Deidre Bradley

SJAC 2
Abstract
Kolb (2003) brings a new perspective on organizational change with his article, Seeking
continuity amidst organizational change a storytelling approach. He brings up good points on
the importance of remembering the past, not keeping the past alive, however. He suggests that
just using a different word, that is, continuity over change, can bring about a different level of
acceptance to employees. Kolb revisits an approach he took with one company and discovers a
potentially new twist on the organizational change philosophy.

Thesis Statement
The overarching question of the article is to explore the idea of using a storytelling
approach while seeking continuity during organizational change. Kolb (2003) argues that rather
than taking the proverbial bull by the horns approach and change everything immediately while
always discounting the past, one should move slowly and cautiously so as not to bruise the
memories of those who are still viable to the organization. He prefers using the word
continuity as opposed to the word change. Just changing the verbiage can put others at ease,
letting them be able to hold on to memories but never forsaking the vision of the future. Kolb
(2003) refers to a study his students conducted and noted it was refreshing to explore this idea
rather than moving forward with the traditional ideas of organizational change. Kolbs
experience in shifting his own paradigm with one group of workers during an assignment at
Amcor. He soon realized through that process that making radical changes are not effective and
it hurts the morale of the long-tenured staff because they have the impression they are being
forced to forget the past, no matter how grand, and forge ahead with changes they had no input
on implementing.
Main Points
Kolb (2003) explains that he came to discover the elements of continuity within a
company that was experiencing a major change related to employee shift work. As Kolb was
preparing for an intervention at a can factory, he focused on the organizational change issues that
had been given to him.
As he prepared for sessions with the employee, he realized that the learning exercises he
was going to employ might not be well received by the audience. He took into account the

educational levels of the employee and realized there may be some resistance to his normal
approach. He feared that the sessions would be viewed as therapy sessions and the workers
would not buy into them. He had to plan an alternate strategy.
Kolb (2003) borrowed an idea from a colleague and used the ice breaker exercise where
the employees introduced themselves by seniority level. This proved to be interesting and nonthreatening to the staff. Kolb was trying to get to the history of the plant in order to aid in his
change management exercise. Throughout the process, he had a very simplistic way of handling
change. He interviewed each team member having them tell about 5 to 10 minutes about their
story.
Kolb (2003) states in his article that he believed this activity helped staff gain perspective
on the changes that were being proposed and greatly reduced their resistance to the changes that
were coming. More importantly, it connected the staff members despite their years of experience
or their backgrounds.
Kolb (2003) reveals that he has not had a client with the same issues that would have this
exercise revisited at the time of writing the article. He is confident that other opportunities
and/or ideas will come to him or perhaps others in the organization development world where
this simple notion could expound upon his idea and share their outcomes with others.
Critical Assessment
While this is a fascinating article and one that speaks to me about the importance of
respecting the past, I do not believe this could be considered a proven model yet the idea is very
compelling and speaks to me as a leadership student, as a leader.
This article states that the idea came to him to start slowly with the group and get to know
them during one assignment. He did what many leaders fail to do. He got to know the workers

and actually encouraged them to talk about the past in a positive way. This idea speaks to me as
a common issue we have learned and built upon all semester. Rather than forging ahead with an
agenda of ours, we need to look at the whole system, develop relationships, forego changing
everything at once or too early without begin educated on the process and allow people to be
involved in the decision-making process.
The negative that stands out to me in this experiment, is at the time of writing the article,
he had not used it since. I like that he was able to come up with this idea for this plant and
perhaps it was a at the right time, right place deal. He had the right mix and it opened others
up to each other and to him, which made his job a tad easier in discussing new initiatives,
changes. Unfortunately, we do not have any evidence of Kolb using this ever again, at least not
since the article was written. We do not have any trends or statistical data to show that this is
indeed a tried and true method. On paper, it does indeed look good but in practical application,
we are not sure.
We do not know if this was truly a successful intervention. The article states that there
were some successes but it does not state if those successes actually made the transition happen
or how long the changes were sustained. I believe it is critical that a trend be identified before
deciding if his strategy was truly successful. Kolb readily notes that this was a one-time event
and does not explicitly state it is science.
Kolb (2003) was able to tap into a similar idea from Peter Senges Executive book
summaries: The fifth discipline (2011). Kolb brought this diverse group together by interviewing them
together rather than individually or in private. Other workers could peer into their co-workers minds for
about five minutes. Personal stories became real and having others hear them helped each other to
identify or understand each other a little better. This goes along with Senges first principle of systems

thinking: placing people in the same system, regardless of how different they are, tend to produce similar
results.

While I want to believe Kolb was definitely onto something, we do not have evidence.
However, I cannot argue that this approach would be worth trying and it is something that I want
to look at during my research for my project.

Reflection
While I certainly agree with Kolb (2003) that it is important to link the past to the present
and future, I do not fully believe there is total science behind the article. I do believe that Peter
Senge (2011) notes in his article, Executive book summaries: The fifth discipline, shares these same
idea of continuity but he looks at it as systems thinking, in my opinion. I believe they are both trying to
get to the same point, just in different ways. What Kolb did in his experiment was to bring others
together and to see the whole picture. He did that by getting to know the plant workers on their level.
Kolb (2003) was able to get the plant workers to develop a shared vision. He invoked storytelling
as a way to break down barriers and get the workers to open up to him and to each other. He respected
their past, he did not give them a stage to revert to wishing things were like back in the day.
I will definitely look to this as a strategy when discussing change with others. To say this is a
model, I do not believe in going that far with it. However, it is a nice complement to change management.

References
Kolb, D. G. (2003). Seeking continuity amidst organizational change a storytelling
approach.Journal of Management Inquiry, 12(2), 180. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/203315238?accountid=27424
Seng, P. M. (2011). Executive book summaries: The fifth discipline. Bristol,VT: Soundview.
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