Creating Change by Changing the Conversation
If all transformation is linguistic, then we create a new future by having new conversations.
—Block, 2008, p. 36
IN RECENT YEARS interventions to “change the conversation” have become an important focus for Organization Development (OD) practice. Whether used to shift attention from problem-based to more positive orientations, change the methods or topics of inquiry and dialogue, or bring more and different voices into the room, the expectation is clear: changing the conversation leads to organizational change. The emphasis in OD practice on changing the conversation parallels and has been influenced by the linguistic turn in the social sciences since the 1980s wherein language, conversation, and discourse have become central concepts in understanding and indeed creating social reality.
The purpose of this article is to summarize and present a range of theory and research about language and change, where the term discourse is used to include conversations, written texts, stories, narratives, metaphors, slogans, and so forth. It draws upon the new field of organizational discourse studies and is intended to expand practitioners’ knowledge and application of language-based premises about organizational change (see for example, Bushe & Marshak, 2009; Ford & Ford, 1995; Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004; Marshak & Grant, 2008; Shaw, 2002).
The understanding of organizational change as used in this discussion is a good place to begin. In most ways we consider organizational change to mean some alteration (something is stopped, started, modified, etc.) in the existing organizational arrangements (strategies, structures, systems, cultures, etc.) and/or processes (planning, coordination, decision- making, etc.). However, a discursive orientation frames that understanding in a more nuanced way than typical usage. For example, the assertion that something is “an existing arrangement” is itself a discursive account that positions something in a particular way and for particular purposes. Thus, in one specific organizational context “existing” might imply something is outdated and there is a need to change to something new, while in another it might imply the benefits of stability based on proven performance. Consequently organizational change involves both things and the discursive accounts of those things in contextual and recursive relationships. In essence, discourses shape how people think about things (how they “talk to themselves”) and therefore how they act; and how people act and think about things shape their discourses. Changed actions can lead to changes in conversation and changed conversations can lead to changes in behavior.
Discourse and Change: An Illustration
To help illustrate the importance of thinking about the relationship of discourse and change consider the following vignette about the fictitious company Zeta. The illustration is intended to suggest the need to think about discourse and change in multi-dimensional and mutually implicated ways:
Zeta Company’s strategy and operations have been shaped by continual references to the founder’s maxim to always “own and control your destiny.” This led to decisions to operate independently, to own versus rent, and to use directive leadership styles. Recently, influenced by media articles and business conference presentations about out-sourcing and off-shoring, the CEO suggested that the Zeta top team consider outsourcing as a strategy to improve financial performance. The ensuing discussions drew on discourses about the quality of rented employees, the family-centered values of the company, trends in the industry, academic debates about out-sourcing, prospects for the future, and so forth. When the Vice President of Human Resources worried aloud about the union’s reaction with a major contract re-negotiation pending, the discussion polarized into a debate about out-sourcing saving costs versus costing jobs. Convergence on a clear way forward was not forthcoming and the CEO suggested having a task force study the matter carefully and come back with a proposal in three months. In later hallway conversations several of the top executives wondered if the boss had “gone soft” because the CEO had not made the decision and told people to implement it. Several weeks later the CEO attended a business roundtable where one of the topics was Executive Paralysis by Analysis Leads to Underperformance. Reflecting on how the out-sourcing discussion was handled, the CEO convened a meeting of the top executives to press the urgency of improving financial performance and then asked for specific proposals. When none emerged, the CEO again suggested out-sourcing as a way to enhance share-holder value and forcefully argued for its adoption. This time there was agreement to move forward, although a few of the executives lamented to each other that “the founder would never have done this,” and “wait until it gets to the Divisions, they’ll never support it.”
Here we get a sense of the ongoing, iterative, and recursive ways that discourse impacts on change, including for example, corporate maxims, mission statements, strategy documents, hallway chatter, divisional rhetoric, ongoing interpretations of corporate values, and also outside stimuli such as trade journals, media accounts, seminars, exposure to other executives in formal and informal settings, and so on.
Core Premises about Discourse and Change
The following summarizes an extensive range of the research and theory pertaining to organizational discourse and change found in scholarly journals, but with much less exposure to the practitioner community of change agents (for a more detailed discussion see Grant & Marshak, 2011)
1. Discourse plays a central role in the construction of social reality. We begin with the central premise found in most theories about the relationship of language and change. Discourse does more than simply report or record information, instead it is constructive and shapes behavior by establishing, reinforcing, and also challenging the prevailing premises that guide how organizational actors interpret experience. Therefore, changing the existing dominant discourse(s) will support or lead to organizational and behavioral change. This is a central premise of social construction theory (see Gergen, 2009) and is a principle reason given for how and why changing the conversation can lead to organizational and behavioral change.
