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Strategic Improvisation and Narratives for Navigating Complexity
How can the strategic direction for an organization’s overall development be supported and communicated if planning, and even strategies, are no longer sufficient options? According to Falkheimer et al. (2025), the answer lies in narratives and strategic improvisation.
New and traditional ideas on communication and management were combined into a framework grounded in the humanities and arts, as this summary of the article shows. The result: a new mindset for corporate communication that draws more from jazz and narrative theory than from traditional management models.
We live in a complex world where organizations must constantly adapt to growing dependencies between institutions, actors, and stakeholders. This development highlights the need for organizations to take a new, communicative approach to leadership and management: They must develop and implement diverse strategies to navigate today’s interconnected, multi-actor arena.
But what does this mean and how can corporate communication help organizations face these challenges?
Falkheimer et al. argue that in a world where narrative understanding and strategic improvisation are crucial, sensemaking communication defines societies and organizations. Narratives keep societies together, but can also polarize them, raising important leadership questions:
- What stories are being told about us and our business?
- Who is telling them and why?
- Should we take the lead in shaping and guiding the narrative about us?
Collaboration helps embracing uncertainty
To approach these questions, the article promotes a dichotomy between dominance and collaboration strategies:
Dominance strategy means
- using established methods and tools to keep control and dominate
- focusing on long-term planning, dividing organizations into functions, documenting, measuring, focusing on information, and evaluating results
- creating new administrative tasks and systems for control.
Collaboration strategy signifies
- aligning organizations with the perceived uncertainty and paradoxes while taking strategic initiatives
- not counteracting against the outside world, but embracing it to foster innovation through new ways of collaborating, organizing, and managing
- shifting the focus to learning from mistakes, decentralization, and committed employees who drive ongoing development
- enabling faster responses, not through randomness, but by balancing clear structure with the freedom to act within a defined framework.
Narratives and the cognitive approach become cornerstones
Adopting a collaboration strategy involves placing narratives as a cornerstone of organizational leadership. Narrative is traditionally understood as a story of events and experiences with an internal structure called a plot. Recent research challenges this understanding, showing that today’s communication is often fragmented, incomplete, and non-linear (Dayter, 2015).
The use of narratives in management is not new, but it is now being reframed as “strategic narratives,” particularly relevant in public diplomacy, statecraft, and conflict. In an era of propaganda and disinformation, these narratives are gaining renewed importance.
The traditional view of strategic narratives as top-down persuasion is outdated. Today, they are dynamic, co-created, and shaped by multiple actors. Their effectiveness depends on how well they resonate with shared values – a shift amplified by digital platforms that promote participation and dialogue.
This evolution reflects the cognitive turn in management, which sees organizations as socially constructed. Accordingly, sensemaking communication becomes central to leadership, positioning corporate communication as a core management function.
The Strategic Improvisation Model brings it all together
The narrative and cognitive approach to organizations leads to a new and communication-based way of understanding and managing, summarized in the Strategic Improvisation Model.
»The aim of strategic improvisation is to enable us to navigate the tension between order and chaos, perform the balancing act between complexity and the ever-changing nature of everything, and establish a clear direction.«
Falkheimer et al.
Strategic improvisation is not a linear process but a dynamic interplay where elements influence and enhance each other. It means adapting narratives within a defined framework and it occurs when three essential components are combined:
The concept draws from the arts, crisis management, and strategy, with key contributions from Frank J. Barrett – an academic and musician – who emphasizes jazz improvisation in organizations.
What does embracing jazz improvisation mean for organizations?
In music, the composition is the piece of music to be performed as planned. In an organization, this corresponds to the documents that will guide the direction and structure of the business.
Narrative is similar to the musician’s interpretation of the composer’s intention and composition. The musician considers the choice of tempo, phrasing, dynamics, and much more, asking: What does the composer want to convey with the composition?
Improvisation, for a musician, means reusing older material, combining it with new elements, and thereby configuring it in a new way. It therefore has to do with flexibility, creativity, and innovation. This process is not completely random: There is thought, plan, and rhythm to rest upon. A clear direction guides which impulses are acted upon and the opportunities that are exploited.
Improvisation requires boundaries to be meaningful. In music, this delineation involves choosing specific musical material and forms. In strategic improvisation, the framework and narrative provide these necessary boundaries, but also allow for the freedom to move within them.
Three management principles of strategic improvisation
To apply narratives and strategic improvisation in corporate communication and leadership, three key management principles are proposed (see table). These principles bring strategic improvisation to life by combining readiness for uncertainty with the ability to provide direction, context, and shared meaning.
Typically, communication specialists produce and disseminate information, develop channels, and manage crises. However, in the changing societal landscape,
- organizations must now act more anticipatory and establish their narratives about who they are and how they are contributing to societal transformation
- communication strategists are becoming key advisors to executive leaders,
- while management consultants focus more on testing the feasibility of strategies and their supporting narratives.
Many publications address sensemaking, communication, value creation, and leadership, but the concepts remain largely confined to academic circles. With this article, the researchers contribute to a further developed practice, based on an explicit recognition of sensemaking communication, narratives, and improvisation.
The article was published in the Corporate Communication Review. The magazine offers research-based, practice-oriented insights for communication professionals worldwide and is published by the Academic Society for Management & Communication, in collaboration with the Institute for Public Relations, EUPRERA, and the EACD.
The original article can be downloaded here.
Cite this article: Falkheimer, J., Gennerud, H., Gentzel Sandberg, K., & Tyrstrup, M. (2025). Strategic improvisation and narratives for navigating complexity. Corporate Communication Review, 1(1), 4–10. https://doi.org/10.63904/ccr.v1i1.5