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PART TWO: SOLUTION

CHAPTER 2:

2

STORIES WORK

PEOPLE ARE BULLETPROOF

How many e-mails do you get every day? How many phone calls? How many instant message chats do you have? Added together, it’s probably over 100. When I say this to audiences, most people start laughing and then they start crying! Do you feel like you are getting more done? Sometimes it feels like we are so busy “coordinating” that we’ve stopped “performing.” We are trading a lot more information and we are soaking up less.

“Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts…. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story. People stick with their story even when presented with facts that don’t fit. They simply interpret or discount the facts to fit their story. This is why facts are not terribly useful in influencing others. People don’t need new facts—they need a new story.”

– ANNETTE SIMMONS’¹

The sooner we realize that people are bulletproof—immune to the constant barrage of bits and bullets—the better leaders we will be. Leadership is a lot about influence. Heck, life is a lot about influence. We spend an inordinate amount of time persuading and influencing our teachers, kids, clients, bosses, employees, and peers to take an action, whether it be to get an A, do their homework, close a sale, or stretch to reach a goal.

In business, much of persuasion is throwing bullet points at people in an attempt to win their hearts and minds via intellectual argument. Facts and data are presented to give a business case for why something is true and must be acted upon. Because almost all persuasion in business is limited in this way, the facts and data you are presenting compete head-on with the facts and data that are already present in people’s heads. Your people may be listening as you state your case, but all too often they are thinking: Yeah, right. I’ve heard this before. But nothing really ever changes. So, forget about capturing their hearts. And without hearts, you can probably write off minds as well.

Robert McKee, the Hollywood screenwriting coach, said in a Harvard Business Review article: “The other way to persuade people—and ultimately a much more powerful way—is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story.”²

What’s fascinating about leadership in business is that most leaders that I’ve come across know that they aren’t making a connection. Leaders understand at a fundamental level that the bits and bullets aren’t hitting home, because they are just bouncing off of people’s existing attitudes, biases, and beliefs.

“Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.”

– ROBERT MCKEE³

Leaders often make two false assumptions that cause performance to suffer. First, they assume that their employees are always rational, unemotional, and analytical actors in this numbersdriven game called business. Not on your life. People are messy. We come to work with differing backgrounds, attitudes, and belief systems. We want different things. And none of us use the same “model” to interpret information coming at us, because our interpretation depends on our prior life experiences.

Second, leaders often assume that the information they are communicating is simple and thus should be easy and quick to communicate. Nope. One of the reasons that leaders often fail to communicate even “simple” information is that it’s not simple. They have had time to think it through, socialize it, and move forward. But no one else has, and thus it’s not at all simple for people. Even simple changes need time to be talked about, weighed, socialized, and, finally, adopted or discarded. Imagine a metaphorical dumpster behind your office containing all of the well-intended but discarded attempts to change behavior and enhance performance. How big would it be?

If our success in life and in business depends on how well we influence people, then we had better choose wisely when deciding how to approach them. This is where stories are starting to gain traction and play an incredibly powerful role.

GAINING TRACTION

Stories take many shapes inside organizations, from hallway conversations and e-mail anecdotes to personal stories, corporate legends, and even full-blown, highly produced videos and presentations. And as more and more leaders realize that their communications are not getting through, they are looking to stories as an alternative.

“In a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about 8 seconds’ worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequen-tiality, one damn slide after another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships.”

– EDWARD TUFTE⁴

ETHICS, ANYONE?

After months of effort, a group of attorneys from one of the largest auditing firms in the world had just put the final touches on a 65-page document. The document had gone through hundreds of drafts, been reviewed by countless company executives, and made its way through a rigorous approval process. Because the document was critical to the future success of the company, the CEO and his senior management team wanted the document in the hands of all 33,000 employees of the firm immediately.

But the company faced some major problems. First, the document was 65 pages in length—too much for an already overloaded professional to read and understand. Second, this document was no John Grisham novel. It was dry, procedural, and written in the legal language of attorneys. Third, the company’s leadership had an audacious goal for this document; its purpose was to affect a major change in how each individual in the company behaved when faced with an ethical dilemma. Because this company had watched competitors crumble under the weight of ethics scandals, its leaders had a high degree of urgency to protect the firm.

To save time and money, the leadership team was tempted to just e-mail the document to all employees, support it as best they could in meetings and company communications, and hope for the best. But they knew better than to do that. They knew that if the employees didn’t truly understand the contents of the document, why it was important, and how to behave differently, the firm would be at much greater risk.

