Harnessing Storytelling in Leadership and Business Strategy
🌊 I could tell you the story about the red-flag day at the beach when my son saved the life of a young boy.
🇯🇵 Or about the time I was asked to make the Japanese flag bleed.
🚦 Or about the blistering summer day I was pulled over in traffic and arrested, leaving my 8-month-pregnant wife on the side of the road wondering what to do.
Those are personal stories I share with friends and colleagues, but when I work with clients, there is another set I use…
📦 I tell the story of cleaning the garage to help clients understand the creative process.
👕 I tell the story of a canary-yellow sweater my wife bought me to help clients understand the feeling of discomfort and confidence.
😉 And I tell the story of flirting, dating, and marrying to help clients understand the pace of building relationships with their customers.
We take storytelling for granted, yet the power of the humble story is nothing short of awe-inspiring. And while the topic is much too deep to cover in a short email, there are four things I’d like you to understand…
Story is the most powerful tool in your leadership toolbox.
A Stanford study on story showed that five percent of listeners remembered statistics while 63% remembered stories.
Stories create order from chaos. They light up the listener’s brain and trigger emotional responses. They’re the best tool you have to change attitude and behavior.
Your organization has many stories to tell and they should work together to build narrative power.*
You tell stories to your customers and stories to the larger market. You have stories to motivate your leaders and align your teams. And you have stories you tell yourself about why you do what you do.
Each of these stories is valuable and important, but when they work together they can build something even more powerful. A strategic narrative, threaded through all the smaller stories, can align people inside and outside your organization and call them to action.
*Narrative Power, Guillaume Wiatr, Metahelm
All great stories tell about a five-second moment.*
The biggest, greatest, grandest stories that get told, the ones that leave us thinking about the story for days after, all tell about a five-second moment. The main character in the story should be completely different after this five-second moment because that five-second moment is about transformation.
The beach story was about my daredevil son realizing life can disappear in a blink. The Japanese flag story was about me learning that we teach others how to treat ourselves. And the getting arrested story was about…… well, let’s save that for another day.
The same goes for the stories of your organization: What transformative moment drove you to start the organization you’re building? What is the transformation you promise customers? How will your teams champion your transformative view of the market?
A strategic idea should underpin your narrative and maximize the value your organization delivers.
Either you have a strategy … or you don’t.
And either your narrative and stories support that strategy … or they don’t.
Your strategy should help you maximize the value you deliver to the world and when that strategy is supported by the stories you tell and the narrative you build, you'll create an organization that's not just successful, but truly unstoppable.
