Strategic Leadership | Integral Strategy: Narratives integral and Identity in Strategic Leadership
We have defined the broad organizational context in which strategy will
do its work and examined some of the tools and concepts that it needs
to become an integrated process of leadership. Ultimately, though,
strategic leadership is indispensably a matter of practice. It must enact its designs
and use its tools. Part III will focus on the practices of a systematic and integrated
strategy process. The current chapter opens with a sketch of the elements of strategic leadership as a summary and a prospectus. Then, we turn to the core of our
conceptual model by focusing on both the significance and the use of narratives
of identity in strategic leadership.
INTEGRATING STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP
We are proposing the formulation of a collaborative process and discipline of
strategic leadership. It pretends to be neither a science nor a discrete method of
discovering knowledge. Rather, it is an integrative and applied discipline of decision making. Although different from them, it has parallels with other disciplines
of decision making such as management, which aims to integrate knowledge with
decisions and actions. It also has clear similarities with fields like the creative
and performing arts and applied psychology. These practical fields use rigorous
concepts and systematic methods to engage with human agency and experience,
which they intend to influence and enrich but cannot fully objectify and control. As an integrative discipline, strategic leadership relies on interdisciplinary
knowledge and insights about leadership and human experience and uses a variety of methods of empirical and conceptual inquiry. As an applied discipline,
it uses systematic methods in developing strategies, making decisions, and taking
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actions. Inherently collaborative, strategic leadership engages participants in
group processes and makes decisions through an intentional and structured series
of deliberations.
As will become clear, the connections between strategy and leadership require
careful elaboration. In effect, each of the concepts includes criteria that will set
the terms for its relationship in strategic leadership. Since leadership engages
humans at deep levels of their experience and motivation, strategy will have to
begin there. The idea of integral strategy takes us to organizational self-definition
through narratives as the starting-point for strategy. Leadership petitions strategic
management to find its depths and broaden its vision. The idea of "integral" strategy also tries to capture the notion that strategic leadership has to be persistently
reflective about its own models of thought and judgment. To be adequate to the
task, it also must look toward both its connections to legitimate systems of authority and its linkages to methods of implementation.
The integration of strategy and leadership involves a series of explicit expectations from the side of strategy as well. The strategy process asks that leadership
commit itself to a set of orderly steps and procedures, and to diverse forms of
knowledge, analysis, and measurement. Strategy and leadership offer each other
disciplined ways of understanding problems and making decisions, and interrelated
processes that can mobilize the people and the resources of an organization.
The Prerequisites of Strategic Leadership
We have drawn together several streams of reflection on leadership, decision
making, and values in order to set the course for a process of strategic leadership.
One way to appropriate the fruits of this labor is by elucidating a set of prerequisites or conditions that must be satisfied for strategic leadership to be an effective practice in the decision-making world of the academy. Given what we have
learned, what tests does strategic leadership have to satisfy? I offer here a series of
initial propositions that will be developed, illustrated, and discussed throughout
subsequent sections of the text. By offering these motifs here, I hope to provide
the reader with both a recapitulation of key findings to date and an outline of the
argument and proposed practices that will unfold throughout the text.
Strategic leadership is:
• Integral: It begins at the level of human agency, values, and paradigms.
• Sense making: It relies on narrative to make sense of experience and give meaning to the future.
• Motivational: It mobilizes energy and commitment.
• Applied: It takes form in decisions and choices.
• Collaborative: It uses collegial deliberative methods.
• Systemic: It connects separate decision-making systems within the organization.
• Data driven: It depends on good metrics and strategic indicators.
Integral Strategy 109
• Integrative: It integrates different forms of data and knowledge into insights and
decisions.
• Embedded: It depends on distributed leadership throughout the organization.
• Action oriented: It requires effective systems of implementation.
THE BIRTH OF STRATEGY: THE POWER
OF NARRATIVES
Discussions with college administrators about strategic planning quickly reveal
how differently people think about the process. The conversation may start as a discussion of the meaning of a vision for a college to be the best in its class, or it might
come to focus on the organization's distinctive competencies and its responses to
a threatening environment. Frequently the most energy about strategy surrounds
questions of financial resources and the college's market position in enrollment,
especially its net tuition income after discounts for financial aid and scholarships.
All these issues may be critically important, but in themselves they are strategies of management, not of leadership. How can the strategic focus be shifted
to leadership? How can the language of strategy be translated into the idiom
of leadership? The answer begins by locating the foundation of strategy in the
organization's unique identity, as revealed in its narrative of identity, its story.
For our purposes, narrative is the form that stories take as they tell of events that
unfold through time and create dramatic tension around conflicts and challenges
and their resolution (H. Gardner, 2004). Narratives are the way we tell, and story
what we tell, so often the two are one and the same. Narratives of identity are
one type of story that give an account of an organization's or a society's unique
characteristics. This point of departure moves strategy to a deeper plane of selfanalysis and self-understanding, where we begin to see that it has to do with sense
making and sense giving, and so with leadership.
For the past several generations, the modern imagination has been drawn to the
importance of narrative in understanding human experience. Most contemporary
fields in the humanities and social sciences have been fascinated, even preoccupied,
with the significance of narratives. The literature on the topic in each discipline
is so vast that it represents the shape of the modern sensibility.1 Far from being
seen as simply fanciful inventions, stories are narratives of the meaning of events
as persons and groups live them rather than objectify them. Thus we find that case
histories and case studies, original historical texts and documents, myths and sagas,
songs and dances, paintings and sculpture, biographies and autobiographies, letters
and diaries, and novels, poetry, and plays are powerful sources of revelation of the
meaning of the human project. As Roland Barthes, one of the most influential
theorists on narratives, puts it, "under this almost infinite number of forms, the narrative is present at all times, in all places, in all societies: . . . there does not exist, and
never has existed, a people without narratives" (quoted in Polkinghorne 1988, 14).
Stories as people live them or imagine them give us access to the participant's
sense of meaning, to human interiority as the individual's or the group's lived forms
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of self-awareness. Through the meaning of the events that they recount, narratives
display values and commitments that matter decisively to people, often with an
unqualified sense of importance. Objectified external analyses typically lose sight
of the richness and ambiguity of human intention and motivation, and the drama
of personal meaning in both ordinary and extraordinary events. Objectification
cuts the vital nerve of connection to the self's or the group's investment in these
events, their caring about them. Stories, on the other hand, convey the sense of
meaning and of mattering with which persons live their lives. Neil Postman captures
precisely these motifs: "Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through
the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate
the present, and give direction to our future" (quoted in Connor 2004, 10).
Stories capture and convey the dynamic of values as the internalized norms of
self-enactment. After reminding us that humans are always in the pursuit of what
they take to be good, Charles Taylor notes that as we "determine the direction of
our lives, we must inescapably understand our lives in narrative form, as a 'quest' "
(1989, 51–52).
