Storytelling in Business
- Anthropology (1)
- Characters (2)
- Collaboration (3)
- Delivery (1)
- Elements (3)
- Japan & Japanese (3)
- Off the Shelf (1)
- Seminars & Presentations (2)
- Small Business (2)
- Uncategorized (3)
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Collaboration, One Story at a Time
The business of collaboration can be tricky when the people you’re trying to bring together are competitors. This is especially difficult in many areas of agriculture, where processors compete for raw materials as well as customers.
Collaboration...good!
Agriculture represents fertile ground for long-held resentments that span generations, making cooperation difficult. In an industry typified by family businesses, tales of deals gone wrong are told and retold.
For twenty-five years I have worked with farmers and ranchers, as well as the businesses that prepare and process their products. Many times I’ve encouraged businesses to work together in order to overcome obstacles and build markets. My biggest challenges are not economical – the financial advantages to collaboration can often be quantified. Instead, the bigger hurdles are usually personal. The same qualities that make some people successful can make them very competitive, making cooperation difficult.
Stories can reveal much of the ‘baggage’ that competitors bring to the table, threatening collaboration. Let the stories flow. A facilitator needs to be – and to be seen as – neutral, “without a dog in the fight” (to use an expression I’ve heard a few times in the agricultural world).
In hindsight, getting the apartment together was a bad idea
It pays to listen to the stories with a sympathetic ear; even if you’re not certain all the details are correct, the story may feel very “true” to the teller. Understand, too, that what happened in the past reveals subjects that are particularly sensitive.
Try to steer towards stories where collaboration has worked – even if those successes are modest. “Can you tell me about the time when Jim from Company X contacted you about that warehouse fire…?” A few “happy outcome” stories won’t necessarily erase years of bad blood, but they cast the facilitator as someone who doesn’t share in the bad memories, but works towards supporting fruitful collaboration. Remember and celebrate the small victories, growing a sense of “We” and “Us” – one story at a time.
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Can the Heroics
I don’t know whether the new CBS series “Mad Love” will survive, but last night’s debut featured a few lines that struck home.
NOT the Hero
Speaking as Larry, Tyler Labine described his role simply: “I am not the hero… I can either help the hero, or try to destroy him.”
In the so-called “real world” I wonder how many people don’t consider themselves the heroes in their own stories. Do you? Certainly there are times when we can feel as if we’re playing a supporting role in someone else’s drama – but consistently and over time, is there anyone who always feels like the sidekick?
I addressed the role of hero in an earlier post, but it seems like destiny is telling me to take another crack at it. Or, if not destiny, how about a sitcom?
Let’s consider this from the perspective of S-in-B (storytelling in business). How many brands out there, the big ones we encounter daily, are willing to play second fiddle – to act as sidekick?
Who you callin' sidekick?
With people, the tendency to declare, “I’m not the hero,” can be seen as humble or passive. Certainly, few major brands could be called that.
But consider the uniqueness – the chutzpah! – for a company or a brand to declare itself our sidekick and recognize that we are the story’s hero.
Too often organizations cast themselves as the protagonist in an ongoing story. But for their customers, as well as for their own employees, they are truly not the hero: “I can either help the hero, or try to destroy him.”
In telling your organizational story, hold off on the heroics. Try to see your organization’s role as helping someone else – customer or employee – achieve their goals.
As Larry says, “Every love story should have one of me.”
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Pack your Toothbrush!
The next time you try cooking up a memorable story, add a dash of incongruity.
Human beings strive to make sense of what they see and hear. You can use this to your advantage by introducing elements to your story that, at first blush, don’t fit together. This incongruity creates a puzzle your audience will want to figure out. You gain an audience that wants to hear what you have to stay. In turn, your audience gains a story they’ll remember.
In presentations and classes I’ve introduced the following elements: The scientist, the strawberry and the toothbrush.
And then I tell the story of Tony. A friend of mine, Tony sources and sells food products around the world. On one occasion he was in Japan, in the headquarters of a major ice cream manufacturer. The purchasing manager was trying to explain a problem with the fruit they were sourcing from Tony’s company. The manager called for one of the food technicians to join the meeting. 
