Promoting Organisational Development: The Impact Of Narrative Research

Faced with a challenging economic landscape, many businesses seek ways to adapt, grow, and thrive. However, it’s difficult to do so without good, actionable information from key stakeholders. Narrative research has emerged as a powerful way to obtain and explore the stories and experiences of employees, partners, and customers, offering business leaders valuable insights that are more grounded in the reality of stakeholder experiences.

Traditional surveys, whilst a good starting point for gathering information from a group, often result in skewed data due to the effect of social conventions, opinions and unconscious biases. For example, respondents may give answers they think the questioner wants to hear, or their self-reported behaviours might differ from their actual actions. Unlike conventional metrics that may leave people wondering about causes and solutions, narrative research provides a faster path to understanding what is actually happening within an organisation and even, potentially, what can be done about it.

So, what is narrative research and how can it be utilised to benefit businesses?

What Is Narrative Research?

Narrative research offers a distinctive approach to understanding organisational dynamics that goes beyond traditional data collection methods. While it excels at gathering more accurate and unbiased data through stories and experiences, the true power of this method lies in the insights it can bring.

Imagine if you could easily answer questions like:

• What really matters to my customers in our service and product
• What gets in the way of employees being more innovative or customer-focused
• What attitudes have changed since we started this change programme
• How might we unlock our people’s potential to innovate
• What are the early warning signs of cultural problems and how do we address them

This approach to narrative research delves deeper, aiming to uncover not just what people say, but the underlying reasons for their behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes.

By applying specialised signification frameworks and analysis techniques, we can extract insights that are both profound and actionable. This, in turn, allows leaders to better identify the factors that shape or influence issues, understand what truly matters to their stakeholders, and pinpoint what helps or hinders progress. As a result, organisations can develop targeted strategies that address fundamental challenges rather than surface-level symptoms, driving meaningful change and fostering sustainable growth.

Examples of applications of Narrative Research include:

• Employee stories and experiences to highlight how to improve field sales
• Leadership narratives to inspire merging organisations around a common future
• Organisational change stories to explore why problems are being hidden rather than dealt with
• Customer experience narratives to change how call centres respond to customer calls
• Community and population stories to understand the problems of people living in a war zone

What Are The Advantages Of Narrative Research?

Undertaking narrative research can benefit your business in several ways:

Improve Employee Performance

High levels of employee engagement can have a powerful impact on a business’s performance, with a 23 per cent increase in profitability and an 18 per cent decrease in staff turnover. Sounds great, right? Of course, fostering genuine employee engagement is a persistent challenge that many employers struggle to navigate effectively. In fact, misguided attempts to boost engagement can sometimes backfire, leading to cynicism or disillusionment among staff. However, the real goal isn’t just engagement for its own sake, but rather how it translates into improved performance and organisational outcomes.

The aim of narrative research is to uncover authentic experiences within an organisation that reveal what truly matters to your employees, to better understand and break down barriers to their sense of belonging, their ability to work more effectively and their ability to meet the organisational strategy. When you identify, address, and validate these experiences, you’re not just making your employees feel good. You’re fostering a stronger connection to the company’s mission and cultivating a sense of ownership that drives real business results.

Ultimately, narrative research helps create a virtuous cycle: as employees see their insights translated into meaningful changes, they become more invested in the organisation’s success, further driving their performance and commitment to organisational objectives.

Shape Cultural Change

Changing the culture of a company is never easy, especially if your workforce is opposed to change or feels that it is being enforced upon them without their agreement. Narrative research plays a crucial role in driving cultural change within businesses. By identifying both positive and negative narratives, companies can identify cultural issues, challenge assumptions, and promote values that support growth and development.

Whether it’s addressing issues of diversity and inclusion or fostering a culture of innovation, narrative research provides a valuable framework, with real-life insights, for driving meaningful change. It allows organisations to better understand their current cultural landscape, identify areas of resistance or support, and develop strategies that resonate with employees’ actual experiences and perspectives.

Facilitate Knowledge Sharing

By leveraging employees’ stories and experiences, companies can foster a culture where knowledge is shared organically and socially. This approach helps improve local decision-making and problem-solving by contextualising past experiences and highlighting the circumstances under which choices were made.

Creating opportunities for employees to connect and share their insights promotes collaboration across teams and departments, cultivating an environment of continuous learning and improvement. This dynamic and interactive approach not only enhances decision-making and problem-solving but also works to attract new talent whilst reducing employee turnover by creating a vibrant and supportive workplace culture.

Find Out More

For more information on how narrative research can benefit your business, or to speak to an expert, please contact Narrate today either by clicking the link here or on +33 (0) 686 937 829