Narratives as a Distinctive Form of Cognition
Human intelligence grasps the truths of stories, identifies with them, and
remembers them in ways that cannot be matched by abstractions. Ask any teacher
or speaker what people remember in their talks. Stories appear to constitute a
distinctive cognitive form. "This appears to be so pervasively true that many
scholars have suggested that the human mind is first and foremost a vehicle for
storytelling," claims Dan McAdams (1993, 28). Just as there are structures to
knowledge, so too there are forms and patterns in the search for meaning in our
lives. The noted psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that the mind apprehends the
world by way of two different cognitive forms, each with its own radically different
methods of verification. The "paradigmatic" mode is logical, empirical, and analytical, while the "narrative mode" is concerned with wants, needs, and goals, "the
vicissitudes of human intention" in time (Bruner, quoted in McAdams 1993, 29).
Stories convey the shared meanings of human striving, the intensity of conflict,
and the unpredictability of experience. In our finitude, nothing is guaranteed, so
we are forever finding and losing our path, often in unexpected ways. Stories are
adequate to this inherent tension and uncertainty of human existence in time
since they illuminate the changing meanings of who we are and what we intend
to become (Ricoeur 1984–1986). As Bruner puts it, "Through narrative we construct, reconstruct and in some ways reinvent yesterday and tomorrow. . . . Memory
and imagination supply and consume each other's wares" (2002, 93).
Organizational, Cultural, and Religious Stories
Although works of imaginative literature are significant and powerful forms of
narrative, our attention will be focused on organizational stories. The importance
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of narratives has been fully appreciated by students of contemporary organizational
culture. We agree with Polkinghorne: "The narrative is a basic form of coherence
for an organization's realm of meaning, just as it is for an individual's" (1988, 123).
As we saw in chapter 1, along with norms, values, rituals, and symbols, stories play
a decisive role in shaping the leadership of organizations. Important aspects of
institutional identity can only be communicated in narrative form. The consuming devotion and passionate vision of the founders and leaders of organizations are
passed from generation to generation and group to group as stories that define the
present, not just the past. Two of the most popular and influential management
books of the 1980s and 1990s, In Search of Excellence, by Peters and Waterman
(1982), and The Fifth Discipline, by Senge (1990), reflect a deep sensitivity to the
significance of institutional values and narratives. In the Leader's Guide to Storytelling, Stephen Denning (2005) charts the many ways in which business organizations do, can, and should rely on stories in accomplishing many of the tasks
of leadership. Stories appear to be the epitome of organizational sense making in
Weick's understanding of the concept. Stories ground identity with reflections
that select the meaning of past events and are enacted and shared with others as
a plausible way to understand ongoing experience (Weick 1991, 1995).
Nowhere is the centrality of narratives clearer than in religious traditions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam recount narratives about how the divine has appeared
in certain people, places, and events. Jesus of Nazareth taught primarily through
stories and parables and by narrating the impending events that would usher in
God's Kingdom. Narrative is the basic biblical voice (Borg 1994). Even in the
more conceptual texts of classical Buddhism and Hinduism, stories are nonetheless abundant and indispensable, as in the Hindu devotional text the Bhagavad
Gita. The crucial significance of story for leadership is foreshadowed in the ways
that religious leaders such as prophets, teachers, and saviors communicate and
embody narratives about ultimate meaning.
Collegiate Stories
As it is for other organizations and institutions, so it is for colleges and universities. Stories fill the campus air. The tales of greater and lesser campus comedies
and tragedies of intellectual toil and fulfillment, of academic reward and failure,
of intimacy and conflict, are constantly given voice. They always begin in one of
the basic forms of narrative with "Remember the time . . . ?" From playing fields
to the laboratory, in offices, classrooms, and studios, from the stage to the library,
every institution creates a wealth of stories in which it displays itself and its values.
The prominent alumni are extolled, legendary leaders are honored, distinguished
professors are celebrated, and great coaches and teams are remembered. Some
academic programs and achievements come to take on iconic status and become
normative legacies and markers of identity. All the smaller and larger stories can
be drawn together and interpreted as part of an inclusive narrative, for they reveal
common beliefs, meanings, commitments, and values that reflect a unique identity.
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Narratives are never told as raw facts or antiseptic histories, but as the tales of
participants. They are always shaped by the drama and tension of conflict: success
and failure, triumph and defeat, achievement and frustration, loyalty and betrayal
(cf. Denning 2005; Toma, Dubrow, and Hartley 2005).
The story as a narrative of identity displays the unique characteristics that set
the institution apart, and in which it takes pride. The place is recognizable in the
fragments of its story because they share in a narrative that makes sense of the parts
with reference to a larger whole and temporal sequence. Narratives also reach out
for larger stories, so each college interprets and reinterprets itself as participating in
the comprehensive narrative of certain traditions, norms, and practices of liberal
and professional education and the values of scholarly discovery. Postman again
helps us to understand the connection between local stories and master narratives
of education because they share a story "that tells of origins and envisions a future, a
story that constructs ideals, prescribes rules of conduct, provides a source of authority, and, above all gives a sense of continuity and purpose" (Postman, quoted in Connor 2004, 10). The story, then, is far more than a history, although it is revealed
in history. It lives in multiple recollections, but it is defined in shared memory and
in common meanings and values. Although not free from conflicting understandings, its common meanings as a story of identity and its bearing on the future as a
narrative of aspiration can be coherently interpreted and widely affirmed.
Collegiate Sagas
The power of the generic idea of story has been applied to the study of higher
education in a variety of ways, so it can be illustrated in several forms. In The
Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore, the distinguished sociologist
of higher education Burton Clark (1970) used the notion of organizational saga
to capture the power of the cultural dimensions of experience in formal organizations. As such, a "saga is a collective understanding of a unique accomplishment
based on historical exploits of a formal organization, offering strong normative
bonds within and outside the organization. Believers give loyalty to the organization and take pride and identity from it" (B. R. Clark 1991, 46). The concept of
saga can be taken as a strong form of what we have called story.
Each of the three colleges in Clark's study illustrates different patterns of a saga,
although they share many common features. At Reed in 1920, a young president
created a new college in the Northwest of the United States to be a pure academic
community that prized nonconformity. Antioch, on the other hand, was an old
institution in slow decline before Arthur Morgan became its president in 1919.
Under this bold and charismatic president, the college introduced a novel plan to
alternate periods of study and work as part of general education. At Swarthmore, a
strong Quaker college responded to the leadership of its gifted and magnetic president, Frank Aydelotte, to create an honors program inspired by the Oxford model.
Although not all institutional stories have the depth and salience of sagas, they
all display the characteristics of narratives of identity. Whether it is present in
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strong or weak forms, the institutional story is the starting point for strategy. Those
institutions that cannot take possession of their life stories will find the work of
strategy and leadership frustrated at every turn. As the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges' 2006 report on the college presidency,
The Leadership Imperative, puts it, "Only by embracing and building on . . . the
institutional saga . . . can a president span successfully the full range of leadership
responsibilities" (12) as one element of what the report calls integral leadership.
The story, as we shall see, enriches institutional self-definition through statements
of identity, mission, vision, and position, and, as a result, it fuels leadership as
a reciprocal process.
