Interviews with 10 change leaders leading organizational change

Using Yorke’s (2014) screenwriting framework for the creation of engaging narratives, we interviewed 10 change leaders about their recollections of specific anecdotes after a recent organizational change experience. Change leaders in the sample were predominantly senior middle managers and executive directors closely working with change recipients who were core team members and team managers. They worked in digitally intensive industries, and the nature of their work can easily be described as intellectual work, predominantly focused on conceptual skills and interpersonal expertise. The temporal dimension of change dynamics was a prerequisite for our study. Change leaders had to have formally finished their change projects within 30 days of the interview to minimize distortion of recollected memories. Respective projects included one intrapreneurial project, one process of company reorganization, two merger and acquisition processes, three software implementation projects, and three human-resources-related processes. As expected, stories portrayed change teams antagonized by the establishment. However, our narrative analysis highlights a personal transformation story in each narrative. As the sentiment of conveyed narratives changed, the change leadership role fluidly alternated from the initial leader to the change recipients.