So what did they do? They told stories. They told stories of partners asking managers to bury the hours from one client into another client’s fees. They told stories of managers asking clients for inappropriate favors. They told stories of analysts and consultants photo copying and sharing the answer key to continuing education classes. They told stories of clients taking partners to gentlemen’s clubs by the airport. They told stories of administrative assistants sharing inside information to stock-trading friends at a backyard barbecue.

These stories were sent to all 33,000 employees. But they didn’t stop there. In the middle of each story, they would ask employees: What would you do if you were in this situation? They asked employees to think through how they would address the partner in the elevator or the client who suddenly pulls into the parking lot of a gentlemen’s club. They also provided employees with a problem-solving model and asked them to apply it to all of these situations.

And what happened to the 65-page document that outlined all of the policies and procedures? Was it a waste of time and money? Not at all. The key points of the document drove the creation of these fictional, but real-life stories. The stories connected back to the document and showed why certain behaviors are unethical. The document became a key supporting resource instead of the main event.

To date, the company has been very successful in helping employees understand how to take action with the ethical problem-solving model. The company also got an unexpected bonus: it is now winning large clients based on its unique and marketable approach to solving this complex problem. In fact, the company’s employees are talking about the stories. They are repeating the stories at work and telling their clients about their unique experience. Because of the success they have had with ethical decision making, the company is now looking at how to apply stories to other challenges, such as improving its client service, increasing sales of large engagements, and building leadership skills.

In short, the company turned a dry, boring e-mail into stories and the stories into results. Stories became the link that turned routine compliance into an experience.

As evidenced from examples like the one above, the use of stories as a leadership tool is gaining recognition and getting traction. Tom Peters is talking about it. Harvard Business Review is writing about it. Academia is studying it. And, increasingly, business leaders are learning and using it.

Stories are in the middle of an important migration from being considered too folksy or “soft” for business to being discussed as serious leadership tools in the very serious pages of publications like The Economist, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. What these publications and many other business leaders and academics are finding is that our messages and communications, even inside our own organizations, now have to compete with so many more sources of information. So stories, after spending many years being ridiculed as “soft” or “fluff,” are gaining respect as tools that just might help these leaders get performance enhancements to stick.

“Many true statements are too long to fit on a PP (PowerPoint) slide, but this does not mean we should abbreviate the truth to make words fit. It means we should find a better way to make presentations.”

– EDWARD TUFTE⁵

Consider for a moment another business tool that was once widely criticized and often referred to as “a toy” by serious business leaders. This tool was ridiculed by much of the media as being unfit for serious work. It was thought of as a poor alternative to the much larger, more powerful tools used by successful organizations. And it was thought of as a plaything that only kids would use and enjoy. This tool is the PC, and it is now as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. No serious business would last a day without the PC. (As a former IBM salesperson selling midrange systems before the widespread adoption of the PC, I too was guilty of referring to the PC as a toy.)

It is curious that stories are gaining traction now. Many of the world’s top business schools like Kellogg, Harvard, and the University of Chicago use stories to teach their students complex topics. But instead of stories, these schools use the term case studies. However, there is an important difference between case studies and stories.

The difference between case studies and stories is the same as the difference between narrative and stories. A narrative is the explanation of a sequence of events or actions that happened to someone or something. A story, by contrast, adds a layer to narrative by including elements that make people care about the action, such as how someone in the story was affected, the emotions involved, and possibly even the “values” of the people involved in the story.

A CASE STUDY IN STORYTELLING

While attending business school in 1993, I took a class called “Entrepreneurial Finance,” taught by a smart, imposing professor named Steve Rogers. If Professor Rogers was anything, he was intimidating. He knew his subject cold, and he loved to find out if you knew the subject as well as he did by calling on you and sticking with you until he had wrung you dry. One night, Steve had put only one foot into the classroom when he loudly demanded of some poor, lost soul, “ROBERT, TELL ME ABOUT THE CASE!!!” As Robert’s life undoubtedly flashed before him, he began to mutter some unintelligible grunts and groans about the entrepreneur who, in the case study, had just formed a company and raised a couple million dollars in loans by mortgaging everything he owned. He told of how the man, married and a new father, had given his creditors personal guarantees on his cars and his house in order to finance his business.

As Steve and Robert unfolded the case study, it quickly became a series of events. The guy raised money, hired few employees, started to build a product, and began to sell it. We dug into the numbers and the competitors for this new business and the discussion became very dry—until Steve started to add color to the case. He asked us: “So, if you were this guy, what would you be saying to your wife around the dinner table as your expenses are piling up and it’s becoming harder to make payroll? How would you feel looking at your little daughter when you know your house is on the line for this business?”