THE STORY OF CENTRE COLLEGE
The story of Centre College, a small liberal arts college founded by the Presbyterians in Danville, Kentucky, in 1819, can illustrate something of the significance of narratives as they inform the strategy processes of an institution.
In the late summer of 1983, Rick Nahm, the vice president of Centre College,
called the president. He said excitedly, "We have passed 67 percent participation
in alumni giving for last year. I am checking with Dartmouth and Williams, but
I think that we have beaten them. We will have the best record in the country."
The Centre story, as described in the strategic plan then being completed,
tells of a tiny college, 725 students at the time, with an exclusive commitment to
education in the arts and sciences, and a disproportionate influence in Kentucky
and the mid-South region of the country. The only small college in the state to
house a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, it has a remarkable legacy of preparing the
state's and the nation's leaders. Centre serves as a beacon of excellence and a
source of pride in a region that has always lacked resources for education. At the
turn of the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton,
commented about the challenges of measuring educational quality. Discussing and
questioning the proportion of alumni who achieve distinction as a measure, he
said, "There is a little college down in Kentucky which in sixty years has graduated
more men who have acquired prominence than has Princeton in her 150 years"
(quoted in Trollinger 2003, 13). What Wilson questioned became part of Centre's
story of disproportionate influence, singleness of purpose, leadership, loyalty, and
achievement. By that time, Centre had awarded diplomas to dozens of state and
federal legislators, two vice presidents of the United States, and several Kentucky
governors and had established a tradition of producing leaders for the ministry,
the bench, and the bar. The "great dissenter," John Marshall Harlan, the Supreme
Court justice who rejected the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessey v. Ferguson
in 1896, was a Centre alumnus. Later, another alumnus, Fred Vinson, would serve
as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1946 to 1953.
The next year, the alumni-giving victory became complete. Dartmouth distributed a green-and-white button for alumni that read, "Go Big Green, Beat
Centre." Not since Centre beat Harvard in football 6–0 in the upset of the century
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in 1921 had the story of a metaphoric David and Goliath become so vivid. Not
long afterward, many of the goals of an ambitious strategic plan were fulfilled:
enrollment grew by one hundred students, new facilities were built and older ones
renovated, salaries were substantially increased, and a capital campaign reached
its $40 million goal a year ahead of schedule. The power of Centre's story was
decisively revealed in 1985 when the Olin Foundation awarded Centre its annual
grant for the complete financing of a new physical science building. In its contacts with the college, the foundation marveled at the loyalty of Centre alumni
and noted the college's heritage of leadership in its region. Driven by strategic
planning, Centre's record of financial and academic achievement has steadily
continued to progress since that time.
Although the Centre story has some especially rich motifs, it is representative of the narratives of identity that can be told in virtually every institution of
higher education. As we have suggested, narratives do what all good stories do,
which is to capture important insights, values, lessons, and truths about identity
in accounts that reach us as agents rather than as observers of life. Stories touch
us as persons, reaching both our minds and our emotions. They use the language
of metaphors, images, and symbols and turns of phrase pulled from everyday life
that interpret the drama of experience in ways that empirical description cannot.
In their empirical study of the use of metaphors in planning and leadership at the
University of Minnesota, Simsek and Louis(1994) describe similar characteristics
of symbolic and metaphoric language. In their study of twenty widely diverse colleges and universities that have higher patterns of student engagement in learning
and graduation rates than comparable institutions, Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt,
and their associates (2005) show the deep educational significance of campus
culture, symbol, and story. Each campus has a connected set of strong symbolic
meanings and owns a powerful narrative of achievement and identity. Stories
draw us in as participants as we identify through imagination and memory with
the narrative of our community's identity.
We should not go on to conclude that all is consistent, successful, and cheerful
in stories of identity, for disruption and conflict bring trying challenges to places
and may even tear them apart. These chapters, too, are part of the story. The Civil
War tore a hole in the heart of Centre College, dividing families, students, faculty,
alumni, and the Danville community into two hostile camps, and the Presbyterians into two churches. It led to the founding of a competing university fifty
miles away. The wounds required almost a century to heal, and the college suffered as a result. In the early 1960s the college had to put the ugly legacy of racial
segregation behind it, and through decisive presidential leadership by Thomas
Spragens, it did so with conviction and moral purposefulness.
FINDING, TELLING, AND TRANSLATING THE STORY
As we seek to know and tell our stories, it becomes clear that there are many
individuals, programs, traditions, rituals, documents, and cultural norms and values
Integral Strategy 115
around which stories collect. Often a specific program or a set of practices will
continue to exercise influence indefinitely because they have taken on definitive
or iconic status, perhaps as part of a saga as described by Clark or as an element
of identity that continues to have meaning. Those who wish to discover and give
voice to an institution's narrative of identity will do well to consider these various
practices and beliefs. They offer clues about the larger story, and they can be discovered through a disciplined and integrative reading of the institution as a text.
Clark's discussion of saga and our analysis of story reveal that there are different
layers and levels of meaning in narratives. As a consequence, different forms of
inquiry must be used to understand their significance. As we have seen, they always
begin in the concrete, in specific events, particular relationships, actual places,
and real people. These particulars are then drawn together into accounts that use
language in various ways to describe a sequence of events and outcomes, following an infinite variety of plotlines. Often the stories circulate as smaller or larger
fragments, while in some contexts their content is widely shared and understood.
Although organizational stories cannot be invented, they can be discovered and
brought to awareness. In doing so, we may find explanations for all sorts of issues
and peculiarities of an organization that have eluded us. More importantly, we may
be able to take fuller possession of our circumstances and our future as we become
more purposeful in understanding and telling our story. As we seek to know and to
articulate an institution's story, it becomes important to look for the characteristic
patterns, themes, values, markers, and motifs that they contain, for stories have
been created around and through them. They include the following:
• Precipitating events: the founding, a transforming gift, a dramatic occurrence,
a bold new direction, encompassing change, a crisis survived
• Transforming leaders: individuals such as presidents, board members, or faculty
and staff whose leadership and vision created a distinctive and enduring change
in the organization
• Salient personalities: individuals whose passions, accomplishments, and endearing eccentricities mark the experience of the community
• Generative programs: distinctive educational programs that define the organization's practices and self-consciousness in a normative way
• Markers of distinction: the accomplishments of the institution, faculty, staff,
students, and alumni that stand out for their special quality and level of achievement in all forms of teaching, research, service, athletics, and leadership
• Markers of distinctiveness: those elements that are experienced as setting the
institution apart, including a special mission, a religious commitment, a particular location, unusual programs, powerful administrative and academic competencies, a distinctive campus, special service to a community or profession, or
a relationship with a particular constituency
• Features of the culture: the traditions, rituals, practices, values, norms, and
patterns of relationship and forms of community that distinguish an institution
as a human and intellectual community
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• Larger meanings: the ways that the story represents and embodies the larger
purposes and values of education in the search for knowledge, in human transformation, and in service to society, sharing thereby in the larger narratives of
the purposes of education
One important source for stories of identity is the voices of the campus and of
key constituencies. Telling the story depends first on listening for it and hearing
it in the narratives of others. When the time is right, the leader begins to tell the
story as she has systematized, interpreted, and perhaps transformed it, reflecting all the while what has been learned from listening. In the process, she will
discover how much people appreciate hearing the story, even when they know
it well. They find it energizing to hear it told in a new way, many times hearing
elements of it they knew but could never quite state. The listeners feel affirmed
because it is their story, one in which they have participated and to which they
have contributed.
