May 5, 2026 · 39 min · 18 segments
Most change efforts fail not because people resist change, but because leaders misunderstand how change actually works. Julia Dhar, behavioral scientist and BCG managing director, explains why 75% of…
One of the ways the brain is really attracted to stories is because it creates a certain set of expectations for us.
We start to hear a story, we begin to plan for where it is going, and when our expectations are violated on where the story is going, that's confusing and disruptive for us as well.
So in your example of saying, "We're gonna fulfill our destiny by cutting 2% of costs in this part of the business," people's expectations have been violated.
Whereas if we had started from the place of saying, "We're continuing to build our fitness, and one of the activities associated with that is to look for opportunities to reduce our costs, to be more efficient, more productive in what we do," that actually makes much more sense to me.
The consequence for someone who is a storyteller, and I hope many of our listeners are embracing the idea now that one of the roles of leader is as storyteller, the best thing that you can do is to ask yourself, "Is this story honest and specific?"
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One of the ways the brain is really attracted to stories is because it creates a certain set of expectations for us.
We start to hear a story, we begin to plan for where it is going, and when our expectations are violated on where the story is going, that's confusing and disruptive for us as well.
So in your example of saying, "We're gonna fulfill our destiny by cutting 2% of costs in this part of the business," people's expectations have been violated.
Whereas if we had started from the place of saying, "We're continuing to build our fitness, and one of the activities associated with that is to look for opportunities to reduce our costs, to be more efficient, more productive in what we do," that actually makes much more sense to me.
The consequence for someone who is a storyteller, and I hope many of our listeners are embracing the idea now that one of the roles of leader is as storyteller, the best thing that you can do is to ask yourself, "Is this story honest and specific?"