At that moment, we began to look at this case differently. Suddenly, we were in the action, and we had an emotional connection to this entrepreneur. The case came alive and we started to see it as a story that could end badly. That night, Steve taught us some important lessons about how to (and how not to) finance a new business. More than 12 years on, I don’t remember the name of the company, the industry, or the other characters. But I remember the lessons of the story. And that’s the only thing that counts.

This difference between case studies and stories is precisely what great teachers, doctors, and business leaders understand so well. You bring case studies “back to life” by adding the details that connect to what we care about, transforming an otherwise dry sequence of events. As the case unfolds in front of you, a story develops when you talk about what the characters were feeling—what scared them and what exhilarated them. That layer of extra information makes all the difference. It is what helps us engage with the content and what helps us remember.

“I have argued that a key—perhaps the key—to leadership, as well as the garnering of a following, is the effective communication of a story.”

– HOWARD GARDNER⁶

WHY STORIES WORK

I have worked with many leaders who send the memo and then ask: “Why aren’t my people getting it? It’s so simple!” My answer to these leaders is also simple: Tell them a story. It does take a little more work up front, but not much. And the downstream benefits far outweigh the up-front costs. Before we explore how to do this, let’s look at why stories work.

“We value narrative because the pattern is in our brain. Our brains are patterned for storytelling, for the consecutive.”

– DORIS LESSING⁷

There are ten main reasons why stories work, and these reasons are why business leaders are warming up to stories as a tool to enhance performance.

1. Stories create presence

One of the challenges that leaders are beginning to wake up to is presence. When most communication is facilitated by technology and comes in the form of bits and bullets, how can we ensure that we actually have people’s attention?

As the pendulum begins to swing and we pay more attention to information overload, many leaders are realizing that stories are a powerful tool that can be used to connect with people in a way that we are present to each other. Because stories are a two-way form of communication, and because they can’t be captured in bullet point form, they demand our attention. In a real way, they make us sit still for a minute. And when we give a story our attention, we can question, clarify, and confirm what’s taking place so that we walk away with a solid understanding of what’s being communicated.

Another reason that stories create presence is because they allow for a much-needed break from our information-drenched day. They give us a chance to pause and catch our breath.

Like the 1929 advertising slogan for Coca-Cola, a good story is “the pause that refreshes.” If there is something we truly need in our work day, it is to be refreshed. One of the hardest parts about any job—whether you are the CEO or you are a brand-new employee—is dealing with information overload. Sharing a story with people who normally have heads down pounding away at their jobs creates a space for them to pause, listen, reflect, and integrate what they have heard. Even the most simple of stories creates this space.

If stories are migrating along a path toward being considered serious business tools, then one of the stops along the way is Hollywood. Many business leaders and the publications they read have looked to Hollywood, not for entertainment’s sake, but for ideas and methods of storytelling. If the American movie machine has proven anything, it’s that people all over the world love a good story. Stories entertain, inform, refresh, and connect us—all good reasons to be present to them.

But why do stories create presence through connecting us? Because stories often connect with our emotions—something that bits and bullets never do. Therein lies the key lesson from Hollywood. Stories connect to our emotions. (This is where business leaders usually run away.) A natural ingredient of stories is emotion. If the story involves people, it often involves emotions too. I’ve seen leaders who are uncomfortable discussing anything with emotion try to “turn off” that component of the story, and the story always falls flat. They have hollowed it out and it no longer rings true. When leaders include the actual emotions of the story—whether their own or those of the characters—people get to see and hear something that they don’t often get in business. And it makes a connection to what they would be feeling and thinking.

Emotions engage our hearts. We can sympathize with a person in the story who is struggling or scared or tired. We feel joy when the person in the story overcomes her obstacles. These basic human emotions that we experience with stories build a connection to our hearts and a presence that is fundamentally different than the normal business communications aimed at our heads.

“When an idea wraps itself around an emotional charge, it becomes all the more powerful, all the more profound, all the more memorable.”

– ROBERT MCKEE⁸

“I’M WITH YOU”

A story I often tell to aspiring entrepreneurs is about the early days of growing WisdomTools. The economy had tanked after 9/11 had taken place. The Enron debacle was in full swing. It seemed as if all of our potential clients were hiding under their desks for fear of being laid off. As a result, no one was buying anything and we were in a deep dive. Without clients, we had no money to make payroll. We had to make very, very difficult decisions to let most of our staff go. It hurt so badly that it felt like we had all been punched in the gut.