One of the ways to listen carefully is with the help of a formal process. The following set of questions (O'Toole 1981, 129–30, used by permission of the author)
provides one example of a way to open a dialogue about identity. It has a light touch
but can yield helpful insights to be explored in greater depth in other context.
Translating the Story into Themes and Values
Connecting the threads in an institution's narrative represents an important
dimension of strategic thinking. It brings the benefits of systematic reflection to
issues of identity, the strategic significance of which is often ignored. Yet another
stage of analysis is required to create a full narrative of identity to serve as the
foundation for strategy. As we have suggested, it is important to translate the
Integral Strategy 119
story into a set of distinctive concepts, themes, meanings, purposes, and values.
In doing so, we create a set of conceptual touchstones to which participants in
the work of strategy can repair as they seek to capture and elucidate the bearing
of the institution's sense of itself for the future.
Strategic leadership uses the power of a systematic method in its work as a
discipline. Yet the method comes with cautions. If we do not keep the story connected to concrete events, it will lose its power to energize and motivate the participants in a community. Abstractions are necessary, for without them we could
not communicate widely, create policies and systems, and relate our educational
responsibilities to the wider society. Yet abstractions draw their vitality from the
currents of life out of which they have emerged and through which they must
be continuously renewed. In studying strategic plans and related documents,
one finds a large series of concepts and values that institutions use to describe
themselves and their purposes. To illustrate with a consistent example, we can
turn again to Centre College, for its current leaders have recently thought and
written self-consciously about the values that define the Centre story. For one
member of the faculty and leader in the planning process, the common thread
in the many forms and memories of the Centre experience is "a combination of
high expectations and high commitment, of ambition and affirmation, or rigor
and reward. It's tough love" (Wyatt 2003, 7). As one chemistry professor used to
put it, "At Centre the collar fits a little tighter." Students experience the college
as an intimate educational community of intense relationships and high expectations that showcases a student's multiple talents in the classroom, around the
campus, on the playing field, and on stage. Other leaders at Centre, including
its current and preceding presidents, have reached for words such as "transformation," "empowerment," "education of mind and body," and "leadership" to
describe the educational purposes of the college. In exploring these elements of
the larger story of liberal education, the college's own story is enriched.
Our emphasis on narratives prompts the question of how they are to be related
to the practice of strategy within a formal process. Is the institutional story a
lengthy chapter in a strategic plan, or is it found in one or more summary statements, or is it not part of the strategy document at all? How does the story function
in the formal strategy process?
IDENTITY STATEMENTS
Because institutional circumstances and stories are so different, there are many
answers to these questions. Yet despite the variety, it is clear that strategic leadership depends upon effective ways for the connection to be made, for values and
insights derived from the story to be present explicitly in the strategy process.
To accomplish this, we propose that strategy documents should include a brief
section on institutional identity, unless the task has already been accomplished in
other easily available documents. The identity statement should synthesize and
summarize the institution's story, thereby constituting with mission, vision, and,
120 Strategic Leadership
eventually, position a fourfold self-definition. Although an identity statement typically does not have a linear relationship to the decision-making process, it provides
a coherent interpretive framework for the development of the other aspects of the
self-definition and priorities of the plan. By offering participants in the process
a set of shared reference points, values, images, and metaphors, it sets a common
course for their work. By reflecting the experiences, beliefs, and contributions of
the wider campus community, it provides an important resource for leadership as
an interactive process of influence.
The length and character of narratives and identity statements will vary widely
to reflect institutional needs, characteristics, and circumstances. If an institution
already has a heightened consciousness of its story, it may only need a paragraph
or two to communicate its identity. In other cases, a college might need several
pages or more to capture its defining epochal moments, themes, characteristics,
and core values. If there has been little thought given to the institution's narrative of identity, or if strategy is a new process to the campus, the section will be
longer. Institutions that have undergone substantial change or that contemplate
doing so can use an identity statement to interpret their changing story to their
constituencies. They can reflect their sensitivities to the challenges of change,
show authentic continuities of purpose and values, and rally support for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Core Values
Similarly, a set of core values should be defined and stated as a thematic expression of the institution's identity and in some cases may be that statement. Based
on our earlier analysis of values, this means inquiring into what really matters
to a place—as expressed in its history, its priorities, its budgets, its facilities, its
policies and programs, and its culture and relationships. What is privileged and
what is secondary? What is enduring and what is passing? What would people
sacrifice in the name of what greater good? What are the authorities and norms
that do and should drive choices? If a good cross-section of a campus is asked to
pick out a limited number of truly characteristic values in answer to these kinds
of questions, the institution's profile of values begins to emerge. When a value
is proposed to be central and fundamental, it can be queried repeatedly with the
question "Why?" until people give good explanations of its relevance and reach
deeper levels of identity. Core values can never be just a set of abstract nouns but
should be characterized and explained with reference to events, programs, and
practices that give the values texture, authenticity, and credibility as the lived
norms of the organization's story (cf. Sevier 2000).
In his study of five entrepreneurial universities in Europe, Clark (1998) describes
the evolution of the University of Twente in the Netherlands as a successful and
innovative technological university over a thirty-year period after its founding in
1964. We can use the interesting analysis of its core values as an illustration of
a statement of identity.
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The university has become:
• The two-core university: by offering an unusual combination of programs in
both applied science and applied social science
• The campus university: by creating a beautiful verdant campus with a selfsufficient living and learning environment, distinctive in the Dutch context
• The responsible university: through its commitment to the development of its
region both economically and culturally
• The university without frontiers: by means of its international character in
both teaching and research
• The focused university: by providing in-depth study in a number of fields
• The flexible university: by using a variety of methods of governance and decision
making, and creating various streams of funding to achieve its goals
The Critique of Stories
Often stories take on mythic status and become miniature paradigms that work
like magnets drawing everything toward them (cf. Simsek and Louis 2000). It can
then become nearly impossible to get behind the myth to see events in fresh and
novel ways. As a result, it often falls to new leaders or to crises to do the hard
work of demythologizing the stories of a community that have hardened into
orthodoxy or have become defensive and stale. The task of criticism is a part of
strategic leadership.
Both for good and ill, not everyone in an academic community interprets the
story in the same way or embraces the one they know. In every organization,
there are different accounts about what the founders meant and did, and the
true content of the place's values. Some of the story may be flawed and include
memories of exclusion and discrimination that need to be brought to awareness
and addressed. Yet even when there are defects and discord, to position strategy
within a narrative of identity is to give it a point of departure that creates a sense
of common enterprise. Differences in values are often disagreements over their
specific content, not their intent, so they can be resolved through dialogue and
deliberation about the authentic meaning of educational quality. The story will
enrich the strategic conversation and debate, deepen involvement in the process,
create more coherent insights, and build credibility. It will, most importantly,
define and illuminate the shared commitments that are needed to transcend the
structural tensions in academic decision making and to define an inviting trajectory for the future.
