Beyond Traditional Storytelling: Why Organizations Need to Rewrite Their Narratives
This post is the first in a series exploring Transformational Storytelling as a core element of organizational evolution. In our next post, we'll examine "The Five Narratives That Limit Organizational Evolution" and how to identify them in your organization.
I have been leading business storytelling workshops in organizations for nearly 15 years. Over that time, I have witnessed firsthand how our understanding of storytelling in organizations has transformed. Back then, business storytelling mostly meant advertising campaigns. Only a few visionary leaders like Steve Jobs and Tony Hsieh saw the opportunity to use storytelling strategically to shape product, vision, and culture. But as smartphones and social media changed how leaders communicated, storytelling became broadly recognized as a powerful tool for communication and engagement.
Today, we speak of leadership storytelling, brand storytelling, data storytelling, and culture storytelling. We apply storytelling tactics to our presentations, reports, infographics, emails, and LinkedIn Posts. Content is king, and storytelling is everywhere...
But now, new technology like AI is changing the game once again—fundamentally shifting how we engage customers, drive decisions, and lead change.
So what will storytelling in business look like tomorrow? What if our current approach to storytelling isn't enough? What if the real transformation challenge isn't telling better stories, but fundamentally rewriting the narratives that define your organization?
Our Traditional Understanding of Business Storytelling is Narrow and Incomplete
When most of us think of storytelling in an organizational context, we tend to think literally of stories. For example,
an executive might think about the words in an upcoming speech
a marketing team might think about the copy on a webpage
a sales team might think about an elevator pitch or a key case study
an analytics team might think about the data in a report
an innovation/change management team might think about the slides in a PowerPoint deck
These are each accurate examples of storytelling in business. However—I can’t help myself here— there is more to the story. Each of these examples sits within a broader context of narrative frameworks. These “bigger stories” called narratives actively shape how we think about the examples I’ve listed above.
Consider a manufacturing company that’s struggling to adapt to change. Their leadership can “tell a story” about innovation all day long — however, if there’s a bigger narrative embedded inside the company that says “nothing is more important than efficiently executing established processes,” then those innovation stories will never take root.
The underlying narrative needs to be rewritten before new stories can flourish.
Narratives: The Operating System of Organizations
Credit: Frank Wolf, https://staffbase.com/blog/narrative-vs-storytelling/
In his book The Narrative Age: How leaders can inspire change in a polarized world, Frank Wolf, the co-founder of the SAAS company, Staffbase, writes that “narratives are patterns that emerge from multiple stories.”
Stories and narratives share common elements. The most important is their basic structure — they have a beginning, then something happens, and then there is a new end state…Stories and narratives differ in their level of abstraction. Stories are very specific, while narratives are more general.
Narratives are broader, deeper stories that are more than just the stories we tell—they're the fundamental meaning-making structures that shape how we interpret reality. These narratives don’t just entertain—they translate into rules, cultural norms, and desired behaviors.
In organizations, narratives function as invisible “operating systems” that determine:
What we perceive as possible or impossible
Which options we consider or overlook
How we interpret success and failure
What we value and prioritize
How we understand our identity and purpose
Though these narratives are largely unconscious, they're reinforced through everyday interactions, language, and institutional structures. And they're remarkably resistant to change. That's why traditional change management—which focuses on rational arguments, process modifications, and structural reorganizations—often fails to create sustainable transformation. It’s often too surface—as a result, it doesn't address the narrative foundations that give meaning to everything else.
From Traditional Business Storytelling to Narrative Redesign
Great leadership storytellers have always recognized the role that small-scale, tactical storytelling can have in “redesigning” broader, cultural narratives. For example, think about:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which aimed to reconfigure now the mainstream conceived of race in America
Apple adopting the tagline “Think Different”, way back in the 90s, to transform the mainstream’s narrative about technology—from nerdy to cool
The #metoo movement using individual women’s individual stories to catalyze a broader movement against sexual violence in the mainstream
These are just three of many examples of leadership storytelling used to its full depth and potential. There are also many “lighter” applications of storytelling that can be used to improve the examples listed above, like executive speeches, Powerpoint decks and website copy. But—here’s the rub—these lighter, more tactical improvements will always be limited by the bigger narrative.
To make one relatively silly example, consider organizational mission statements. Just about every corporation has a mission statement—mission statements are widely considered to be part of the default operating system of leadership. If you were to read hundreds and thousands of these mission statements, you would realize that they all have something in common—they’re all written out in words. “Of course they’re written in words,” you might reply, “they’re statements. What did you think they would be, dance moves?” Well, consider the Maori of New Zealand who are well known for their traditional haka ceremonial dances. Famously, the haka is performed every time the country competes in a sporting event, as in the example below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKFYTFJ_kw
The haka is intended to challenge the opponent. But it also communicates something “bigger”—the values, history, and one might even suggest the mission of the organization.
