Category: Blog

I recently read about a large technology company commissioning science fiction (sci-fi) writers to pen short stories about their future technology and product uses. They believe this can help anticipate consumer aspirations and drive future adoptions of its products. Sci-fi is not a world I am particularly familiar with but I find it fascinating to read that a concept remarkably similar to the iPad was described over 40 years ago in 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke and video chat facilities similar to Skype were set out in the 1911 novel Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback. There are many people who believe sci-fi has a remarkable knack for predicting the future reality.

The move to commission short stories depicting your future struck me as such a brilliant approach…but surely not only for the technology sector and not just for external consumers? But for any business, and starting with your own employees. Every business needs to be able to picture and articulate its own future – be it fantastical and far-fetched or grounded and achievable. But it doesn’t stop there, setting the vision for your business is one element. It’s vital to take the time to tell that story to every part of your business to make your vision a reality. And why share the story with every employee? They have the most important part to play.

Engaging your workforce on the journey your business is on can have invaluable benefits. According to the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) engaged employees deliver four times more value to an organisation than non-engaged employees. The Institute of Social Research discovered that a 5% increase in positive employee attitude relates to a 2.1% increase in sales performance. Beyond the statistics it’s the power of the story to engage hearts and minds and inspire values and behaviours.

What better way to engage employees than to listen to and celebrate their stories? Imagine a bespoke online platform that allows users to upload, tag, search and store their own success stories. The Storytellers’ vision for the future is not quite a sci-fi novel but involves new technology – we are developing our online platform for clients that allows stories aligned to the business’ strategic objectives and values to be shared electronically and celebrated globally.

Our approach at The Storytellers offers a framework for articulating the unique journey your organisation is on, working with leaders to reach and engage every employee. As part of our framework that vision for the future is key – where do you want your business to be in the future?

The first time you hear someone say this to you in the workplace it comes as a surprise. Yet actually it isn’t uncommon to hear. It has made me think hard about why someone would say this, rather than just help out. Perhaps they are too busy, but if so, why not just say that? Perhaps it is above their skill level, and embarrassment prevents them from admitting it? Or perhaps they simply don’t want to help! In today’s economic climate, where each of us is trying to excel in our role and add value to our company there will be times that we need a helping hand from our colleagues and associates.

Perhaps it has something to do with accountability? If you are accountable, you will own the solution as my colleague Mel mentioned in her recent blog on ownership of change. So the key must be in making all colleagues accountable and getting them to take collective ownership for the company’s success.

So, how can you get all of your employees engaged in creating a successful business? The sticking point often comes for colleagues who aren’t client/customer-facing and don’t see it as ‘their job’ to create a great customer experience. Finance, HR and IT often fall into this trap. The answer is to help them understand that even if six degrees removed from the customer, they still have a role to play in working better together with their colleagues as ‘one team’ to help create that culture of customer focus. By changing internal processes or systems they too can effect the positive experience that a customer will have, be it through better efficiency or understanding of the impact on the end user. Sometimes simply by shifting the emphasis on the customer – by putting the customer at the heart of everything you do – you can quickly change the way people think about their role and the inter-relationship they have with others in the businesses.

In theory this is great. However, there is one key thing that glues all of this together and makes it work; reward and recognition. People need to understand how their contribution has helped the greater good. For those who aren’t in direct contact with clients and don’t have direct accountability for programme outcomes or client relationships, it is more important than ever to include them in the rewards and recognition of success. Be sure to always thank others and show appreciation to those who have stepped up to help you out, especially if what they did ‘wasn’t their job’.

I’ve just finished reading an interesting article about Dutch social psychologist, Geert Hofstede’s research into cultural differences in the workplace.

For Hofstede, a country’s ‘way of doing things’ will have a powerful impact on company culture. Hofstede classifies these ‘ways of doing things’ as Cultural Dimensions, which include factors such as the distribution of power, an alignment with either masculine or feminine tendencies and a country’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.

To use an example, Hofstede looks at the way in which the distribution of power is perceived. While some employees will expect to be given the opportunity to ask questions, share their opinions and shape the business, others will be used to receiving clear direction, which is rarely questioned. For these employees ‘engagement’ will mean something very different.

Hofstede’s research led me to start thinking about the way in which communication styles differ across the globe and the challenge this presents when communicating a single, aligned vision throughout a global organisation.