STORY AND LEADERSHIP
Our effort to find the roots of strategy within narratives has also given us a
clear glimpse of the relationship between story and leadership. Consistent with
our earlier characterizations, it has become clear that some of the essential tasks
122 Strategic Leadership
of leadership are to know, to tell, to enact, and to embody the organization's
story. This perspective allows us to penetrate into the dynamics of leadership
as an engaging reciprocal process. Leaders show exceptional sensitivity to narratives of identity because they reveal the central beliefs, needs, desires, and
values of their followers. As they learn the story of the group they represent,
leaders come to understand what matters, what motivates, and what triggers
action (cf. Denning 2005). They know the way the story of their group shows
human experience unfolding through commitments to that which has decisive
importance in the lives of its members and in the life of the leader.
National Identity: Lincoln at Gettysburg
To see narrative at work in leadership, we can do no better than to examine a
familiar story of national identity. When Abraham Lincoln speaks at Gettysburg
on November 19, 1863, in the middle of a terrible civil war, he evokes America's
past, but he does not give a neutral historical account of its founding. Rather,
he makes his comments in the framework of a narrative of identity. A historian examining the same events might highlight the political circumstances in
which independence was achieved, emphasizing the economic interests of the
founders and France's desire to aid a fledgling nation to foil its ancient enemy,
Great Britain. In a philosophical account, the Declaration of Independence might
be characterized as a derivative document, one that lifts ideas from a variety
of Enlightenment thinkers and makes exalted but dubious claims about human
equality that contradict common experience. We can call these external or outer
histories. Yet as Lincoln steps to the podium on Cemetery Hill, he speaks as an
agent in a historical drama to other participants in it by offering an inner history, which takes the form of a narrative (Niebuhr 1941). Thus, he can say to his
countrymen that "our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal." He evokes the shared memories and collective commitments of a national
community by using metaphoric images of birth and telling a story about truths on
which the founders, "our forefathers," staked their lives and their reputations. He
goes on to say that the devotion to human freedom has been communicated most
powerfully not by words but through the acts and deeds of "those who gave the last
full measure of their devotion" to preserve it. In closing, Lincoln repeatedly calls
on the "high resolve" of his countrymen. They must act to ensure that those who
have fallen in battle will not have died in vain. All of Lincoln's central themes at
Gettysburg and in other speeches involve active forms of sense making and sense
giving and require engagement from his listeners. In his second inaugural, he calls
on the nation to attend to the ravages of war and to "bind up wounds," "to care
for" the widow and the orphan, and "to achieve and cherish a just and lasting
peace" (quoted in Goethals 2005). Lincoln's narration of events is a summons to
responsibility and a call to action for those who claim the American story as their
own. Stories matter.
Integral Strategy 123
Leading Minds
This example of story as a vehicle for leadership can be multiplied many times
over and has been made the subject of studies from many perspectives. George
Goethals (2005) finds strong echoes of the theme in Freud's comments on the
power of ideas over leaders. In his important book on leadership, Leading Minds:
An Anatomy of Leadership, Howard Gardner (1995) offers a cognitive theory of
leadership, emphasizing the leader's ability to discern and articulate the group's
story. The notion of leading by knowing, of course, supports our thesis that there is
a disciplinary component to leadership. Yet the cognition in question is complex,
for it involves strong elements of emotion as well as reason (H. Gardner 1995).
Perhaps put more aptly, it is a form of cognition that is enacted in the choice of
authentic values, and that must provide evidence of their authenticity.
Gardner (1995) pursues his thesis through a series of brief monographs of
eleven prominent leaders, including both direct and indirect leaders. Among
others, he studies Margaret Thatcher, Robert Maynard Hutchins, George C. Marshall, Pope John XXIII, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Mahatma
Gandhi. In doing so, he uses a broader characterization of story than we do here,
calling them "invented accounts in any symbol system," yet he focuses primarily on
the way these leaders used narratives of identity in their exercise of leadership
(H. Gardner 1995, 42).
A Narrative of Freedom and Justice: Eleanor Roosevelt
Several of Gardner's studies focus on leaders who exercised extraordinary influence on society although they did not occupy formal positions of high authority,
for example, Gandhi, King, and Eleanor Roosevelt, each of whom also crossed
racial, cultural, or gender boundaries. A patrician by birth and by marriage to one
of the commanding figures of the twentieth century, Eleanor Roosevelt began
to find her own independent voice and influence in her middle years. She and
other female leaders demonstrate that narrative leadership is not bound by gender, especially since it emphasizes elements of personal experience and relational
knowledge in which many women find their voice (Gilligan 1982). As Roosevelt
started to participate actively in political organizations and causes, she developed
and communicated simply and clearly the message that women should assume
independent roles of leadership in public life. Her story came to include the call
for greater social justice for all citizens, and she wrote, argued, and spoke tirelessly
in public and private forums for civil rights for blacks and for women. Although
her ideas were often controversial, she found ways to differentiate her role to
avoid political problems for her husband while constantly trying to influence
him. She was for years one of the most influential women in the world in her
own right. In time her story became a global one as she championed human rights
for the dispossessed in her role as a member of the American delegation to the
United Nations. Many of the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and after
124 Strategic Leadership
were first articulated, brought to national awareness, and championed by Eleanor
Roosevelt as she lived the story that she told (H. Gardner 1995). A summary of
Gardner's thesis captures well the significance of story in leadership:
Using the linguistic as well as nonlinguistic resources at their disposal, leaders
attempt to communicate, and to convince others, of a particular view, a clear
vision of life. The term story is the best way to convey the point. I argue that
the story is a basic human cognitive form; the artful creation and articulation of stories constitutes a fundamental part of the leader's vocation. Stories
speak to both parts of the human mind—its reason and emotion. And I suggest, further, that it is stories of identity—narratives that help individuals
think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they
are headed—that constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leader's
literary arsenal. (1995, 42–43)
The Embodiment of Stories
The power of story should not tempt us to conclude that it wholly explains the
role of the leader. In particular, leaders must live, or, as Gardner says, embody,
their story as well as tell it if it is to be effective as a vessel of leadership. Thus,
storytelling as a discipline of thought is supported by an even more rigorous discipline of personal commitment. As Gardner puts it, "It is a stroke of leadership
genius when stories and embodiments appear to fuse—when . . . [in the words of
Yeats] one cannot tell the dancer from the dance" (1995, 37). Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King preached the power of nonviolent resistance based
on deep ethical and spiritual principles and stood firm against the blows that
resistance to power unleashed. General George C. Marshall believed in integrity
as a military virtue and put his own career on the line by always speaking the
truth to those in power, including President Roosevelt. Robert Maynard Hutchins
believed deeply in the power of rational thought and the study of the great books
and debated passionately and worked endlessly to instill his ideas at the University
of Chicago and elsewhere. By embodying the values he claimed, he permanently
shaped the curricular debate at the university. Followers are deeply suspicious if
leaders fail to show in their lives the values they articulate; the "walk" must always
accompany the "talk." If it does not, then judgments of hypocrisy or deceitfulness
quickly surface, destroying the leader's credibility and influence for all but a few
diehards.
