Narrative Organizational Development
Making companies future proof by working with stories
Narrative organizational development – a consulting field with a future
For about 15 years, companies have been exploring storytelling for their communication. More recently, they make another discovery: the importance of stories for organizational development and for a company’s viability and survival. Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller, for example, studies „narrative economics“ (as per the title of his book from 2020) and economic sociologist Jens Beckert, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, emphasises the importance of future stories for the competitiveness of companies. Therefore, a great demand for narrative organizational consultants and developers who work on a systemic basis is to be expected in the next few years.
Organisations are narrative systems
Narratives (i.e. imprints and thought processes in the form of stories) are underlying many communicational acts as well as the way employees and managers think and behave. Therefore, if you really want to understand an organisation and create lasting changes, you need to be aware of the stories circulating in the company and be able to work with them. This is the key to planning effective interventions and working on an organisation’s identity, internal and external communication, the creation of meaning, the leadership culture, employee motivation and change processes.
Certified training on a scientific basis
As results of narrative psychology and brain research suggest, people use narrative structures (stories) to understand meaning, identity, processes, strategies, visions etc. and make them comprehensible as well.
The training course „Basics of Narrative Organizational Development“ enables consultants and organizational developers to work with these basic narrative principles of an organization.
Based on the findings of brain research,narrative psychology, system theory as well as organizational and social research, this training course provides participants with the perspectives and methods necessary to transform companies into narrative organizations.
Practical training with an university certificate
The training will consist of 11mandatory digital zoom sessions (4-6 hours each). Its successful completion is confirmed by a certificate from the Media University Stuttgart.
„A narrative organization can make the hidden visible, put knowledge to use and discover new possibilities for action.“
Open Seminars
Additional to the 8 modules of the core curriculum, participants to the Narrative Organizational Development training program also book 3 seminars out of our open seminar program.
