Xerox CEO promotes storytelling in business

The Xerox Chairman and CEO, Anne M Mulcahy, was interviewed in the March issue of Fast Company magazine under the heading What I Know Now. Among other things she talks about the importance of storytelling:

Storytelling is hugely important. At our town meetings, the most frequently asked question wasn’t whether we’d survive, but what we would look like when we did. I got great advice: Write a story. We wrote a Wall Street Journal article, because they had been particularly nasty about us, dated five years out…

… It was about where we could be if we really stood up to the plate. And people loved it. No matter where I go, people pull that article out. They personalized it.

Stories exist at all levels of the corporation. You talk to tech reps, and they’ll tell you what they did to help turn this company around. Whether it was saving a buck here, or doing something different for customers, everyone has a story. That creates powerful momentum–people’s sense that they’re able to do good things. It’s much more powerful than the precision or elegance of the strategy.

You can read the rest of her thoughts, including the importance of engaging everyone in a change process, at the Fast Company website.

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