How can we speak to every employee in a style and language which will resonate with their ‘way of doing things’, without diluting the central culture of the organisation?

This is where storytelling, I believe, comes into its own. Once the narrative of the business journey has been set, the story can be brought to life in a number of ways. Managers can work with their teams to personalise the story in a way which will resonate at local level – both in terms of the way they present the story and in identifying the information and actions most relevant to their team.

Once they have a personal connection and understanding of the story, employees can begin to tell their own stories, which will inevitably be ‘local’ and vary hugely in content and delivery, yet still contribute to the overall business journey.

Of course, some will argue that Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions are over-simplified generalisations. Can we be sure that national culture will impact upon employee behaviour more than organisational culture? This is open to debate and probably varies for each organisation, but we only have to travel oversees to be reminded that communication styles can be worlds apart.

For me, the effectiveness of storytelling as a medium for global communication lies in the infinite ways in which a story can be told, without losing its meaning. This, combined with the story’s familiar and nostalgic quality – as one of the original ways of sharing information, firmly embedded in communities and cultures all over the world – means that its ability to touch hearts and minds, spark the imagination and re-shape beliefs can transcend many cultural borders.

I’ve heard many motivational speakers in my time, but one person stands head and shoulders above the rest: Scott Burrows, one-time kick boxing champion and former athlete.

I heard Scott speak at a conference in Atlanta earlier this month. Young, all American good-looking, vibrant, sparkling blue eyes and white teeth. Smiling from ear to ear from the minute he started. And in a wheelchair, diagnosed quadriplegic after a tragic car accident six years ago or so.

His presentation was a truly inspiring message about adapting to change.  His own experience took him to the brink of the precipice as his life as an able-bodied person ended and he faced life unable to move from the neck down – dependent on family and friends for his most basic needs. Yet he maintained a clear vision that he would walk again. Crazy speak, the doctors said, as a quadriplegic.

His message was clear. With change comes chaos and confusion. To make change happen you need to get out of your current mindset. You need to stretch yourself beyond your self-perceived limitations, make a positive response to the challenges you face. Go with what scares you. Take risks. Get out of your comfort zone and do things differently.  Fear of the unknown and fear of uncertainty can cause paralysis. Stand up to your fears, focus on what’s within your control.

To do all of this you need a clear vision of what you need to achieve. Be willing to see success in your mind and imprint this idea again and again ‘until your brain just can’t tell the difference’. Visualising success enables us to create a clear path to achievement. Without a vision we have no goal – no end game – to aim for, so no means of shaping a path towards it.

In Scott’s case, his vision was to walk again. Amazingly, through months and years of physiotherapy, struck down by triple whammy of pneumonia, a pulmonary embolism and a collapsed lung on the way, he gradually regained some movement in his wrists, which allowed him to pick things up using a different type of movement by moving his wrists up and down. From there, through sheer grit and determination, he gradually regained the use of his arms (shaking his father’s hand again, he said, was one of the highlights of his life). When the doctors reminded him that walking again just wasn’t going to happen, he lost sight of his vision and gave in, until his family gave him renewed strength to carry on working towards his goal.

Nobody in the room could believe it when he struggled out of his wheelchair to stand, and walked very unsteadily across the stage. A film that followed showed him scuba-diving and playing golf. A truly outstanding achievement that took him six years of mindset, vision and grit, and a relentless determination not to give up.

What defines us is our willingness to scale our efforts and stand up to our next challenge. Whether personal or in business, a clear vision will enable us to define the path to success. Yet achieving that vision is down to our own mindset, and being prepared to test ourselves on a daily basis in a way which will be uncomfortable and difficult at times, but totally necessary to make change happen.

My university lecturer once asked me during a discussion about branding: 'what story are you trying to tell? I didn't have an answer at the time, but I was inspired to find one. My search led ultimately to my 10,000-word dissertation on the relationship between storytelling and branding.

