Nostalgia Narratives
Nostalgia Narratives are stories about how things were better in the past. In doing so, they suggest that we should go back to the good old days. Jason Feifer wrote an article about the phenomenon in which he describes them as stories about how “today’s changes ruined a glorious yesterday – that a golden age is ours to reclaim”. He goes back and researches various golden ages and makes an interesting discovery. Regardless of the golden age, there are always people telling their own nostalgia narratives. Thus we always recall our past as being better than today. All the way back to 3500 BC, when people first began writing down stories!
This explains one challenge with organisational transformations regarding people’s resistance to change. They often cling to how things were done in the past, remembering only the positive aspects and conveniently forgetting the negative ones. This behaviour reflects a form of retrospective coherence, where individuals construct a narrative about the past to align with their desired beliefs.
Nirvana Narratives
There is also an equivalent that I am going to call Nirvana Narratives, which are more focused on the future. (There is probably an established name for this already, but let’s go with the alliteration!). Thus Nirvana Narratives are about how today’s changes will create a glorious tomorrow – that a golden age is ours to attain.
This explains another challenge with transformations. People try and implement a future state which is not appropriate or achievable. In doing so they ignore the reality of the current situation and create resistance by imposing changes that won’t work. This is because the gap between the present and future states is too big to traverse in a single step.
Now Narratives
The alternative approach is to ask people to tell “Now Narratives” which are focused on the present. (Again, please humour me with the alliteration!). By sharing stories about what is happening at this time, we can more readily identify aspects of the here and now. Those are the things that we can target to change today. That could be identifying Obstacles with Agendashift‘s IdOO pattern. Or it could be identifying Constructors and Constraints as defined by Estuarine Mapping. Thus Now Narratives are about how today’s changes will create a more glorious today – that a golden age is ours to conceive.
In other words, Now Narratives help us work towards an Ideal Present. And in doing so, they address the three reasons why you should use Strategy Deployment. Namely, strategy is not deterministic, static or mechanistic.
The image above is the album artwork for Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, which seems like a relevant concept for this post!