I love it when an organisation has a strong narrative - a story that helps people involved make sense of what’s really important about this business.
Key to that story is making it specific. I remember a senior executive in one client
who was always able to communicate with people at all levels of the
organisation and with its customers with ease.
I realised that what he was doing in each case was telling a simple
story, adapted for the people involved, which illustrated two or three key
points in a natural flow that made whatever he was describing seem much simpler
and easier to understand than before. He
always started with a specific event that encapsulated something special about
what the organisation was seeking to achieve. Each story had a spine that gave
it structure, and it placed the current situation in its context by using
relevant examples so we could relate and therefore see how the future made
sense.
The storytelling executive was also good at making his
stories stick. He did this through
repetition, ‘playing the broken record’ by telling and retelling his stories
until we all had taken them to heart.
He’d often vary the example or change the emphasis a little, but the
underlying narrative was consistent. He
knew his persistence paid dividends when he heard other people telling the same
stories or using the same phrases. His
stories became part of the language of the company and spawned new versions
from other people in their own words, as the ripples of engagement were felt
across the business. The stories were
helping others to make sense of the purpose and direction, to believe, and to
make these things their own.