2. There are multiple levels of linked discourse that impact a change situation. The mantra to change the conversation does not speak to the level of discourse one seeks to change. However, scholarly research and theory suggest that change agents should think in terms of changing or influencing at least five levels of discourse – the intrapersonal, personal, interpersonal and group, organizational, and socio-cultural. In addition, the different levels both influence and are influenced by discourses operating at all the other levels.
• Intrapersonal level discourses might manifest themselves in the form of internalized stories, “tapes,” and introjected beliefs that an individual tells him/herself. It also includes cognitive schema, frames, symbols, and archetypes from the unconscious that shape individual reaction and response.
• Personal level discourses include a consideration of the language in use by individuals, including favored concepts and topics as well as influence strategies, impression management, and rhetorical methods. For example, a number of studies have focused on the metaphors used by individuals in order to reveal their thinking and perception about organizational change (e.g., Marshak, 1993).
• Interpersonal and group level discourses involve conversations in many settings and in many instances can be said to shape the social order in everyday organizational conduct. Discursive interactions at this level impact on the actions and behavior of individuals within a localized context, e.g., a department or among a specific group of actors who socially interact on a regular basis.
• Organizational level discourses addressing topics such as mission, strategy, values, how to succeed, and so on form the dominant thinking, organizational practices, and collective social perspectives within an organization. In order to instigate successful organization-wide change managers must develop new organizational-level discourses and communicate them through various discursive means (talk, text, email, slogans, change, campaigns, etc.) to persuade various stakeholders of the value and purpose of the change.
• Socio-cultural level discourses are recognized and espoused at the broader societal level and across institutional domains. They might address more or less standard ways of understanding a certain type of phenomenon within the broader context. These include phenomena such as business reengineering, globalization, out-sourcing, sus-tainability, and even organizational change itself. They also include the taken for granted premises and possibilities governing an industry or organizational sector.
As mentioned earlier, the discourses at different levels do not exist independently of each other; the talk and texts within any level of discourse are linked to and informed by discourses and the talk and texts that operate from other levels. This means that it may be important to identify and address discourses pertaining to change at one level, and to also then place them in the context of the other levels of discourse. For example, it may be quite difficult for a divisional manger advocating new ways of doing things at the interpersonal and group level to institute change if the conversations and messages from higher headquarters reinforce the prevailing ways of doing things.
3. The prevailing narratives and storylines about change are constructed and conveyed through conversations. Narratives and stories are devices that focus on common themes or issues and which link a set of ideas or a series of events. As such they construct and explain the socially accepted ways of doing things and also enable and limit how people think about the world around them. Narratives and storylines are re-created each day in the multitude of conversations occurring at all levels of an organization. Consequently to change some aspect of the organization would require changing the daily conversations that convey the prevailing narratives and story-lines that are endorsed by those presently and/or historically in power and authority.
4. Power and political processes shape the prevailing discourses concerning change. Power dynamics help to shape the prevailing discourses about a specific change and the phenomenon of organizational change itself. Organizations are considered to be political sites where particular discourses are advanced by particular organizational actors in ways that shape and influence the attitudes and behavior of other organizational members. Conversations about change related issues held among stakeholders with differing interests will involve the meanings attached to these issues being negotiated, reinforced, and privileged by those actors drawing on their various power resources. Assuming some social agreement results from these tacit discursive negotiations, a dominant narrative emerges that will influence how a change is conceived, understood, and should be implemented.
5. There are always alternative discourses of change. What any particular group believes is reality or the way things are is a social construct that is created, conveyed, and reinforced through discourse. This implies that there may be multiple social realities in any given situation. Moreover, it means that different groups or strata or silos of an organization might develop their own narratives or story-lines about a particular change issue that defines the way things are as they experience them. The extent to which any group’s particular narrative comes to dominate the meaning attached to a change issue will be linked to power and political processes as previously discussed. Given these dynamics some have suggested that those leading or facilitating change use discursive practices in ways that intentionally draw out and utilize alternative discourses, for example, by using methods such as multi-level conversations, dialogue, inquiry, asking new questions, and the use of various orchestrated interactions among stakeholders. The intent being to use these discursive practices to frame new shared meanings and change mindsets that will then lead to significant and beneficial change in the organization.