I believe that the leader's embodiment of the story brings to light another
dimension of leadership that is not always in evidence. We usually attend to the
power of the story to motivate followers and neglect its strong influence on the
leader. Embodiment empowers leaders as well as followers. It taps into deep levels
of intrinsic motivation because it reaches the leader's values and personal identity.
As the story is clarified, understood, and embraced by the leader, it becomes a
source of energy that drives commitment and creates self-confidence. As leaders deepen their self-awareness and convey their commitment to the story, they
Integral Strategy 125
find increasing respect and loyalty from their followers, so the engaging power of
leadership takes on a new depth of meaning. The authenticity of the mutual commitment builds trust and elevates performance (W. L. Gardner et al. 2005).
Forms of Leadership: Visionary and Ordinary,
Transactional, and Transforming
The examples that we have chosen to illustrate the power of story might lead
us to conclude that it is only leaders on the main stage of history—the Lincolns,
Kings, Gandhis, Roosevelts, Marshalls, and their peers—to whom the theory
applies. Howard Gardner refers to individuals of this stature as "visionary" or
"innovative" leaders, since they often renew familiar stories or see the world in
bold new ways. Yet "ordinary" leaders also draw on the motivating power of stories,
although their influence may not be as profound or their narratives as original.
These typologies, and the categories of transforming and transactional leadership, are helpful for sorting out the different dimensions and dynamics of leadership but are not easy to apply to concrete cases or individuals with precision
or consistency. At times the leadership of great presidents like Franklin Delano
Roosevelt appears innovative and even visionary, while at others he is much
more of a traditional backroom politician. Lincoln had an extraordinary moral
vision of the American union but was inconsistent in responding to the glaring
evil of slavery. So, one should be circumspect in applying unqualified labels to
individual leaders and the nature of the story, especially in professional organizations like universities. Loosening the hold of fixed categories also allows us to
consider the broader uses of story in the everyday work of organizations. As they
respond to a changing world and plan their futures, universities and colleges need
the resources provided by their narratives of identity for the work of strategy and
leadership, whether their stories are visionary or transactional, transformational
or ordinary.
NARRATIVES IN THE LEADERSHIP
OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
I have provided a number of glimpses into the ways that collegiate narratives
inform and orient the processes of leadership in colleges and universities and have
reviewed methods to disclose and to articulate institutional stories. We now can
turn to a more explicit discussion of the use of narratives in collegiate leadership
processes, especially related to strategy, and will return to the theme on a more
practical level in other sections of the book.
Legacy and Leadership
Whenever one finds college leaders wrestling with their strategic responsibilities, the issues of change and legacy are often at the center of their concerns. Any
126 Strategic Leadership
analysis of collegiate strategic plans shows the dual emphasis, although sometimes
the language used to describe the conflict is formulaic. In Presidential Essays:
Success Stories (Splete 2000), a collection of essays focusing on issues of strategic
change by the presidents of thirteen small colleges and universities, one can see
clearly the tension between tradition and innovation. Especially as the presidents
deal with broader strategic questions, rather than circumscribed innovations in
management, the need to relate change to the organization's story is consistently
evident. In the words of one president, "Perhaps most important to bringing [the
university] community on board with our vision is a continuing commitment to
link the accomplishments of the present with the traditions of the past" (Argnese
2000, 13). Or, as put by another, "It was very important to respect tradition even
as dramatic change was being undertaken because that tradition was a major
source of the college's pride and identity" (Barazzone 2000, 22).
In a similar way, a collection of twenty-four commentaries on the presidency by
the heads of many large and complex institutions presents similar themes about
legacy and change as they focus on the moral dimensions of leadership (D. G.
Brown 2006). The presidents describe the tasks of leadership, especially during
crises, in many ways, but they often mention the critical importance of knowing
intimately the values and culture of the organization. Presidents should be teachers
who are always looking below the surface of events to find the currents that are
shaping the future of the university and the larger society. In finding the right
symbols and metaphors, they are able to tell their organization's story to create
a "bridge from where we are to where we might be" (Penley 2006, 180).
These examples of the significance of narratives in leadership find support in
large-scale empirical studies. Birnbaum (1992) concludes that presidents who are
judged to be exemplary by their key constituencies (faculty, staff, and trustees)
are distinguished by their strong interpretive skills, their ability to embody the
institution's values and to affirm its strengths. They are able to relate their leadership to the norms and values of the organization's culture "by articulating a
vision of the college . . . that captures what others believe but have been unable to
express" (Birnbaum 1992, 154).
The University of Minnesota
To add further definition to this point, Simsek and Louis (2000) and Simsek
(2000) have shown the centrality of narratives, metaphors, myths, and paradigms
in charting what they see as transformational change at one of America's largest
land-grant universities.
By the early 1980s several planning processes and state budget cuts had made
it clear that the University of Minnesota's constant and unfocused growth was
stretching it beyond its resources and compromising its quality. Teaching loads
were rising, open admissions were the norm in many programs, and resources for
research and graduate study were in relative decline. In offering his own interpretation of these developments, the interim (and later) president Kenneth Keller
proposed a strategy called Commitment to Focus. It suggested the development of
Integral Strategy 127
clear priorities, a better balance in undergraduate and graduate enrollments, more
coordination at the central level, and an emphasis on quality rather than size.
The proposed changes received both criticism and support since they represented
a deep shift in the institution's image of itself (Simsek and Louis 2000).
In analyzing these developments over time among faculty members, Simsek and
Louis (2000) found evidence for a shift in the paradigms, myths, and metaphors by
which the faculty made sense of their experience in the organization. The use of
concrete metaphorical language rather than conceptual abstractions often made
it easier for people to express their ideas about change. The university's earlier
period had produced dominant images of large unwieldy animals like elephants,
or wildly growing vegetation. Images for the later period include that of the lion,
and metaphors that show a greater sense of being focused, directed, and smaller
in size.
Simsek and Louis see a shift in the basic paradigm for the organization itself
from "entrepreneurial populism" to "managed populism." The older story of the
university being all things to all people was transformed into a model emphasizing
more central direction, smaller size, and an ability to make differentiated judgments about program quality and funding. In terms of the traditional paradigm
of populism, the change was dramatic. Based on their study and their theoretical
assumptions, Simsek and Louis conclude that real organizational change requires
"leadership strategies that emphasize [the] interpretation of organizational values
and meaning." Further, "Leaders must become effective story-tellers rather than
commander-in-chief" (1994, 562). The implications for strategic leadership are
clear. A vision cannot be imposed from the top but may emerge as a consequence
of a strategy process that explores competing paradigms, values, and myths that
make sense of the experience of members of the organization.
