What's Your Story?. Craig Wortmann

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.