Into the room came a serious man wearing a laboratory coat, holding in one hand a strawberry. In the other hand he held a toothbrush.
“You see,” began the technician in halting English. “Sometimes, the strawberries contain particles of dirt. We ask you please do this…” And he proceeded to stroke the strawberry lightly with the toothbrush.
Tony described the scene, and his own feelings of surprise, then bewilderment. He remembers thinking, “We supply tons of strawberries… How am I gonna tell the guys back home about this?”
But as Tony studied the problem and consulted with managers back at the packing house, they eventually reached a solution. The production line was fitted with a long soft brush over which the fruit passed, removing particles of dirt. Ultimately the process grew popular with other customers around the world, becoming a standard in the industry.
At this point I remind the audience what the story started with: A scientist, a strawberry and a toothbrush.
From this comes multiple lessons: I’ve used this story to stress the importance of listening to customers. I’ve also told this story to highlight the role of fussy customers in driving higher standards.
And look – just now, I’ve used it again: To demonstrate that incongruity can make a story interesting and memorable!
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Bogey Power
Stories can entertain and educate. Stories can even turn competitors into teammates.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” - Arabian Proverb
After vanquishing their bogeyman, the Seven Samurai opened a kosher deli
Google “common foe” and “common enemy” and you’ll get a couple million hits; the concept was developed before words were uttered to describe it.
But stories show us how collaboration works. They set the scene, cast the characters and write the dialogue.
In stories, challenges and obstacles are often portrayed in human terms as foes and enemies. Sometimes bogeymen. Bigger bogeymen spur bolder action, compelling competitors to work together.
A bogeyman wanders onto the wrong set
Countless stores describe the development of such cooperation: The initial reluctance, the tentative first steps and false starts, the ultimate cohesion into a functioning team.
This story arc is repeated in cinema: The Seven Samurai, The Dirty Dozen, Toy Story.
In the ‘drab’ real world, it might happen with a group of blueberry exporters who team up to combat tough new regulations in Japan.
The bogeyman that the exporters face may be more symbolic than human, but the symbolism is important. Bogeymen in stories represent the specter of imminent and approaching evil. In the business world, that might be new taxes or regulation.
So what’s your bogeyman? Somewhere, there’s a story that shows how you can beat it – with the right teammates.
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Shredding the Past
In 1993 I had just earned my MBA degree, got what I thought was a good job – and found myself sweating in a dark storeroom.
Should I clarify that I was alone at the time?
As a rookie employee I was told to clean out the company’s storeroom, and in the process learned a lot about the business world.
Our future - in that box right there...
The company’s attorney reminded my new boss that documents of different types – marketing, financial, etc. – needed to be thrown away after so many years to comply with corporate record retention rules. I was then tapped to go into the storeroom, find old marketing documents, and toss them into the trash.
It was simple work, or as simple as I was to be trusted with during the first week of my new job. But it exposed the sorry state of storytelling in business today.
At first I read only the dates on the front page of the report, but gradually I grew interested in the reports themselves: Many contained stories about the company in its early days – over fifty years before. Inside the reports were stories of management and marketing staff, all long gone and some long dead.
With each report that was tossed into the trash I felt my spirit sink. As a new employee, just starting out, I foresaw my own future: My adventures and misadventures, recounted in reports, to be eventually shredded. To be sure, I was earning paychecks and making friends, but I was laying down a legacy as thin as rainwater on the hot parking lot outdoors.
Was this company unique?
A good story gets away
Sadly – in what I’ve seen in the years since then, no. To be sure, some organizations take a less literal approach to record retention, but for many companies the old stories are locked in filing cabinets or shipped to off-site warehouses.
It’s easy to call companies hypocritical when they craft stories for their customers and trash stories created by their own employees. But maybe it’s not driven so much by hypocrisy as the need to feel in control. It’s easy to control stories told through advertising, and much harder to filter, edit and arrange the stories lived by employees.
We assume organizations want employees to stick around a while and devote themselves to their jobs. In turn, employees don’t need to actually see their histories getting shredded to sense they’re not being valued. Somewhere, internal and external storytelling needs to be aligned, with employees not just sensing but seeing their stories being saved and celebrated. Much of my work is dedicated to exactly that! More to follow in future posts.