The University of Richmond
By the late 1960s, the financial future of the University of Richmond was in
doubt. This small, largely undergraduate private university with some 3,500 students, founded by Virginia Baptists in 1830, had served long and well to provide
educational quality and opportunity for local and state residents. As the new
decade of the 1970s was dawning, however, competitive challenges were mounting, especially as Virginia provided new funding for its prestigious public institutions and opened the Virginia Commonwealth University on the University of
Richmond's doorstep.
During this period the university had an endowment of $6 million, and faculty
salaries were at the fortieth percentile. Empty residence-hall rooms were being
used for faculty offices. The food services failed a health inspection, two dormitories had to add fire escapes or close, and the campus heating system was on its last
legs. With only two hundred seats, the library did not meet accreditation standards,
and the science labs were equivalent to those of local high schools. President
George Modlin suggested to the trustees that only a miracle, or a merger into the
state system, could save the university from financial collapse (Heilman 2005).
128 Strategic Leadership
Some three decades later, a compelling story of transformation has unfolded
at the University of Richmond. The endowment and other investments are over
$1.5 billion, and total assets are near $2 billion. Faculty salaries by rank are over
the ninetieth percentile for small universities, and the faculty-to-student ratio
is under one to ten. Residences are filled to overflowing, applications average
6,000 for 750 undergraduate places, board scores have increased from 1,000 to
1,300, and the School of Law has become highly selective. The stunning campus
is filled with an ever-enlarging collection of state-of-the-art facilities and new
educational programs. There are substantial plant and operating reserves, and
there is no deferred maintenance. Faculty and student achievements continue to
hit ever-higher benchmarks.
What happened? Among many things, one of the university's graduates, E. Claiborne Robins, stepped forward in 1969 to make a commitment of
$50 million ($240 million today), the largest gift at that time ever made by a living individual to a college or university. Over the next twenty-five years, Robins
and his family would give another $125 million in gifts and bequests. Through his
leadership, others, including the Jepson and Weinstein families, joined in providing multimillion-dollar contributions.
When I arrived as president of the university in 1988, many of these transformations had occurred through the energetic leadership of President Bruce
Heilman, and they continued under the ambitious goals of my successor,
William Cooper. I found a robust pulse of opportunity and an aspiration for
national leadership shared by many of the faculty, staff, and trustees. A proposed new school to study leadership funded by alumnus Robert Jepson with
a $20 million gift symbolized the sense of momentum. But I also found deep
and perplexing forms of resentment over changes in the university during the
transformation. Troubling notes of discord existed in large segments of the
alumni body and among some of the senior faculty and a few of the trustees.
For many, the measures of success brought little satisfaction, and every board
meeting would bring the question "How many of the applicants are from
Virginia?"
As I reflected on the era of transformation, I concluded that the university's
story of identity had become fractured, and with it, the meaning of its achievements. An institution that had been in financial distress had become rich. A place
that had enrolled more than 80 percent of its students from Virginia now enrolled
the same percentage from out of state, mainly from the Northeast. An institution
founded and governed by Virginia Baptists became independent, and the coordinate academic structure of Westhampton College for women and Richmond
College for men had evolved into residential programs.
One of the ways that I tried to confront these issues was by hearing, learning,
and articulating the university's narrative. My aim was to attend to the sense of
loss felt by many graduates and then to place the university's identity in a larger
strategic context. My goal as a leader was to enlist their understanding and commitment to the university's ambitious vision of national leadership.
Integral Strategy 129
I argued in different places and ways that the story of the place remained whole
and vibrant, with more continuity than discontinuity. and pride in its achievements more appropriate than resentment. To demonstrate that continuity, I tried
to distill the main themes and values in the university's story. The powerful sense
of place that defined the Richmond experience through its exquisite wooded
collegiate gothic campus was unchanged even as new facilities were continually added and renovated. A sense of community, civility, and service prevailed,
inspired in part by the spiritual heritage of the campus, and by the example of
superior levels of commitment by the faculty and staff. A continuity of purpose
and practice was unmistakable in the commitment of the faculty to engaged learning through an ever-enlarging set of opportunities for student research and other
forms of active and collaborative learning. Education as the transformation of
human powers and possibilities, enabled by the faculty's intense investment in
students and their own scholarship, remained the touchstone of Richmond's mission. The structural condition for the story remained the same, a small collegiate
university with the intimacy and style of a college and the reach of a university.
Student learning was at the absolute center of the collegiate experience, even as
the university's complexity was manifest in Division I athletics; schools of arts and
sciences, business, law, leadership and continuing studies; a large array of interdisciplinary programs; and an extensive program in international education. A sense
of the connectedness of the different educational threads in the Richmond experience remained a constant theme and goal. I also argued that, above all, a sense
of possibility in the commitment to pursue and the ability to achieve the highest
academic aspirations had long been a part of the university's self-understanding
and its vision of the future.
The momentous but implausible decision in 1910 to relocate the campus from
near downtown represented the touchstone of the narrative to display the consistency of the vision of possibility. The site for the campus was inauspicious, an
abandoned amusement park with a small lake surrounded by barren hills in a remote
part of the city. The college had only modest resources to undertake the construction of a new campus and to create Westhampton College for women, but it decided
to borrow the money that it needed—an exceptional risk for the time and place. In
a compelling symbol of high aspiration, President Boatwright secured the services
of the distinguished Boston architectural firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson,
designers of the Princeton chapel and graduate quadrangle. The board accepted
the proposal to design the buildings in the collegiate gothic style and to configure
separate colleges on the model of Oxford and Cambridge. For a Baptist College in
the South to find its architects in the North, to counter the prevailing tradition
of Georgian campus design with high-church architecture, and to start a woman's
college that would come to have rigorous academic standards were other earnests
of a compelling vision taking shape within otherwise traditional forms.
It is difficult to gauge the success of this effort to tell the Richmond story as
a form of strategic leadership with any assurance of showing causal connections.
The ability to reach the goals of two demanding strategic plans and a major capital
130 Strategic Leadership
campaign may indeed be associated with the motivating power of the story, and
the campus climate for decision making remained focused and highly constructive.
Direct evidence for a changed perspective by alumni leaders about the university's
national horizon of aspiration was quite persuasive at the time, and the resentment over change seemed to abate. But those changes may have been driven by
other events, and there is no easy way to prove the relationships.
Nonetheless, I and others became convinced that the legacy of the university
was authentically defined by seeking academic distinction through a sense of
possibility. The story set the conditions within which much of the university's
achievements took place and through which its evolution made sense. The story
worked its way into strategic plans, reports, speeches, fund-raising campaigns,
and all the forms of governance and management. Most importantly, perhaps, it
provided me as president and the leadership team with a sense of clarity, confidence, and conviction about what the place stood for and what it might become.
The story became an authentic source of energy and purposefulness for the tasks
of leadership. Studying epochal events carefully, encouraging dialogue about their
meaning, interpreting their significance consistently, motivating others to affirm
common values, and translating the story into plans and priorities are some of the
elements of narrative leadership.
