Stories Tell the Stories

The evolution of a business with an untested concept is complex. It is difficult for constituents to digest information in a way that keeps people aligned to the vision and motivated to plow through the challenges. In the face of lots of work, competition and the promise to deliver something “new” to the market, it is essential to keep everyone aligned to the end game.

“It is difficult for constituents to digest information in a way that keeps people aligned to the vision and motivated to plow through the challenges.” 

What Stories Can Do

There are lots of ways you can communicate about an issue. You can explain every detail. You can create documentation. You can send long e-mails. Unfortunately, in the midst of the chaos of an entrepreneurial venture, it’s hard to imagine how you and your team to digest this information. Instead of explaining the details, telling a story can “cut through” the clutter of the day to day and create “aha” moments. In many cases, telling a story can produce more effective results than explaining the issue. Stories create:

• Clarity. It clarifies the specific message you are trying to deliver. People don’t have the time to focus on the details. If you can offer a story that seems like a similar problem or path, people can jump on board.
• Credibility. It gives credibility to the message when independent third parties deal with the same issues that you are dealing with. When you are going through an issue, aligning to the experience of a third party can help. For example, if you are struggling with the investment process, you can tell the story of the hundreds of wildly successful companies that were turned down by hundreds of investors before they secured their financing.
• Faith. Stories can create faith in your team when they understand that well-known third parties went through the same thing. If you watch companies that have success, but did it in the face of similar challenges to yours, it keeps people on the path.

Stories don’t take the place of regular and clear communications, but they can create themes that keep everyone moving forward.

Examples

Here are a few stories that show how you can use them to drive people forward in the face of the normal challenges of the entrepreneurial venture:

• Sticking to a Bold Vision. At IncentOne, we were creating an entirely new market in the early 2000—rewarding people for healthy behavior. We had to help our employees understand that building a new market is hard, and requires overcoming many obstacles—big and small. We could have said it this way: “To innovate and create a new concept, it takes a lot of time, effort and capital.” Instead we told a story:
  • The Amazon Story, Most of the time, we just referred to Amazon. Amazon told the world that no one would ever buy a book in a bookstore. The world scoffed at them. Did they think that Barnes & Noble and Borders and JB Dalton and every local library and bookstore would disappear? They told Wall Street that they would lose billions to ensure that exact scenario. Amazon was founded in 1995. By the end of 2001, they had cumulative annual losses of $2.85 billion since going public in 1997, and after operating as a public company had made a profit in only one quarter ($5.1 million in 2001).
• Using the Amazon story helped us plow through the many challenges we faced before we turned rewards for healthy behavior into a standard industry solution.
• Driving Fundamental Change. You know your company needs to drive some fundamental change. Imagine walking into your company and saying to leadership, “We need to fundamentally revamp our revenue sources and business model. If we don’t shift to a model in which 100 percent of our revenues comes from different products in the next five years, we will be out of business.” Or try this.
  • The Blockbuster Story. In 1985, Blockbuster opened its first video rental retail store in Dallas, Texas. By the mid-1990s, Blockbuster was a household name, and at its peak, the company had over 60,000 employees, 9,000 stores and branches in more than a dozen countries. Then came the Internet and Blockbuster’s inability to respond to the trend it created. Amazon had just entered the market, expanding from selling cheap books online to cheap DVDs, and a little company called Netflix rolled out a subscription service. It wasn’t until 2004, six years after Netflix launched, that Blockbuster realized it needed to enter the online DVD rental-by-mail space. By then, Netflix was already turning a profit and Redbox had just launched. Blockbuster was already dead—it just didn’t realize it yet. With the rise of Netflix, mail-order DVDs, video-on-demand and streaming services online, the former video giant didn’t stand a chance. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and was purchased by DISH Network in 2011.
• A story of fundamental change that makes a point with a bang.
• Perseverance.Most great ideas are, by definition, new. How do you keep people moving forward in the face of challenges and setbacks? How about talk about all of the famous entrepreneurs who faced failure before wild success?
  • Walt Disney. Walt Disney was reportedly fired by a newspaper editor for not having good ideas and no imagination. Disney World is currently valued at $35 billion dollars.
  • Thomas Edison. Before becoming successful, Thomas Edison tried more than 10,000 times to invent the light bulb. When asked about his failures, Edison stated that he knew “definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work.”
  • Fred Smith. Founder of hugely successful company “Fed Ex” Smith’s college professor stated that his concept of Federal Express was “interesting, but not feasible”.
  • Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was actually fired from Apple, the very company that he is responsible for making it the success it is today. When Jobs was fired from Apple, he was quoted stating “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
  • Oprah Winfrey. Hailed as the “Queen of Daytime Talk TV”, Winfrey was fired from her news reporter gig at a Baltimore news station. Oprah went on to build a wildly successful following from her daytime talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. Oprah’s net worth is currently valued at $2.7 billion dollars.
  • Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times before getting his huge break. Spielberg is known for directing mega hits that include Jurassic Park and Jaws, among many others.
  • Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. Founders of the home improvement chain “The Home Depot”, Marcus and Blank were fired from corporate America in 1989. These savvy businessmen went on to turn their Big Box store into a huge success and currently have over 2,200 retail stores in the United States with revenues exceeding $74.8 billion dollars.
  • Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders is the entrepreneur who founded KFC “Kentucky Fried Chicken” when he was 56 years old. His recipe was reportedly rejected over 1,000 times before a restaurant picked it up.
  • Henry Ford. Ford founded two automotive companies that failed before he was able to gain success with the Ford Motor Company. At his time of death, Ford’s estimated net worth was $188 billion dollars.

With all the clutter, it is challenging to deliver messages to the organization that stick. The process of telling and retelling stories will plant seeds, create memorable themes, and reinforce important messages for your company culture and your business.