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The Meat of the Story
Managers often express the need to “tell the story” of their organization. 
Few mean it literally – as in writing a book – but this was done very successfully by a U.S. organization in Japan.
The book is “American Beef: Tradition and Transformation” (in Japanese, アメリカン・ビーフの伝統と変革), published by the Meat Export Federation, an association of exporters seeking to develop international markets for red meats like beef, pork and lamb.
On a recent trip to Japan I met with Susumu Harada, senior director at MEF’s Tokyo office, and talked about the book that doesn’t necessarily sell American beef as much as it promotes the idea of American Beef. Originally intended as a “Thank You” gift to the Japanese trade, it found a welcome audience with many Japanese, deepening understanding and generating goodwill.
The book can teach us a lot about how to successfully convey a story:
Images conveyed Traceability and Safety
Don’t Write Your Story – Have Your Audience Write It. The standard approach for many PR exercises would be to write the book then have it translated. Harada and his team reasoned that the story of the U.S. beef industry needed an authentic Japanese voice. To accomplish this they commissioned native Japanese – writers and a photographer – to visit three ranches in three U.S. states, and to tell the ensuing story from their perspective.
Know Where You’re Going, but Understand that Several Versions of the Story Can Get You There. The MEF team wanted to highlight the industry in simple, human terms. They drafted an outline of the themes they wanted to describe, including Family, Safety and Stewardship.
Images of the Western U.S. resonate with Japanese audiences.
Within those general guidelines, the writers and photographer were given considerable freedom, ultimately creating a distinctly Japanese story that resonated with the target audience.
Don’t Expect the Story to Be Over. In many ways the stories we tell are conversations: We change them to the situation and to the audience. The audience reacts, changing the story as it’s told. And from it all, the storytelling experience changes us. The book that came from this project was a much-appreciated gift, but it also helped to spark conversations between the Meat Export Federation and its customers in Japan.
Posted in Japan & Japanese
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Courting Perry Mason
“Who do you draw inspiration from?”
The question came at the end of a Rotary presentation I gave on Storytelling in Business. I wondered what I could say to earn points for professionalism and intelligence.
I was momentarily stumped then blurted out, “Erle Stanley Gardner.”
In order to meet demand, Gardner wrote in stereo
Blank stares predominated. “He wrote about 5,000 words a day, the equivalent of a novel per week… He was listed in the Guinness book of world records as the world’s best selling author… He created Perry Mason.” FINALLY – nods of recognition in the audience, but I could tell I still needed to earn those points.
Stories in business aren’t much different than the stories we learned as children – the good ones contain similar elements. And Gardner, who authored about 800 works, has a lot to teach us about successful storytelling:
Compelling Characters: Gardner believed in realistic characters, warts and all. The Perry Mason of his novels was a bit edgier than the character portrayed by Raymond Burr, but both had the ability to make the audience care.
The witness was uncooperative
Challenges to Overcome: Good stories have gaps that demand filling, triggering a very human desire to make things right. Gardner’s early writing was pulp at its pulpiest: He started his stories with riddles and kept the action rolling.
Internal Alignment: Stories don’t need to make sense to the real world, but they need to make sense to themselves. In other words, the elements of a story should fit together, with characters acting true to their nature. Perry Mason novels aren’t classical literature, but the characters, setting and plot fit together snugly – and thus “click” with their intended audience.
Gardner’s storytelling techniques are analyzed in a book by Francis L. Fugate. Used copies of “Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer” run $50 on Amazon.
Posted in Off the Shelf
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Stories Through the Fog
Fog Cutter
In what role would you cast Robert Gunning, hero or villain? Some describe him as a pioneer of clear writing. Others blame him for the ‘dumbing down’ of America.
About seventy years ago Gunning worked with some of the most popular newspapers and magazines. His mission: Improve readability. A result of his work was the “Fog Index” – a formula to measure complexity in writing.
In the early 1940’s, publications like the Wall Street Journal were estimated at a 16th grade level. Gunning’s efforts reduced that to an 11th grade level, improving comprehension and increasing readership.
