The power of STORYTELLING at Work
by Everlyn Clark
To introduce new employees to its corporate culture, Nike tells them the story about a track coach and a waffle iron. To teach management trainees about its corporate values, Costco Wholesale relates the story of Calvin Klein jeans. And to honor superior performances, FedEx recounts tales of employees' heroic efforts to fulfill the company's promise to customers.
Great leaders know what that employees need more than lofty mission statements and industry buzzwords. To understand and appreciate what their organization stands for, workers need to hear about its people, its values, and its history.
So smart leaders tell stories. They periodically gather their 'tribe' around the corporate campfire to recall the legends and share new tales. By touching the hearts as well as the minds of their employees, they create a legacy of experience they inspires generations.
"What else have we got besides stories?" asks Jim Sinegal, the co-founder and CEO of the giant warehouse chain Costco Wholesale. "They're what really hit home with people; stories bring meaning to the work we do." Although a picture is worth a thousand words, Sinegal says, a story told appropriately is priceless.
Stories also stay with people longer than facts and figures because they reach the heart as well as the mind, according to Gregory Bateson, author of Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unit. Bronwyn Fryer, senior editor of "Harvard Business Review," agrees. "There are two ways to persuade people," Fryer writes. "The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. That's not good enough because people are not inspired to act by reason alone. The other much more powerful way to persuade people is to unite an idea with an emotion in a compelling story."
Stories have always been the "glue" connecting people with their cultures and with one another, and some social scientists say that humans are hardwired for storytelling. Tribal practices and history have traditionally been passed down through the generations by word of mouth.
Karen Dietz, PhD, a folklorist and organizational consultant, explains that the ole of tribal storyteller has traditionally been a high honour.
"It has been the teller's responsibility to preserve the tribe's stories, the heart and soul of its ancestral heritage," Dietz says, "These legends articulate the group's perspective of the world and their place in it, the storyteller must ensure that each member of the group understands the importance of their roles in continuing the traditions upon which the very survival of the tribe depends."
Similarly, survival in business also relies on the group understanding and buying into the same basic narrative. Hence, being able to tell and pass in corporate stories to Harvard professor Howard Gardner. "Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader's tool kit."
"How's your day going?" "What's the latest news on the company's new product?" "What's the status of your project?" Commonly posed in the workplace, each of these questions is usually answered in story form, whether or not you are consciously aware of being a storyteller.
Knowing that you are constantly telling stories is, however, essential to the figuring out which stories to tell, when to tell them, who to tell them to, and, most importantly, why you are telling them.
Here's how some top corporations use stories to get messages across.
Stories Preserve History, Nurture the Culture
Nike uses the power of a story to ensure its employees understand the company's heritage and philosophy. Founded more than 40 years ago, the company still uses a story about the late co-founder Bill Bowerman to keep staff motivated. The University of Oregon track coach was eating waffles for breakfast one morning when he was inspired to pour latex on his wife's waffle iron. That impulsive act led to the development of Nike's famed waffle-soled running shoes.
"We think of this as internal branding – stories about people getting things done," says Nelson Farris, Nike's Global Director of Corporate Education. "If we connect people with our heritage, chances are they won't view Nike as just another place to work."
One of the first CEOs to use storytelling to deliberately manage through stories, David Armstrong of Armstrong International uses his books of collected stories as recruitment tools. He asked candidates to take a book home and read it to learn about the corporate culture and determine whether it's the kind of place they would like to work. For employees, he posts stories on bulletin boards, puts them in paycheck envelopes, and frames them to hang on the walls. Armstrong has also recorded CDs and videos of people re-enacting their own stories for others to learn from.
Stories Celebrate Heroes
A FedEx courier in Honolulu, Hawaii, was making a delivery run during a rainstorm accompanied by unusually high winds. When a strong gust sent a package from the back of his truck and plunked it into the ocean, James Bush Jr didn't hesitate to dive in after it. He recovered the package and, without taking time to change his soaked clothes, delivered it to the customer.