NARRATIVES IN THE DISCIPLINE
OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
The examples of narrative leadership that we have examined all have a theme
of continuity and change, which is undoubtedly one of the central motifs in
collegiate stories. Yet its recurrence should not lead us to think that narratives
have no other plotlines. In other cases stories have to do with recounting the
transformation of apparently negative characteristics into resoundingly positive results, describing national or global supremacy in applied or fundamental
research, telling of a steady rise to greatness through an unchanging focus on
student learning, narrating an institution's disproportionate influence relative to
its size and resources, or telling of a singleness of purpose that does not change.
As leadership unfolds through strategy, the story remains a touchstone of identity, a point of reference for sense making and sense giving, and a source of the
integrative and systemic possibilities of the total process.
Identity and Mission
Perhaps the most common word in the lexicon of higher education for these
matters of self-definition is "mission." "Identity" is, however, a larger concept
and richer word than "mission," which is often misinterpreted as static. Identity
encompasses culture as well as structure, meaning as well as purpose, motivation
as well as accomplishment, and aspirations for the future in addition to past and
current achievements. Identity is about uniqueness. In relating his experiences
Integral Strategy 131
as a consultant in strategic management, Lawrence Ackerman emphasizes that
finding identity is about "seeing through" all the layers of the organization—its
organizational charts, numbers, earnings, staffing, and history—to find "the heart,
mind, and soul of the company as a self-directing entity in the purest sense" (2000,
22 ). Mission remains an essential concept, but its meaning as active commitment
to a purpose can be renewed and reclaimed when it grows out of identity. Each
needs the other in leadership, although they are not the same thing.
Strategy as an Integrative Discipline
As we have now been able to see in a variety of different contexts, the discovery and narration of the content and meaning of the story depend in turn
upon methods of reflection, analysis, and synthesis that are critical aspects of
strategic leadership as an integrative and applied discipline. It takes a definable set of capacities and skills to understand and communicate the meaning of
narratives. We associate many of these abilities with the humanities and some
forms of the social sciences, especially as they come to terms with understanding human commitments and values. To find and articulate the larger human
significance of the story depends on an appreciation of the way the imagination
expresses itself in various types of language and systems of symbols. The written
and spoken word is the primary but not exclusive way in which stories are known
and communicated, so an understanding and command of language are powerful
vehicles for leadership.
We have also learned that an institution's story is a subtext embodied in its
programs and policies, structures and relationships, campus and resources, and
in what has come to be called the culture of the organization. In order to be
effective in shaping strategic decisions for the future, the cultural text needs to
be brought to the surface and read explicitly. The discovery of the defining characteristics and values of the culture takes other kinds of intellectual skills, some
of which we find on the applied sides of fields like anthropology, sociology, social
psychology, and organizational behavior. Now the task becomes more analytical
and less poetic, as a variety of methods of inquiry and forms of information have
to be used to capture the organization's cultural and structural patterns of identity.
The way the institution sees itself and does its work, sometimes through important rituals and practices, forms a backdrop for knowing and telling the story. As
we have seen and shall see repeatedly, numerical strategic indicators represent
another indispensable tool with which to grasp an institution's identity.
Story and Motivation
As a discipline of leadership, strategic inquiry has a special dimension that
relates to the power of the story to inspire, to motivate, and to guide decisions.
The story in leadership is more than a good tale or a set of propositions to engage
the mind, for it addresses values that create a shared sense of commitment among
132 Strategic Leadership
its members. A narrative of identity involves the communication of beliefs to
believers and of responsibilities to those who hold them. Although leaders must
not ignore the facts or evade cogent arguments, their task is to go beyond external explanations to create interior meanings that address persons, including
themselves, as participants in a community of commitment. In doing so, they
seek to tell the story in language and embody it in actions that engage the lives
of those they lead. Leaders relate stories that will give life to shared beliefs and
release the power of values held in common. Stories, as we have seen, involve
the inspiration of a vision and a summons to responsibility. So, first to know
and then to tell the story are foundational aspects of an integrative discipline
of leadership.
Normative Criteria for Stories
The place of narratives in leadership also has deep moral ambiguities and challenges that must be confronted, for history bears ample witness to the way that
leaders manipulate and distort stories for their own purposes. Countless narratives
of identity are exclusive and repressive. They can capture the imagination and
draw humans into perpetual cycles of war, domination, and suffering. Stories can
be products of an evil imagination and unleash ugly passions.
As we have learned in reviewing several examples of controversies over mission, the story has to be interrogated and evaluated by criteria and standards of
evidence, as is the case with any cognitive inquiry or discipline. Not every story is
good or true, and they must be tested in appropriate ways. The modern imagination has not found it easy to find tests for matters that have to do with values; yet
it would be foolhardy to leave the most important commitments that humans ever
make simply to the play of passion, preference, or circumstance. Whatever diffidence we entertain intellectually about the worth and objectivity of our master
values and stories, we inescapably shape the actual content of our lives around
values we take to be indubitable. We should be able to do more than just stammer or shrug our shoulders when it comes to giving an account of the stories and
convictions by which we live.
These reflections may seem far from the narratives of colleges and universities,
but they are connected to them in important ways if some of the tasks of leadership are to follow the methods of an applied discipline. As Howard Gardner
(1995) indicates, every story encounters counter-stories that offer an alternative
account of an organization's history, values, and purposes, so the credibility of
collegiate stories depends on criteria and evidence. If a story is to be persuasive
against its contenders, it must have support for its claims. If college leaders try
to treat the story as a plaything of their egos by distorting the facts, erasing the
legacy, or proclaiming an empty vision, the story will not be effective or credible
as a vehicle for leadership.
This is not the place to develop a full analysis of the normative dimensions of
stories of identity. Collegiate storytelling does not require as much, but it does
Integral Strategy 133
benefit from being connected to the kinds of questions that ordinary experience
carries with it to test its own commitments. Just as we hope to conceptualize
and systematize a method of leadership that is already at work in a good strategy
process, so it is worthwhile to examine briefly the ways that we bring normative
expectations to the narratives of our organizations.
We should be assured that the stories of identity that we tell and are told are
accurate and plausibly reflect the facts of history and the truth of circumstances.
We know that legends and exaggeration are the stuff of stories, but we do not want
to deceive in what we say or be deceived in what we hear. Stories must as well be
authentic and reflect the meaning of events as they are owned and lived transparently by the participants. As we revise and reinterpret stories, we must provide
evidence for our arguments and not manipulate the audience. Although not a
matter of logic or deductive thinking, stories have to have an inner consistency
to be persuasive and motivational. To be consistent, stories inspire action, not
just talk; persistent goals rather than expedient ones; and steady focus rather than
shifting enthusiasms. Coherence is another test for our narratives, for without it
we cannot relate different aspects of the story to each other and see various themes
as connected in a broader integration of values and beliefs. We also ask that our
collegiate stories be comprehensive in relating the meaning of local commitments
to the wider world of fundamental social and educational values, to important
emerging realities, and to the cause of education as a form of human transformation, which has its own wider narrative. Parochial and defensive stories, or those
that rigidly worship the past, are products of a flawed imagination that will not
be adequate guides to the future. And so it goes. By consistently emphasizing
questions that have normative force, we ask that our narratives present their
credentials. A discipline of leadership has distinctive forms of evidence, but it
has them nothing less.