The Power of Stories

In a recent coaching session, a recently appointed MD was explaining to me that the business he was to lead was made up of divisions and sites formed by several acquisitions and appeared to have little cohesion or common purpose.  On one of his initial site visits one of his divisional directors had offered the view that the business was an artificial construct brought together by convenience, not the most motivating welcome!

In our discussion, I was struck by the writings of author Yuval Noah Harari who writes that ‘humans are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around and convince millions of others to believe in them’.  The MD is Australian, I am English, and we concluded that we both relate strongly to our national stories, feel irrationally competitive during our cricketing battles even though we are the same in every sense with the exceptional of a fluke of geography.

We concluded that his challenge to build cohesion and meaning in his business ‘artificial construct’ or not, is to build a story, spread it around and convince (in his case) thousands to believe in it’.

As another author, Peg Neuhauser said ‘No tribal chief or elder has ever handed out statistical reports, charts, graphs, or lists to explain where the group is headed or what it must do, it’s the stories we tell that allow us to effectively lead and inspire others.

Humans are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around and convince millions of others to believe in them.

There are many ways to structure a story, and most business leaders will have communications professionals who will support them.  However, we discussed the following principles as a start point:

• Keep the story short: We talked about something that was around five lines of text, something simple but powerful – the metric of success being that other start to tell the same story across the organisation.
• Have a beginning, middle and end: The beginning focuses on the current state, leaving the other party nodding and thinking ‘yes, I recognise that too’.  The middle outlines a few aspirations which are meaningful for the audience, things that they can relate to, and which provide real purpose.  The end provides a call to action and a clear reward which motivates people to buy into a different future.
• The fact that the MD is not able to be sure that his views will provide purpose for the people in the organisation is an important realisation – we agreed that it would be ideal to co-create this story with a range of people across the organisation, something that is likely to lead to greater resonance and higher engagement.

I am sure that building the ‘story’ is something that will take several iterations and an investment of time.  However, once developed (with the support of many of his team) I am sure it will provide a powerful catalyst to creating cohesion and shared meaning in his business.  To quote another truism ‘the story is the leader when the leader is not around’.  Having a powerful and simple story can provide a compass for those in the organisation to direct decisions and plans.  With the right story the new MD can set to work to galvanise his organisation to turn the fictional story (his strategy) into reality.