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COMMENTARY
Over the past several decades, leaders and organizations have come to terms with the fact that change really is here to stay. Now it is time to move on. Truly successful leaders and organizations of the future will progress beyond the mere recognition of the constancy of change to cultivating the qualities and skills that can maximize the potential hidden within the change itself. Yesterday's mantra of "Change or die" will evolve into a new mantra for the future: "Live to change." Organizations must stop characterizing change as a mere event to be endured and learn to tap the possibilities that emerge from change as teacher and transformer. Herein lies the future - allowing change to shape the organization so that the organization can shape change.
Change requires leaders and organizations to embrace paradox and process - ambiguity and opportunity. In other words, for organizations to remain open to new possibilities and opportunities, they must learn to capitalize on the role of uncertainty and ambiguity. These forces form a cyclical pattern that successful leaders welcome as they pursue their organizations mission. In addition, it is incumbent on leaders to provide ways for their organizations to navigate and be transformed by this ambiguity-opportunity cycle. In doing so, they create organizations that tap the power of change with flexibility and vigilance.
Two questions emerge at this point. First, how are leaders to create this type of change environment? Second, what tools are already present in the cycle that will assist them in this environmental creation? One of the most powerful ways for leaders to make sense of the ambiguity-opportunity cycle is to tap the power of one of humanity's oldest art forms storytelling. Through "sensemaking" and "sensegiving," leaders can use the raw materials of narrative to construct new 'organizational sense."
Sensemaking and sensegiving defined
Sensemaking/sensegiving is a process that "involves calling into question an obsolete interpretive scheme, framing a new interpretive scheme in understandable and evocative terms, providing guidance for action toward the incipient change and exerting influence to accomplish it" (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1995).
In this definition, the leader is viewed as both iconoclastic and prescriptive. The leader is iconoclastic, because he or she challenges the organization's cherished beliefs and paradigms. With this challenge comes...