6. Discourse and change continuously interact. Discourse in the form of narratives, stories, memos, official documents, conversations, email, metaphors, hallway chatter, and so on are used on an ongoing basis to maintain and further the interests of particular groups or individuals; and people continually draw on them in order to make sense of the events that continually unfold around them. Accordingly, as suggested by the earlier Zeta example, discourses at multiple levels are disseminated and consumed as a continuous, iterative and recursive process. It is also a process whereby the conversations and narratives associated with a particular discourse do not simply appear from nowhere, imbued with a particular meaning. Instead, over a period of time and through negotiation and various political processes the meanings that discourses convey, along with the agreements and mindsets that they construct, will emerge and alter the ways things are understood and enacted.
7. Change agents need to reflect on their own discourses. An appreciation of the significance of discourse in relation to change processes encourages change agents to be open to the possibility that a primary way to effect change in social systems is by changing the prevailing discourse. Changing the discourse involves changing the conversations and texts that create, sustain, and provide the enabling content and context for the way things are. This, in essence, adds discourse at multiple levels as an important target and lever for organizational change. It also suggests change agents need to be more aware and reflective about what they say and hear in relation to change than is often the case. In particular, change agents need to be sensitive to the emergence of discourses that are different from their own, and if necessary respond to or even draw upon these alternative discourses in ways that benefit the change process. Given the relationship between power and discourse, there is also an ethical need for change agents to reflect upon the power relationships between themselves and those they are seeking to influence as well as the power relationships between and among other key actors.
We have outlined a number of key considerations drawn from the scholarly discourse and change literature to help explain the importance of talk and text in shaping the thinking and behavior of key actors in organizational change. In the following section we consider the implications of this for change agents.
Implications for Change Agents
The new field of organizational discourse studies invites change agents to approach organizational change with an interpretive orientation and an understanding that language in its many manifestations is constructive and central to the establishment, maintenance, and change of what is and what could be. Some more specific implications follow and are summarized in Table 41.1.
For the change agent a discursive orientation to change means applying methods that foster attention to the ways in which discursive phenomena, at multiple levels, and in multiple ways, create and hold the current way things are. How do day-to-day conversations reinforce preferred ways of thinking established by historical, organizational, or other contexts? What are the most salient or powerful discursive phenomena one should pay attention to with respect to organizational change efforts: stories, metaphors, official documents, emails, discursive contexts, rhetorical tactics, power processes, and so on?
There are a number of strategic implications for change agents if change is a function of multi-level, discursive phenomena. First is the need to better understand how different levels of discourse influence and reinforce each other and thereby create a web of reinforcing narratives, stories, metaphors, and conversations that can make alternative discourses and change more difficult. This means that change agents may need to identify, utilize, or attempt to change the discourses at different levels (e.g., personal, group, organizational) to support a specific change effort. For example, a regional vice-president trying to put forward a new narrative about “social responsibility” may experience difficulties if the prevailing tacit or explicit discourses at corporate or local levels reinforce contrary messages, perhaps about profitability above all else. Strategically, it is also possible that changing discourses at one level may influence discourses at other levels, thereby providing change agents with alternative targets or levers depending on their resources and opportunities. One example of this would be seeking to influence corporate level discourses by changing interpersonal and group level conversations among lower level managers.
The importance of conversations to socially construct reality and frame experience versus simply convey objective information needs to be more carefully understood and cultivated by those advancing change agendas. Change agents should realize that talk is also a form of action so all conversations and communications can be used to create new premises and possibilities. This also means they should pay attention to how prevailing narratives are reinforced in day-to-day conversations and messaging throughout the organization. Change agents would then seek to intentionally introduce new narratives to alter those conversations, possibly by changing the types of questions asked or introducing processes and interventions that will create new discussions among a broader set of stakeholders.
