The Stickiness of Stories
From my brother James, whose company, Travelers Tales makes travel guidebooks out of stories:
From a Yahoo Finance/BusinessWeek piece today, The Seven Secrets of Inspiring Leaders [by Carmine Gallo]:"Few business leaders appreciate the power of stories to connect with their audiences. A few weeks ago I was working with one of the largest producers of organic food in the country. I can't recall most, if any, of the data they used to prove organic is better. But I remember a story a farmer told. He said when he worked for a conventional grower, his kids could not hug him at the end of the day when he got home. His clothes had to be removed and disinfected. Now, his kids can hug him as soon as he walks off the field. No amount of data can replace that story. And now guess what I think about when I see the organic section in my local grocery store? You got it. The farmer's story. Stories connect with people on an emotional level. Tell more of them."
There's also a great line about optimism being a "force multiplier."
The article also talks about how Bill Gates managed to recruit Steve Ballmer to Microsoft:
Steve Ballmer once said that shortly after he joined the company, he was having second thoughts. Bill Gates and Gates' father took Ballmer out to dinner and said he had it all wrong. They said Ballmer saw his role as that of a bean counter for a startup. They had a vision of putting a computer on every desk, in every home. That vision -- a computer on every desk, in every home -- remains consistent to this day. The power of a vision set everything in motion.
(I wrote about this idea recently, in Yahoo's Revival Meeting. I'm thinking a lot about this at O'Reilly, as the company approaches its third decade, and we have to keep re-investing in our vision. If we believe in "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators," as I've said we do, where does that take us, what do we have to do to live up to that vision?)
The Ballmer account is itself an example of effective business storytelling. Which brings to mind the site FiftyLessons, which is harnessing the power of stories to create a new kind of business advice site. I've only seen a couple of the stories, but they are indeed effective.
tags: business, leadership, stories, vision
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Comments: 4
[10.16.07 03:40 PM]
"Few business leaders appreciate the power of stories to connect with their audiences."
how is this earth shattering? have these business leaders forgotten the power of anecdotal evidence or testimonials? ... while slightly different, they're all just telling stories to make a point.
[10.16.07 09:43 PM]
Barry --
You must work for a great company. Many folks do forget to tell stories. I think I'm a great story teller (take open source and web 2.0 as examples of stories I've helped tell that have had huge industry impact), but even so, I realize that as my company has gotten older, I've forgotten to tell the old stories again and again, and to make them new for employees. That's part of how a company builds a culture.
Go listen to some of the samples at 50lessons, and you'll see how much information can be packed into a short story. There's a great one about a story told by Herb Kelleher of Southwest that sums up a great deal of Southwest strategy in a paragraph that no long powerpoint could ever equal.
[10.20.07 06:00 PM]
There are stories from all levels of the organization that show employees living the desired behaviors. Like the story of the employees at an international hotel chain who shaved their heads when they discovered a favorite ten-year old customer was starting chemo therapy. These are the stories that bring vision statements, goals and objectives to life.
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Steve Cisler [10.15.07 06:05 PM]
A couple of very different comments. Don't forget the story of how Steve Jobs recruited John Scully from Pepsi. :
"And then he looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world and I just gulped because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed."
And another: there was a program in the south called Parables to Policy where rural folks told stories on video about how better telecoms and Internet access changed their lives. This was played for state regulators and made a big impact because they rarely heard from these people. they did not venture into the boonies, and the people did not go to public hearing in the capital. The program was supported by W.K. Kellogg Foundation.