ORGANIZATIONAL NARRATIVES TM
A NEW, POWERFUL APPROACH TO MAKING
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS STICK
Why change efforts fail: lots of data, little insight
To increase morale, productivity, and profit, creating the right culture and boosting employee
engagement is essential in today’s competitive environment. Yet 75 percent of culture
change initiatives fail. Why?
Traditional culture change initiatives
rely on metrics that give a snapshot of
employee satisfaction, engagement,
and productivity without revealing
the mindsets that actually drive
behavior. For example, typical employee
engagement surveys measure
“favorability” towards aspects of a
company and its culture, but do not
reveal the “why” behind the survey
results. Let’s say 57% of employees
agree with the statement “processes
are well organized and efficient in my
work group.” While leaders can benchmark and compare these metrics with prior years and
industry standards, they ultimately provide little value for decision-making. Without deeper
insight into employee motivations, leaders often launch culture change and engagement
initiatives that fall flat—failing to see where their priorities are aligned or misaligned with
underlying employee mindsets. We call these mindsets “Organizational Narratives.”
Organizational Narratives: a new tool for understanding
and shaping employee mindsets
Organizational Narratives are the deeply rooted, emotional stories that employees tell
themselves about a company, its mission, culture, leadership, and future prospects.
Like many other types of stories, Organizational Narratives are anchored in beliefs and
perceptions, not just objective facts. Monitor 360 applies its proprietary Narrative AnalyticsTM
process to help organizations understand, quantify, shape, and monitor their Organizational
Narratives. We analyze large volumes of qualitative employee data, surfacing opportunities
to reinforce positive elements of employee culture and address sources of friction that
impact satisfaction, commitment, and productivity. Because we quantify Organizational
Narratives, we enable leaders to make data-driven decisions, set measurable goals, and track
progress in shaping critical employee mindsets.
The Method: rigorous data-driven metrics to uncover
beliefs at scale
To analyze employee mindsets and extract actionable insights, we use Narrative AnalyticsTM,
our powerful proprietary tool that combines cutting-edge “big data” analysis with qualitative
synthesis. This process has five steps:
1
Gather
data
› 2 Validate
› 3 Identify
› 4 Measure › 5 Monitor
and cluster
Organizational
Narrative
Narratives
ImpactTM
1
Gather data. We go where employee conversations about the workplace are happening,
both internally and externally, amassing large datasets with narrative-rich content.
2
Validate and cluster. We validate the datasets, ensuring that the sample reflects a
robust range of employee views. We feed the anonymized data through a proprietary data
analysis tool that organizes the content based on thematic similarity.
3
Identify Organizational Narratives. We analyze content clusters and extract
narratives expressed by employees, separating them from everyday chatter or individual
grievances. We then test this full set of narratives—what we call the Narrative LandscapeTM
(see below)—in qualitative interviews to ensure that they authentically reflect the voice
of employees.
4
Measure Narrative ImpactTM. We use a variety of metrics to quantify the prevalence
and resonance of each narrative—what we call the Narrative Impact—and assess how this
varies across employee segments (role, tenure, business line).
5
Monitor. We track shifts in these narratives to gauge the effectiveness of culture
change initiatives over time.
SAMPLE LANDSCAPE OF ORGANIZATION NARRATIVES
Narrative
Impact Score
Narrative
85
Proud to Serve
66
Climbing Ladders, But not Poles
This is a sample narrative landscape.
48
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
The table ranks the narratives
44
Productivity Trumps All
by impact score, a measure of
25
Unprepared for the Future
prominence and resonance.
15
Back to Customer Basics
10
Bureaucratic Stalemate
The Impact: ensuring that culture
change investments pay off
The benefits of Organizational
NarrativesTM for business and
human resources leaders:
Understanding Organizational Narratives can be the
• Gain unique insight into the employee mindsets that drive behavior
difference between success and failure in culture
change initiatives. Organizational Narratives provide
leaders with a powerful tool to understand and
shape employee culture. They offer critical insight
into deeply held employee beliefs in a uniquely
quantifiable way and point to specific, high-impact
strategies for creating a more aligned organization.
Interested in learning more? Drop us a line:
[email protected]
• Diagnose business risks linked to company culture
• Harness a new, actionable toolkit to increase the success rate of culture change initiatives
• Provide a deeper understanding, beyond the survey, and connect the growing volume of external and internal data to business outcomes
• Improve employee engagement, performance, and retention
About Monitor 360: Clarity from Complexity
Monitor 360 brings clarity to complex, global, strategic, and analytical business challenges.
We developed Narrative AnalyticsTM working with the intelligence community over the last
decade and are now applying it to the tremendous narrative challenges facing organizations.
We help organizations understand underlying beliefs at scale to reframe issue debates,
launch new products, enter new markets, manage brand reputations, shift organizational
cultures, and create breakthrough strategic plans. We can’t tell you about everything we
do, but if it’s a hard, fast-moving problem, we’re probably working on it (in 40+ countries)—
whether it’s for a major corporation, foundation, or the White House.
www.monitor-360.com