Texas prosecutors are powerful: in cases where they seek capital
punishment, the defendant is sentenced to death over ninety percent of
the time. When management professor Hans Hansen joined Texas's newly
formed death penalty defense team to rethink their approach, they faced
almost insurmountable odds. Yet while Hansen was working with the
office, they won seventy of seventy-one cases by changing the narrative
for death penalty defense. To date, they have succeeded in preventing
well over one hundred executions--demonstrating the importance of
changing the narrative to change our world.
In this book, Hansen offers readers a powerful model for creating
significant organizational, social, and institutional change. He unpacks
the lessons of the fight to change capital punishment in
Texas--juxtaposing life-and-death decisions with the efforts to achieve
a cultural shift at Uber. Hansen reveals how narratives shape our
everyday lives and how we can construct new narratives to enact positive
change. This narrative change model can be used to transform corporate
cultures, improve public services, encourage innovation, craft a brand,
or even develop your own leadership.
Narrative Change provides an unparalleled window into an innovative
model of change while telling powerful stories of a fight against
injustice. It reminds us that what matters most for any organization,
community, or person is the story we tell about ourselves--and the most
effective way to shake things up is by changing the story.