A helpful site, Joe’s Web Tools, provides a simple but powerful way to measure the reading level of your stories. Copy and paste your complete article in the text box and click the button marked, “Test for readability.”
In an instant you’ll get a Gunning Fog Index score, and the results of five other measures. The formulas are similar, based on the number of words in each sentence, the number of characters or syllables per word and in some cases punctuation.
When we develop stories for business – whether articles, presentation notes or even e-mails, tools like the Gunning Fog Index can be invaluable. But clearing the “fog” is a misnomer; the real value comes in matching stories to our audience, and maintaining a consistent style.
Matching: It’s important to match the comprehension level of your audience. Find documents they’ve published on line or from their web site, and search for articles they’ve referenced. Check to see where those articles fall on the Fog Index, and match your stories accordingly.
Consistency: From story to story try to maintain a common voice. Use these readability measures to see if you’re subjecting your audience to an intellectual roller coaster. Just note that many buzzwords can trick these formulas into inflating reading levels, though they may be very understandable to your audience.
Looking back over my previous eleven posts, I’ve averaged a 12th grade reading level, with the majority of posts plus or minus one grade. The single “most difficult” post was “Collaboration and Connected Stories,” at a 14th grade level. However, when I removed the long but totally necessary word, “collaboration” (appearing 11 times), the reading level dropped a full grade.
The “easiest” post? That would be “Pick Your Analogies Wisely.” This short article, about Gary and the “Pro’s from Dover,” came slouching in at a lowly 10th grade reading level.
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Reunions & The Stories We Tell Ourselves
This summer I’m looking forward to getting together with classmates from my elementary school, people I haven’t seen for 35 years.
I spent eight years with many of them – that’s a lot of memories!
But I wonder how my memories stack up to others: Do we remember the same things, the same way?
We all live with certain stories that we repeat to ourselves, guided by the experiences we’ve had. These stories explain, “This is the way things are.”
At reunions we mingle with people who share many of our earliest experiences – but they may not remember things the same way. For some people, life might be pattern of A, B and C, based on memories of certain events. However, talking with others we may learn that instead of A, B and C, events unfolded differently: maybe B occurred first, followed by D then A.
What you have then is a completely different pattern, representing a different story – and quite possibly a different way to look at the world.
Many people talk about reunions in terms of seeing how much other people have changed. Actually, the “real shock” may come in discovering that the stories we’ve told ourselves might be wrong.
When the only stories we tell are the ones we’ve practiced on ourselves, we can deceive ourselves into thinking that “this is the way things are” because events made them so. But through the magic of reunions we can challenge our self-told stories, and re-learn the patterns of our lives. And from that we might be able to grow.
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Metaphors at Work
“I’m like a general. I make the strategic plans, the five-year plan, take this hill, hit these objectives, etc.”
These are the words of Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy – and they echo many business managers who have a special fondness for military imagery.
Metaphors are common in organizations: They provide a valuable tool in getting people on the same page, talking the same talk. Recently the talk hasn’t been all that positive. Military metaphors, such as those about targets and bullets, have been blamed on creating and contributing to an atmosphere of discord and even violence.
It seems then that metaphors can get some people on the same page, while alienating others. “We” and “Them” divisions within groups often occur because sub-divisions use different imagery.
Sports metaphors are also common in organizations. Many managers talk about their teams, even referring to themselves as coaches. In fact, some managers are quite specific in their choice of metaphors, using terms exclusively applied to football or baseball. In communicating with them you had better know whether you should “punt” or “bunt.”
It may help to consider organizations as comprised of various tribes. Each tribe has its own customs and uses its own imagery to explain its world. Problems arise when metaphors clash. The manager who talks in military terms may not see eye-to-eye with another who talks in terms of sports. The “battle” for one is fought today with the results spilling over to tomorrow. For the other, the “game” will end today and another will start tomorrow with the score back to zero-all.
Books like Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson, can make us aware of the many metaphors used in business. It pays to closely listen to the stories that people tell, and be sensitive to the various images people use when describing their feelings. This can be the first step towards better understanding, then communicating with, the people we care about.
Posted in Elements
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