I’m not suggesting that corporate executives perform the haka or any other dance move before a high-stakes presentation. (Wouldn’t that be a sight?) Instead, this example highlights that the fact that mission statements are statements is itself a narrative. Is it a good narrative or a bad narrative? Could it somehow be improved? Are there other, more effective ways to approach the goal of organizational focus and alignment?
By asking these types of questions, we open the opportunity to redesign the underlying narratives. From this new mindset and perspective, we can find novel—and even creative—solutions.
Narrative Redesign in Action
Narrative Redesign is essential for organizations moving through substantial transformation. Consider the recent history of the automaker, Ford. For a century, Ford embodied a particular approach to automotive manufacturing—and developed both the processes and the narratives that were required for success. But in the mid-2010s, then-CEO, Jim Hackett, began promoting the idea that Ford was more than an automaker—actually, Ford needed to think of itself as a technology company in order to accelerate a shift to EVs and compete with competitors like Tesla.
More than a shift in strategy, this represented a narrative redesign.
Narrative Redesign actively rewrite the core narratives that define organizational identity and possibility. This approach recognizes that genuine transformation requires changes not just in what organizations do, but in how they make sense of who they are.
This shift involves several key elements:
1. Narrative Archaeology
The first step is making invisible narratives visible. This involves methodically uncovering the stories that currently shape your organization's sense of identity, capability, and future possibility. What narratives determine how decisions are made? What stories define success? What assumptions limit what people believe is possible?
2. Narrative Disruption
Once existing narratives are visible, they can be consciously disrupted. This doesn't mean simply rejecting them, but creating the space for new narrative possibilities to emerge. Techniques like perspective shifting, temporal zooming, and assumption testing help organizations loosen the grip of limiting narratives.
3. Collective Authorship
Unlike traditional top-down storytelling, narrative reconstruction involves engaging the broader organization in co-creating new narratives. This collaborative process builds both ownership and narrative sophistication throughout the organization, creating a foundation for ongoing evolution.
4. Narrative Integration
New narratives must be integrated into organizational systems and practices to become sustainable. This means aligning leadership behaviors, decision processes, performance metrics, and cultural rituals with emerging narratives. Without this integration, organizations quickly revert to established narrative patterns.
This table lays out the differences between these two approaches:
| Aspect | Traditional Business Storytelling | Strategic Narrative Reconstruction |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Tell better stories about the organization | Rewrite the stories that define the organization |
| Focus | Communication and engagement | Identity and possibility |
| Direction | Top-down: leadership creates and shares | Collaborative: cocreated across all levels |
| Timeframe | Often looks backward or describes present | Creates a pathway to desired future |
| Impact | Changes what people say | Changes what people believe is possible |
| Depth | Works within existing beliefs | Transforms fundamental beliefs |
| Example | "Here's a story about our successful product launch" | "We're not just efficiency experts; we're innovation pioneers" |
| Constraint | Accepts current limitations | Reimagines what's possible |
| Change Type | Incremental improvement | Transformational shift |
| Success Looks Like | Better understanding of current situation | New perception of identity and future potential |
Moving Forward: From Communication to Transformation
Narrative Redesign is one element of a broader framework we call Transformational Intelligence (TI). While analytical intelligence helps organizations understand systems, emotional intelligence navigates the human dimensions of change, and social intelligence builds collaborative networks, transformational intelligence synthesizes these skills to enable organizations to reconstruct the meaning structures that define possibility. A Narrative Redesign process is what turns those abilities into action.
If your organization is struggling to create meaningful change despite well-crafted communication efforts, it might be time to look deeper at the narratives that shape your collective sense of identity and possibility.
Ask yourself:
What narratives currently define how our organization understands itself?
How might these narratives be limiting our evolution?
Who currently authors and maintains our organizational narratives?
What would a more conscious, collaborative approach to narrative development look like?
The answers may reveal that the most powerful transformation lever isn't telling better stories about change, but fundamentally rewriting the narratives that determine what kinds of change feel possible and meaningful in the first place.
Jordan Bower is a transformational storytelling consultant who helps leaders create meaningful change through strategic narrative development. Through workshops, consulting, and keynote speaking, he helps clients move beyond conventional planning to create authentic narratives that drive real transformation.