During the course of my research, I came across a number of interesting books; two that immediately spring to mind are Creative Leaps by Saatchi and Saatchi's Michael Newman and Steve Denning's The Leaders Guide to Storytelling. Both these books illustrate the importance of storytelling as a powerful communication tool, especially in relation to branding. My dissertation distilled a number of messages which have stayed with me and have inspired my work with The Storytellers:

There’s no better recognition than ‘word of mouth’. Employees must believe and ‘own’ the story as they will ultimately be the ones to represent the company's brand values.
Brands communicate a story about a product or service. Successful advertising delivers meaningful messages about the brand, often in sequence, taking the message’s recipients on a journey.
The importance of flux. There is a constant need to adapt a story in a fast-paced society where change is inevitable. A brand must therefore evolve with its consumers or it will fail to build lasting relationships.
Brand characters and personalities can be effective at building relationships between a brand and an audience. A successful brand character can adopt human qualities that allow it to engage with an audience on an emotional level. For me good examples of this include: Kelloggs Rice Krispies' Snap, Crackle and Pop, the Jolly Green Giant and the Compare the Market Meerkats.
At The Storytellers, we recently invented a character (a 4-foot puppet) to represent a client company's brand values. It was a way of connecting the employees to the journey of the company. The puppet played the leading role in the story. His personality was an important vehicle which we used to reflect the views of the company and its employees, and to bring together individuals who aspire to achieve the same goals.

It's an approach celebrated recently in J Walter Thompson's work at brandtoys.com; visualisations of brand personalities for over 3,000 global brands. Every toy is measured by its characteristics and qualities. The concept is based on user experience. It's a great way to compare brands and see how they differ around the world and against competitors.

I hope we get the opportunity to invent more characters, to tell more stories, to add more value to client brands by helping them build lasting and profitable relationships with both internal and external audiences.

Flicking through Sky one day, I found a documentary about social media titled Catfish. After reading the synopsis I was still unclear as to what Catfish was about, so, as most of us do in this technology-rich day and age I got on the reliable iPhone to search for it. Having watched the programme, it was interesting to see how social media can be used to create a whole new virtual life, how, without human interaction you can still be taken on an emotional journey. How characters can fall in love with their virtual beings only to disappointed when they meet face to face.

I started thinking about social media: Facebook, BBM, MSN messenger, LinkedIn, Twitter, Skype, Wikipedia (just to name a few). How easily we have access to information, new ways to communicate, shop, be engaged, connected and inspired. I wondered though, whether social media means we now have less human interaction or whether it gives us a much-needed escape into a virtual world where we can each become the person we would like to be, free of constraints.

So, social media, what exactly is it? Online technology where people can share, find, do almost anything, something for everyone, from entertainment, to education to employment. A meeting place where friendships, communities and neighbours, have become a global phenomenon. Or a shopping mall where industry can 'connect' with potential customers using social media, which is everyone’s new best friend.

We now live in a culture where social media is a part of all our daily lives, taking us on a virtual journey. The question is ‘has social media become so central to our lives – how we communicate, who we meet, what we do and how we do it – that we are addicts? Does it enhance or reduce our lives? What do you think…virtually speaking?’

Having been a member of the Storytellers team for a month now, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the art of the story. I've been thinking about this not only for clients (though this is something that has become a big part of my working day), but also in terms of what it means for me personally.

I stumbled across an interesting blog by a designer, David Airey, who talks about the need to set yourself apart from the crowd. What you achieve and experience creates your own individual story, sets you apart from others. The choices you make and the paths you travel ultimately define you. You won't get this vicariously through others, this one's on you and you alone.

The Storytellers work to build and discover that unique story. To understand and develop the strengths of an individual or business, in order to differentiate them from the crowd, and make them more successful. If you can identify and tell people your story, develop that idea of who or what you are, it will engage them and create an enticement to want to hear more and ultimately be more involved. I'm still learning here at The Storytellers and while I am hungry to learn more, the strong belief in a story and how it can define and develop people and organisations has moved to the forefront of my thoughts.

In the past, as a creative designer, I have worked on branding projects and developed a look and feel for many organisations. I very much helped them create their story, but until I became immersed in the world of the Storytellers I hadn't thought of it in this way. I created it subconsciously. The story has now become a very conscious part of my decision-making process and, in turn, this has enhanced my creative process.

In my interview, I was asked to tell my story. I talked about my secondary school education, as an Essex girl from a convent school. I continued to talk about how lucky I am to have travelled widely and I talked enthusiastically on this subject! I was then asked, “how do you think your travelling has helped your creativity”. Initially, I was a little worried about how to answer correctly but simply told them, “It makes me who I am”.

I don't know if it was the right or wrong answer, but I got the job!