small
business

SAM TROU T

Telling tales

The art of corporate storytelling

By Steve Fisher

ONCE UPON A TIME: Those four simple words conjure up the anticipation of a tale of wonder and fascination. One might think this is something for a campfire, classroom or bedside and not a tool for business. One would be very wrong.

The definition of story here is an account of incidents or events, a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question— not a work of fiction.

Everyone’s been in a business or sales meeting where the speaker clicks through a PowerPoint presentation showing charts and numbers. Few people, if any, take anything away from those meetings other than a sense of confusion or ennui. But put the same information in the context of a story and the point is made.

“When you tell a story, people understand what the mission is and they understand how they can enact it,” explains Evelyn Clark (www. corpstory.com), a Costco member and business consultant in Sammamish, Washington, and a corporate storytelling guru. “If you just talk at a high level of mission and vision, the reaction is ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’

“There was a sales management group,”

Clark continues, “that had been celebrating sales on a monthly basis, honoring the top salesperson by showing numbers. When they started telling stories about how the person did it, the others learned how to do it themselves.” Successful companies get it. “Good corporate stories are more likely to conjure up

 

Additional resources

ⁿ Managing by Storying Around (Armstrong International, 1992, 1999), by David Armstrong

ⁿ Parables into Profit (Armstrong International, 1995), by David Armstrong

ⁿ Introduction to Corporate Storytelling ( http://tech-head.com/cstory1.htm), by Hilary McClellan

ⁿ “Evaluate Your Own Story” ( www.corp story.com/process/evaluation. htm), by Evelyn Clark

tangible visible images than anything in a PowerPoint presentation,” says Chip Heath ( www.madetostick.com), a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s graduate school of business in Palo Alto, California. “Stories are flight simulators for our brains,” he observes, explaining that they portray experiences that members of the audience may not have had yet. Heath teaches a course called “How to Make Ideas Stick” and has co-written a book with his brother, Dan, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007).

What’s in a story?

Clark spoke to leaders of companies who “understand the power of story” for her book, Around the Corporate Campfire: How Great Leaders Use Stories to Inspire Success (C&C Publishing, 2004).

One such company is Medtronic, which started as a home hobby and has grown into a worldwide creator and manufacturer of medical technology. Medtronic, based in Minneapolis, has embraced storytelling as a key ingredient of its success. Every December,