TABLE 41.1 Questions for Change Agents to Consider
Premise Change |
Agent Questions |
Discourse plays a central role in the construction of social reality |
• What discourses (narratives, stories, metaphors, etc.) are holding things the way they are? • How can discourses that are supportive of an intended change be established and maintained? |
There are multiple levels of linked discourse that impact a change situation |
• How might we seek to change the discourses at multiple levels to support a change effort? • Changing a discourse at one level may be easier or more important than at another so what levels should we attempt to target? |
The prevailing narratives and story-lines about change are constructed and conveyed through conversations |
• How can we use conversations as opportunities to construct new premises and possibilities? • How are prevailing narratives reinforced in day-to-day throughout the conversations organization and how might we change those conversations? |
Power and political processes shape the prevailing discourses concerning change |
• Who are the actors who will be most influential to the intended change and how can their discourses and conversations be altered to support the change? • How can we create settings where different actors and interests communicate, or where there is greater power equalization among the discussants, or where the nature of the conversation is different? |
There are always alternative discourses of change |
• How can we identify and use alternative discourses that may exist at multiple levels to advance and support the change? • What forms of organizational power and political processes can we use to deal with counter discourses to our change effort? |
Discourse and change continuously interact |
• Because there is no specific beginning, middle, or end to a change initiative how will we continuously monitor and manage our discourse to stay “on message”? • Because the discourses related to a desired change will be subject to continuous alteration how can we stay alert to new opportunities and openings to advance our initiative? |
Change agents need to reflect on their own discourses |
• How can we maintain a self-reflective stance about our orientations, self-talk, and biases in order to stay open to possibilities and challenges? • How might we rethink and possibly modify our discourses about change to better respond to reactions and alternative discourses? |
Change agents need to be more alert to the mutually constitutive nature of power and discourse. Doing so opens up the possibility of better understanding the power and political processes that shape any given change effort and then attempting to engage in directly influencing those processes. This might, for example, involve asking diagnostic questions such as who are the most influential actors regarding the intended change and how can their story-lines and conversations be altered to support the change? Change agents would also need to cultivate skills and exercise actions associated with creating settings where actors with different interests and power bases can productively communicate, or where there is greater power equalization among the discussants in order to foster the emergence of new or different possibilities. Change agents might also benefit from knowing how to identify and enlist alternative discourses to advance and support desired changes. Understanding how various forms of organizational power and political processes are used to suppress non-conforming discourses could lead to consideration of new and different change tactics. For example, exploring ways to amplify any acceptable portions of an alternative discourse as a way to bring into question one or more aspects of the dominant discourse.
Change agents also need to view the change process as ongoing, iterative, and recursive rather than as a linear journey from a current state to some future state. Consequently, change agents adopting a more discursive orientation will need to know how to join an existing conversation, shift it in new directions, and monitor and maintain new conversations over time. In other words, they will need to be mindful that there is no specific or discrete beginning, middle, or end to an organizational change initiative. In addition, because organizational discourses are open to continuous alteration, change agents should watch for emerging opportunities and openings in the prevailing discourse(s) in order to introduce new ways of thinking into the conversation. For example, changes in socio-cultural level discourses (“being green”) may be used to create opportunities to introduce new possibilities or practices into more localized conversations (it might save energy if …).
Finally, for the change agent a self-reflective stance is critical and also sometimes difficult to sustain. Change agents may be more oriented towards promoting their own favored discourse about change than being reflective about the implicit narratives and frames that may be biasing how they approach a change situation. If we assume there are multiple social realities in organizations, this may also predispose the change agent to ignore or misinterpret important information coming from others who are guided by alternative narratives. For example, the difference between how change agents and change recipients interpret resistant behaviors can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies and self-protective stories by change agents (Ford et al., 2008). Consequently, it would enhance the effectiveness of change agents to maintain a reflective stance in order to stay open such possibilities and challenges. Otherwise change agents will always be limited by the bounds of their own dominant ways of thinking and their preferred narratives about change.
Concluding Comments
We hope this discussion demonstrates the potential contribution of a discourse based approach to understanding and managing the processes and practices of organizational change, especially those related to changing the conversation. It suggests that a number of critical constructs determine how organizational change is framed and thereby influence change processes and outcomes. Multiple levels of discourse, the construction of change-related narratives involving power and political processes, and how they are communicated and enacted through conversations are fundamentally important to the was in which people think about, describe, and make sense of change. It is also important to pay attention to latent alternative discourses that can be blocked or activated by key actors in change efforts. The recursive, iterative, and ongoing nature of discourse that leads to alterations over time is significant to understanding the nature of organizational change itself. The role of the change agent in co-creating discursive realities and the importance of their practicing a self-reflective stance is also highlighted.
Finally, we hope that our suggestion that change orientations could usefully include discourse-based premises will become part of the ongoing narratives of those who plan, manage, and facilitate organizational change.
References
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