, and it may help you to detour around road construction or take the scenic route.
Outcome Narratives provide a number of benefits, specifically the following:
They help to reduce delays, inconsistencies, and rework—and employee frustration from being accountable for expectations but not understanding them.
They provide needed information to systemically identify the gaps and what to do about them—spotlighting both the obvious and the subtle barriers that need to be addressed, and helping to prioritize the actions that will help the most.
They provide a tangible, objective basis for evaluating progress over time.
Application
Creating Outcome Narratives involves the steps shown in Table 4-6 (visit www.almaden.ibm.com/tangibleculture to download an Outcome Narrative template).
Table 4-6. Work Steps to Create Outcome Narratives
Conclusion
Outcome Narratives are structured mini-stories that define future state expectations. They are powerful for culture transformation or integration because they focus on outcomes and can be used for multiple purposes, such as communications, gap assessment and progress evaluation (more on this in Section II). Outcome Narratives were our first Tangible Culture development—and they are greatly enabled by the concept of Right vs. Right, which you will see next.
References
Brown, J. S., S. Denning, K. Groh, and L. Prusak. Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004.
Covey. S. R. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Fireside, 1989, p. 95.
Denning. S. The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Kanter, R. M. Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
Kotter, J. P. Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996, p. 151.
Kurtz, C. F., and D. J. Snowden. “The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world.” IBM Systems Journal, Volume 42, Number 3, 2003, pp. 462–483.
Neuhauser, P. C. Tribal Warfare in Organizations. New York: Harper Business of Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.
Neuhauser, P. C. Corporate Legends and Lore—The Power of StoryTelling as a Management Tool. Washington: Library of Congress, 1993.
Orr, J. Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (Collection on Technology and Work). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Rubin, I. M., R. E. Fry, and M. N. Plovnick. Managing Human Resources in Health Care Organizations: An Applied Approach. Virginia: Reston Publishing Company, 1978.