Reboot storytelling to build belonging

Once popular, storytelling in business has fallen out of favour.  But the power of a human story is hugely underestimated. It may be the modern default approach, but business leaders seldom win hearts and minds with their usual communications toolbox, of well-presented slide shows, data analysis, carefully crafted e-mails, or glossy corporate comms.  Leaders should learn to use stories, which are more memorable, emotionally resonant and speak volumes. 

The stories your people share say much about what your organisation does, what is important, and how people are regarded.  Such stories can give indications of culture in action; team accomplishments, memorable wins, new product launches, tackling villainous competitors, celebrating heroic successes, as well as sharing the pain of failure.  Storytelling can be a smart way of you communicating culture; in the way you talk about your business; highlighting examples of collaboration, innovation and experiments, and the outcomes achieved. The hero of the story does not have to be the usual suspect, but may well be an unusual, or unsung contributor. The outcome of the tale may not just be a financial goal achieved; it could more likely be a contribution to the wider community, lessons learned, and values shared. 

For stories about culture, the key narrative device ought to be one that uses the pronoun “we”.  But the typical hero in the story is almost always the entrepreneurial genius; a Jobs, Ma, or Musk, and others.  But it is the teams they brought together that designed and built the Mac, brought e-commerce to China, and sent rockets to space and back.  The leader often takes the limelight, but 53 were credited inside the Mac, 18 men and women-built Alibaba from scratch, and Musk succeeded because he was avaricious in his recruitment of talents from other firms.  Musk’s former head of talent as SpaceX describes the brief like this, and it sounds like a scene from science fiction adventure movie: “SpaceX is ‘Special Forces’.  We take on the missions that others deem impossible. We told them, this will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life.  We sought the kind of personality that wants to a Navy SEAL - the engineering equivalent of that.” 

Once Upon A Time in a Conference Hall Far Far Away

For several years, storytelling in business seemed to be all the rage.  A decade ago, I attended numerous leadership conferences, seminars, and strategy workshops, where some enigmatic speaker would have the audience completely captivated, as they unpacked the “three beats of the leader’s story,” or espoused the value of sitting cross-legged around our imaginary campfires to explore the mystery and magic of the storyteller’s art.  In leadership workshops, jaded executives were encouraged to re-imagine their corporate resume as a “leadership journey” illuminated with moments of personal “epiphany” and hard-won life-lessons.  As a welcome relief from the usual death by PowerPoint, storytelling seemed a rich seam to explore.  I discovered at one workshop that almost all business and personal challenges could be better understood through some cleverly curated clips from movies.  Most memorably, through a deconstruction of The Shawshank Redemption, I learnt about true friendship, personal resilience, work-place bullying, and the enduring value of knowing a good accountant. 

Some of the conference speakers were as extraordinary in the flesh as they were in the best-selling books they had written.  Bear Grylls (broke his back, but then climbed Everest before he was 21), Joe Simpson (survived catastrophic injuries on a mountain, but made life and death decisions that haunt him to this day), John McCarthy (held captive in a basement in Beirut for five years, but emerged as man of great warmth and unbelievable tolerance) and Ellen MacArthur (solo-circumnavigated the world in 94 days, but emerged an articulate public champion of sustainability, before the topic was de rigour). These days, though, if I attend a business forum, the inclusion of a storyteller on the agenda is now more likely to prompt a world-weary sigh rather than a standing ovation.

The alchemists

Advertisers and marketers once embraced storytelling as the mode through which they would drive up the sales of desirable products. There were some wondrous and very memorable moments, where classic story themes were fused with brand campaigns.  Apple’s ‘1984’ Mac launch (evoking Orwell’s dystopian vision) and the Guinness ‘Surfer’ (narrating Melville’s Moby Dick) were each brilliantly done; smart, imaginative, and thought-provoking.

It is both remarkable and kind of wonderful that two of cinemas’ great directors started their careers selling colourful PCs and dark draft beer. The Surfer’s director Jonathan Glazer went on to make Sexy Beast, with Ben Kingsley, described by Martin Scorsese as the best British film he had ever seen.  Apple’s 1984 was the breakout moment for Ridley Scott, who went on to create iconic blockbusters like Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian, and the Academy Award winning Gladiator.

The idea of the advertiser as storyteller par excellence may have inspired the writers of the TV series Mad Men, where its anti-hero and creative genius Don Draper uses brilliant storytelling to pitch his campaign ideas.  In 'The Carousel Pitch’, his heartfelt epithets and tear-inducing sincerity wow the executives from new prospective client Kodak-Eastman.  Draper’s successful pitch rescues his firm’s tenuous place among the big agencies on Madison Avenue. But like many of the best stories, there is, of course, a twist.  The real magic of the pitch was that, for Don, the performance was nothing more than that - an act.  A charade.  He had left all authenticity outside in the trash, using his wife and children as mere visual assets to sell his concept. I implore you to watch it and be amazed by the power of the master (and duplicitous) storyteller.  

