Discussion Board Response

Learning Goal: I’m working on a management discussion question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

Please provide a discussion reponse to the dicussion post below:

Hello All,

Week one discussion – How do stories of change contribute to our knowledge of theory and practice?

Finding things we identify with can influence our thoughts and behaviors. It may be a simplistic example, but how many of you have the Nextdoor app? I read through some of the posts occasionally and have modified my behavior based on the stories people posted. I have read countless stories on Nextdoor where someone had the garage door open while home working in the yard and briefly stepped inside for something as quick as a glass of water or to use the restroom, only to come out and find something was stolen. I have also read where they were working in the front yard, but not in direct view of the garage and had items stolen.

These small Nextdoor posts showed us what happened, how it happened, and the results. I saw myself in these stories, and I had done all those things at one time or another. Reading those stories influenced how I thought about the safety of my surroundings and caused me to modify my behavior. I no longer leave the garage door open unless I am in direct view. The door is closed if I go inside for any reason or will be out of sight.

The same can be said of stories on change management. These stories paint a picture for us. As noted in our textbook, “They tell us about the context, give us a sense of the whole, a broader frame of reference” (Palmer et al., 2022). These stories also “…transcend individual cases” (Palmer et al., 2022). By transcending individual cases, we can see ourselves, our organization, or parts of our organization in a story. These stories can also present us with situations we haven’t thought about before and show us a different approach to a situation.

In the book, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, a story covers an employee who completely resists change. In the story, they loan him out to a customer so that he experiences all the issues the customer experiences. This motivates him to get on board with change (Kotter & Cohen, 2002). I had not thought of this, and now I will keep this in mind for future change opportunities and dealing with someone who is resistant to change.

Stories on change management can have an impact on us as individuals. We can see ourselves or our organizations in those stories. We can see how things worked out or didn’t work out without taking the risks upfront. We can then think through how we might use or adjust our behaviors to succeed in making changes within our organizations. Reading and evaluating stories allow us to write our own stories!

Kotter, J. P., & Cohen, D. S. (2002). The heart of change: real-life stories of how people change their organizations. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press.

Palmer, I., Dunford, R. W., & Buchanan, D. A. (2022). Managing organizational change a multiple perspectives approach. McGraw Hill.