I have been all over the country and overseas sharing these narrative change methods in various contexts. I have been able to apply them with success in a variety of change settings: to change corporate cultures, to improve public services, to inspire innovation, to create brand narratives, and to develop new products. Although I use my encounter with the death penalty and change at Uber as compelling examples, there are lessons for organizational, social, institutional, and even personal change. You can also use the model to inspire social movements that benefit society or to develop individual leaders inside your organization. In this book, I explain the same narrative change model I used in all of these contexts and share the underlying philosophical perspectives.
Transformational change is never easy. Changing the death penalty took a toll on all of us. The work was tormenting, and everyone on the team witnessed and experienced many types of suffering. I visited death row, twice. Most death penalty defense attorneys burn out quickly. I felt that same stress, and my convictions were certainly tested. Anguish nearly crushed my psyche; my job was in jeopardy. And on that journey, I was often confronted with the ghosts of my own past. At the same time, my past gave me a perspective essential to understanding change.
Internal challenges are often part of leading transformational change. I share personal notes about how I addressed those challenges because I think these stories may be helpful in your own change endeavors. Transformational change is hard work, but even at the toughest points, I found the work to be restorative and fulfilling. Engaging in the change process changed me. It gave me an intense purpose, and the work was deeply rewarding.
Once I got involved in fighting the death penalty, I definitely felt driven to make a difference. Something was at stake for me as well. Looking back, I think those two things helped me overcome the challenges of change. When our convictions are tested, we stand at a turning point in pursuing change. Our convictions can crumble, and we may give up. But if we feel driven to make a difference and have something at stake—how things will be in the future—our convictions can become a source of strength as we become more determined to achieve change.
I often say that my involvement in the death penalty came out of the blue—it is true that it was quite unexpected—but there is another, just as plausible, explanation. Looking back, it is possible that I was on an inevitable collision course with the death penalty. That story explains how I came to study narrative theory in the first place and, coincidentally (or maybe it was fate), how I got to thinking narratives could be used to construct something better than a traditional strategy. Upon reflection, I also see how creating and enacting a new narrative saved me from a deadly affliction. In that collision course version of what happened, changing the system against long odds is what I had been wrought to do.
Every experience I had ever had, every failure, especially my failures, shaped me for the challenge I faced. In that version, my entire life prepared me for this journey, despite my own plan to go into hiding and isolate myself from the world. As I found out, sometimes your destiny finds you on the very road you take to avoid it.
I desperately wanted to disappear. I should have begun the workshop already, but I inched back toward the corner of the large meeting room in Lubbock, Texas. A voice in my head whispered that I do not belong here, that this job is too big for me, and that attempting to change a monstrous system like the death penalty is impossible. I felt out of place and suspected it was only dumb luck that brought me to this moment. On top of that, people’s lives were on the line.
At that time, death penalty defense had gone poorly in Texas. Death penalties were handed down more than 90 percent of the time in capital trials in Texas, and 98 percent of the time in West Texas. We had launched the country’s first permanent death penalty defense team, and the entire team was present along with additional experts who came to lend their minds and insights to this endeavor. There are many public defender offices in the United States, but ours was the only one in the country that exclusively handled death penalty cases.
We intended to rewrite the way the death penalty was defended. Twenty people were gathered in the room. They milled around, sipped coffee, and introduced themselves to each other. We were all meeting for a daylong narrative change workshop I had suggested as a way to introduce a new narrative for defending against the death penalty. Attorneys, mitigators, constitutional experts, and other death penalty defense experts had traveled in from all over Texas.
When this began, I was a newly minted assistant professor at Texas Tech University, in the business school, in the management department. When I say I don’t know how I wound up in that room that day with all the major death penalty defense players in Texas, it’s because I had a very different plan when I moved to Lubbock. I am not a lawyer, and I never had any interest in the death penalty. My plan was to disappear; I was trying to be a hermit professor. None of it was working out.
I am an ethnographer. When people hear the word ethnographer, they probably picture an anthropologist in weather-beaten khakis traveling to visit distant tribes, studying culture by living among tribe members and engaging in their rituals. At the extreme, the anthropologist may even become part of the tribe. People are not wrong to imagine that, but today’s ethnography is a less romantic version—although it can be just as adventurous.
Organizational culture became a distinguishing factor in corporate performance in the 1980s.1 In exploring why a strong corporate culture made such a difference in business, researchers borrowed ethnographic methods from their anthropology cousins to study corporate culture. Ethnographers treated corporations like not-so-distant tribes and embedded themselves in corporate settings. They observed and worked alongside employees to understand the culture of the firm: what it is like to work here, what it is like to be them, and how we do things around here. If you knew what kind of culture great companies had, you could attempt to instill that same culture in your own organization and become great as well. In the search for what made some companies excellent, organizational culture was recognized as the primary factor.
Better performance through better cultures was a main area of focus, but some ethnographers simply sought to describe what it is like inside an institution for the sake of knowing, without an agenda of improving performance. For example, ethnographers described what it’s like to work in an auto factory, to serve in a police force, or to work in a slaughterhouse, to name just a few. They sought to reveal the inner workings and culture of these groups by becoming insiders in these contexts. For example, cops had their own language and informal yet powerful codes for their behavior.2 Strong norms dictated how cops should cover for one another and have each other’s back, both on and off duty.
I joined the death penalty defense team and became a member of that tribe so I could watch and learn and participate as much as possible as an insider. One of my main research aims was to describe the inner workings of the death penalty and how it worked in practice. This understanding would eventually become crucial in changing how it worked.
The team wanted to change the way the institution of the death penalty worked, and I agreed to help organize the team. I observed their work, went everywhere they went, and participated in any way I could. For instance, I strategized on cases, visited defendants, met with DAs and judges, and shadowed team members to learn their roles in defending against the death penalty. Ethnographers often attempt to remain invisible, studying social interaction from an arm’s length to minimize influencing what they observe. In some ethnographic practices, researchers are encouraged to maintain objectivity and keep some social distance between themselves and research subjects.