After we watched our friends and colleagues go, the remaining members of the team came together to talk. We discussed how hard it was and how bleak the future looked. The inevitable question came quickly: “Craig, is this going to happen again? How soon?” Because I didn’t know the answer, I told everyone, “I have no idea. I have no answers for you because I can’t predict when this might end.” And then we started telling stories. We told stories about when the company got started, and what Marty’s (our founder) original vision was. We told stories about the clients we served and the fun we had had.

As the meeting wrapped up and over the next couple of weeks, each remaining person on our team, in their own way, came up to me individually and said: “I’m with you. If this thing ends badly, I’ll be there. I just want you to know that. I’m not giving up.” I had never had more love and respect for a group of people I worked with ever before. And I never looked at the company the same way again.

2. Stories aren’t bullet points

When a leader tells a story, context gets created. Context is what is missing from bullet points. In the transition from our thoughts and ideas to writing (or saying) them as bullets points, all of the context gets stripped away. But context—“seeing” the situation unfold as the story is told—is what enables us to truly understand.

“Stories are shortcuts we use because we’re too overwhelmed by data to discover all the details.”

– SETH GODIN⁹

Stories honor the complexity of our lives by showing real situations and all of the messiness of those situations and the tradeoffs inherent in them. By contrast, when we strip away the context from situations to get down to the bits and bullets, we oversimplify. By oversimplifying, we remove the real learning and leave people feeling empty.

WHAT LISTING PLEASE?

Using bits and bullets versus telling a story inside an organization is like trying to have a conversation with automated directory assistance. In order to squeeze more costs out of our business units, we talk more often to technology than we talk to humans. Consider dialing directory assistance. Instead of just asking a person to look up a number for us, these systems rely on our ability to pronounce the name correctly. Indeed, this is powerful technology that saves a lot of money, but what these systems don’t take into account is your “context” when you are placing the call, such as background noise. When you are sitting in Starbucks and you call 411 (or an airline, rental car company, etc.) from your cell phone, the automated voice says, “What listing?” You reply, “Avis Rent A Car,” while in the background the barista shouts “DOUBLE SHOT HALF-CAF SOY VANILLA LATTE—RECALL! ADD SPRINKLES!” The automated voice says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Could you say that again?” It’s funny; we build these systems to sound human and they end up sounding confused. All you really want is a real person who can say, “Wow, you must be in Starbucks or something. Did you say ‘Avis Rent A Car’ or ‘Ava’s Tent Bazaar’?

The context that is created through the telling of a story allows people to see how the pieces fit together and how decisions get made. The context also helps the listener understand what is important to the teller. In a leadership situation, this is incredibly important. Undifferentiated facts make it extremely difficult for listeners to determine what is truly important, because everything appears important. When faced with “the 25 things we must do right now in order to grow the business,” people are paralyzed. Where do I start? How do I know when I’ve accomplished something? What should I watch out for?

“Ultimately, knowledge worker performance comes down to the behaviors of individual knowledge workers. If we improve their individual abilities to create, acquire, process, and use knowledge, we are likely to improve the performance of the processes they work on and the organizations they work for.”

– TOM DAVENPORT¹⁰

A story’s context brings these answers along, and gives listeners a sense of what is most important and what is least important. And that, my friends, may seal the argument for any leaders out there still doubting the power of story. It is, in reality, the ultimate bullet–the one that gets results.

• REDUCE COSTS

The bullet point “Reduce Costs” is probably in the Top 10 Bullet Point Hall of Fame (along with “Better Synergies” and “Leverage Assets”). But, like most bullet points, this one is screaming for context to be added to it.

Brian, a colleague of mine, answered that call with this story. Several years ago, we were putting together a film shoot for a client that involved creating a story for new employee orientation. We were on a very, very tight budget and, much to our chagrin, we quickly discovered that we didn’t have all the equipment we needed for the shoot. We needed a boom mic—the large pole with the microphone at the end that’s held over an actor’s head—for capturing the audio of the movie. These items are very expensive.

Brian priced out all the alternatives, but he was not satisfied by the prices he was finding. So he went to eBay. He found a large, telescoping painter’s pole for about $30 and then fashioned a homemade connector on the end, where he placed a normal microphone we already had. Everyone at the film shoot was none the wiser—even the professional actors—as the contraption looked and functioned exactly like the real thing at a fraction of the price.