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Change is difficult. As human beings, we like our comfort zone and the safety of our old habits. Some of you might disagree. We are not all the same. Some feel the fire of innovation burning inside them, some like to think outside the box and continuously come up with new ideas. Nevertheless, we all – even those who feel the fire burning – agree that change is tiresome. This book is not about envisioning innovation, this book is about transforming people to make innovation happen. Traditional change management theories posit that people are unwilling to change when innovation is introduced. We find this statement not to be true: people want to innovate, to the extent that they find meaning in what they do. Still, what we see is that it is difficult for people to embrace change and start enacting new behaviors. This book is about helping people embrace change through new behaviors, building something positive that does not concern illness or burning places. Our approach builds on two goals. First, we want to generate real change, not just ideas. Second, we want to build on the positive side of innovation, leaving aside any negative metaphors of innovation as a scaring, intimidating yet an inevitable problem to an opportunity for growth and prosperity. Indeed, we believe in three pillars: innovation as meaning, design as engagement, and leadership as community.

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It is widely acknowledged that stories have for thousands of years shaped the way we live, as evidenced by the dramatic discovery of cave paintings from 30,000 years ago in Chauvet and Lascaux in France. Much of what we know of societies preceding ours stems from tales or written documents narrating the past. In recent years, stories and narratives have gained momentum as a means of communication even in the field of organization, facilitating understanding of complex processes, but also contributing to problem-solving and decision-making. In innovation projects, storytelling is an effective communication and knowledge management tool. The management literature often assumes that organizational change requires managing internal resistance, and the role of stories is to depict an ideal outcome. Thus, in the organizational field, storytelling is mainly used as a top-down tool to communicate and convince. Still, organizational sensemaking is a collective endeavor that requires individuals to assimilate and reframe external cues, in turn requiring a perspective of active involvement. For these reasons, we propose a shift from storytelling to storymaking.

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The fields of management, innovation, and design are rapidly evolving, and so are the research methodologies to study the phenomena. Our research approach is embedded within Mode 2 research paradigm of knowledge creation. This study created and utilized a hybrid methodology of action research and design science research. This approach is collaborative, in that the research question and the research process are co-developed by the research team and practitioners. The research and management teams converged on answering the question of how engagement in an organizational transformation initiative can be created and maintained. This led to the development of the storymaking approach, an evolution of the more known storytelling: we describe how we move from organizational stories to human stories; from human stories to personal stories; and from personal stories back again to organizational stories, which coalesce around an organization-wide storyworld. The approach was designed, developed, and tested in collaboration with six partner organizations (Nestlè, Philips, Sasol, Sorgenia, Sintetica, and Stef). Storymaking consists of a series of workshops in which individuals are supported by a card set to make sense of an organizational transformation. Everyone designs her transformation story highlighting direction and required support. Critical reflection takes place in pairs and teams, and everyone takes commitment to some concrete action. We measure the engagement and meaningfulness of the designed story. This project represents a research platform that contributes to research and practice: we study the role of intimacy in innovation, convergence in a shared direction, cognition, and transformation. Through action research, we also support the sensemaking process of every participant in situ.

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The hybrid research orientation of action research and design science research embedded in Mode 2 research paradigm guided the interaction with the six partner companies, each of which wanted to focus on their organizational transformation challenges and processes. Nestlé and Philips engaged a community to transform their identities: Nestlé faces the challenge of establishing a culture of innovative leadership. Therefore, it engages a community of innovation enthusiasts into transforming their individual identities. A part of Royal Philips, Philips Experience Design wishes to transition to being a solutions company; to develop a meaningful transformation, it must necessarily leverage the perspectives of individual leaders all over the world. Sasol and Sintetica established a new culture: Sasol, a South-African chemicals and energy company, faces the challenge of restructuring its’ portfolio. For this purpose, every employee can freely dedicate 10% of her working time to become more innovative and spur organizational transformation. Sintetica is a Swiss pharmaceutical company with a human-centric culture, which faces the challenge of digitalization. Employees were engaged in envisioning a future where technologies could empower and enable a human-centric culture. Sorgenia and STEF faced the problem of introducing new routines: The utility provider Sorgenia took a bold strategic direction in response to a turbulent environment; now, it must engage employees to embed the new direction in their working practices, transforming the organizational routines. STEF, a leader in temperature-controlled logistics, wishes to introduce a new work model to maintain market leadership; employees would envision their transformed working practices to highlight the advantages of the new work model.

Pages: 21

Stories and narratives are well known as effective tools to deal with organizational transformation. Traditionally,storytelling has been considered an effective tool to communicate the transformation and nurture individuals’ sensemaking of change. We show how a longitudinal approach based on storymaking,where organizational actors write their own personal stories of change within the organizational transformation,effectively nurtures people’s engagement toward change. Through story creation practices,we show how people make sense of change and actively commit to take concrete action toward it. We present the results of applying a storymaking approach in six partner organizations (Nestlè,Philips,Sasol,Sorgenia,Sintetica,and Stef). We provide an overview of how stories evolve through time,showing how step-by-step stories become more and more concrete. Further,we provide evidence about how people embrace transformation effectively through concrete actions: we show to what extent they can complete their commitment. Using Mode 2 research paradigm as our point of departure,we have utilized a hybrid of action research and design science research approach. Being this project a research platform,we report the findings from additional research that was triggered as the study progressed. First, we provide insights about the relevance of cognition for transformation activities. Second,we show the relevance of intimate interactions to nurture the sensemaking of change. Finally,we explore how people converge toward a shared direction when dealing with organizational transformation.

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Our research focus is on how storymaking affects employees’ behaviors in innovation initiatives. Through the action research and design science research paradigms, we have sought to also provide relevant managerial implications to engage employees in actual transformation projects. This research has revealed many nuances in a design-driven dialog around a story. The four basic elements of the storymaking experience were intentionally designed to explore how to engage people while helping them in their transformation. Specifically, the four basic elements of (1) setting your direction, (2) starting with small, relevant, steps, (3) being critical, and (4) changing with someone else encouraged all participants to leverage what they learned from their transformation projects. In summary, this study utilizes a hybrid research orientation that is embedded in Mode 2 research paradigm with the purpose of generating new knowledge that is impactful and relevant. Our research that used mostly Mode 2 research paradigm also integrated methods from Mode 1 paradigm focused on how storymaking informs transformation and reveals new perspectives on engaging employees in the midst of personal and organizational change. Our intention for the future is to broaden our observations with additional companies and deepen the insights with further data collection.

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This chapter discusses the tangible outcomes of the research we developed together, and we thank each and every one for their invaluable contributions. Embracing innovation requires significant personal effort, since people need to feel a sense of purpose to understand the change and then begin their individual transformation journey. IDeaLs officially kicked off in September 2018 with the first community meeting. The first edition was made possible thanks to the collaboration with our partner organizations: Adobe, Adidas, Centre for Creative Leadership, Nestlé, Philips, Sintetica, Sorgenia, and Stolt Tankers. However, this volume is based on the experiences with our partners in the second edition, also welcoming on board Sasol and STEF.