I am less sure the advertisers of today use storytelling with such conviction or skill.  Their objective is not the memorable story retold, but the widely distributed meme or gif. The allegorical and metaphorical wit found in adapting Melville or Orwell seems to be seldom bothered with. The advertisers’ goal is to gain a momentary mindshare, a nanosecond span of attention, and their creative solution is to treat the audience like kindergarten consumers, grasping for the screenshot-friendly marshmallows on offer. The writer and cartoonist Hugh McLeod summed up the dumbed-down approach beautifully: “If you spoke to people the way advertising now speaks to people, they would punch you in the face.”

Death of the story

Technology has played a part in making stories both unbelievably easy to access, and simultaneously, too easy to ignore.  While we can readily access more than 30 million books via Amazon, we are a mere thumb-swipe away from the distraction of instantaneous stories of global importance and/or celebrity gossip, super-condensed into a few hundred characters on Twitter. Worse still, the long-form story version of the tweet starts with the soul-destroying tease “Thread”. 

On Instagram, a story is now described as “slideshow that allows us to capture and post related images and video content, so we share more of our lives with those we are close with”. Another thumb swipe and Facebook sends us photo-montage stories of our colleagues’ enviable holidays, our half-remembered second-cousin’s birthday and our pet’s best adventures.  Not much room then for Melville’s 585 dense pages.

TED Talks have become the modern equivalent of business storytelling.  In a puritanically branded event, an over-rehearsed speaker has up to 18 minutes to enlighten, persuade and inform – and hope that their nuggets of knowledge will be worthy enough to be shared by millions online.  Depending on your perspective, TED Talks is a medium that has either saved Western thinking and the promulgation of new ideas, or alternatively, it has not.  Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo is a massive bestseller.  And the TED franchise has created a whole industry of training, books, videos and professional tutors to help you Present Like TED, Own the Room and Rock it Like TED.   Airport bookshops are packed with TED’s alum.  TED’s own editorial has a succinct take on what Storytelling is enormously helpful: “How do you foster connecting, empathy and understanding between people.  Tell a good story, of course.”

As you’d expect, in the myriad of eclectic topics and more than 3,000 official talks now available, there are duds and some gems.  But one of the very best is just five minutes in length, one of the shortest TED talks ever shared.

Save The Shoes

The story is titled ‘A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter’, by Mark Bezos, sometime more simply Save The Shoes. Like all the best stories, Bezos immediately ignites your imagination. His mode of telling has a theatrical wow factor, walking onto the stage dressed as a fireman, holding his hard hat, and with humility and great humour he shares the story.  He seems genuine and authentic, making the story both personal and universal. On a night of much drama when a house is on fire, his only contribution is to rescue the home-owners’ shoes from the fire.  In its punchline and Bezos’ brief epilogue, there is a sticky reminder of how powerful lessons can be found in real-life experiences and how great storytelling can still blow up a room.  As Bezos finishes, he brings the house down:

“In both my vocation and my avocation as a volunteer firefighter, I am a witness to acts of generosity and kindness on a monumental scale, but I'm also a witness to acts of grace and courage on an individual basis. And you know what I've learned? They all matter. So, as I look around this room at people who either have achieved, or are on their way to achieving, remarkable levels of success, I would offer this reminder: don't wait. Don't wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody's life. If you have something to give, give it now. Serve food at a soup kitchen. Clean up a neighbourhood park. Be a mentor. Not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody's life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one. So, get in the game. Save the shoes.”

Exploring strategic challenges

At LBS, we sometimes build some form of storytelling element into our Executive Education learning programmes.  At its simplest level this might be in the way cohort members are encouraged to introduce themselves to one another (by sharing their story), or at a more sophisticated level, it might be around building a strategic challenge into a compelling narrative that engages and excites others. We use expert facilitators, often writers themselves, as well as actors, stand-up comedians, filmmakers and improvisers to enthuse and build confidence.  There are also some very simple ways you might use storytelling in your teams to make better sense of business problems.

Business ‘models’ are not always very memorable. We more easily recall Star Wars’ The Force than Porter’s Five Forces8. When doing team exercises, familiar tales, tropes, and characters are good ways to instantly connect ideas and minds.

Why not use a familiar story (movie, or book) and get your team to think about a business challenge using a metaphor from that familiar tale? Rather than plot some actions from a hurried SWOT, ask the team: “What if you had Harry Potter’s magic wand and three spells you could cast, what issues, fixes or gaps would you choose to use them on in your business?” Get them to discern and rank their choices. Alternatively, use a film like Back to the Future as a launchpad to discuss what your organisation would look like 10 years from now and the actions you need to take now for it to survive and thrive in the future.

Storytelling glue

There is something both democratic (we can all tell a good yarn, right?), as well as refreshingly human about exploring a business challenge through the format or metaphor of a story.  Stories are familiar, memorable, and easily shared.  Great stories cross borders and can be translated and adapted for different tastes and cultures. They resonate more than business theory, purpose, vision and the features of a product or service.  In the words of Mad Men’s Don Draper, using stories creates a “sentimental bond” with your audience, and much deeper and potent connection.  Stories are a good way of reinforcing glue.