FedEx systematically tells stories like this to make heroes of employees who go beyond the call of duty to great packages delivered on time, fulfilling the company's promise to customers that absolutely nothing will get in their way. The stories are disseminated in a wide variety of corporate media, including employee recognition event, newsletters, and the company website.
Stories Help Increase Sales
One day a sales clerk at the Container Store, an American retail chain based in Texas noticed a customer studying the display of a closet shelving unit. Knowing that the do-it-yourself wire unit could be daunting to figure out, the clerk offered to help determine what components the customer needed to fit their home.
The customer bought the unit and the store manager shared the account with all the other stores as an example of a success story. Now, the company gathers sales stories from each store every evening and disseminates the best to all the outlets so manager can start the next day by sharing successes.
The company has found that, when sales of a core product start to slip, the slide can be reversed by focusing the daily stories on how a sales person helped a customer choose the right version of the product for their need.
Using stories as the bridge between customers and sales staff is also the focus of a storytelling pilot launched in March 2006 by Microsoft.
"As a technology company, it's easy to get enamoured with all the features and functions of a solution," says Lynne Stockstad, Enterprise Marketing General Manger. "Through storytelling, you can articulate better how those features and functions came to life to help a customer realize their potential."
Since corporate customers frequently visit the Microsoft campus to learn about new products, the company has its programmers include their personal stories about developing the software into the briefing.
"The customers look at others from their company and say, "I told you so; that's what we were working on last week," says Stockstad.
Stories Convey Values and Mission
Costco's Jim Sinegal enjoys telling his Calvin Klein jeans story to illustrate the founders' commitment to ensuring good value for customers.
"We were selling Calvin Klein jeans for $29.99, and we were selling every pair we could get our hands on," he says. "One competitor matched our price, but they had only four or five pairs on the shelf. We all of a sudden got our hands on several million pairs of Calvin Klein jeans… at a very good price. It meant that, within the constraints of our markup, which is limited to 14 percent on any item, we had to sell them for $22.99."
They could have sold all four million pairs for that higher price almost as quickly as they sold them at $22.99, says Sinegal, "but there was no question that we would mark them at $22.99 because that's our philosophy."
The company uses that particular story to illustrate how it keeps faith with its customers.
When Gary Prazac spoke at an employee event organized by Medtronic, a biomedical engineering company that develops medical devices for people with chronic diseases, there was not a dry eye in the room.
He told of how Parkinson's disease had aged him, causing him to shuffle along with a cane and giving him an expressionless face known as "Parkinson's mask". He suffered from tremors that caused his body to move uncontrollably and at the same time, denied him the ability to move when he wanted to.
Surgery to implant Medtronic's deep-brain-stimulation device, Prazac says, "reversed at least ten years of…symptoms. It was literally a miracle. Not long ago, I was walking my Great Dane in the woods near home when a fellow dog-walker stopped to chat. He said he'd met my dog before, but an old man with a cane was with him then. 'Was that your father?' he asked."
After a long pause, during which practically everyone in the audience reached for tissues to dry their eyes, Prazac concluded, "Medtronic gave me my smile back."
Seven Ways To Implement Storytelling Today
Stories can be used in any kind of organization at any level and with any audience. Here are seven ways that you can immediately begin practicing the art of storytelling in your own work.
- Keep a notepad handy to jot down examples of "people caught doing things right," as David Armstrong refers to the success stories he tells.
- Develop a catchy title for each story so as to grab people's attention at the very beginning.
- Incorporate stories in your regular communications, for example, memos, reports, presentations, and meetings.
- Set a date with your work team to identify stories that exemplify the value of your collective contribution to corporate goals.
- Share stories in your regularly schedule meetings.
- Ask for feedback on your storytelling skills or hire a coach – to hone your delivery.
- Continually collect new stories so you always have fresh tales to supplement the legends.
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