What's Your Story?

By Craig Wortmann

What's Your Story?" Using stories to ignite performance and be more successful is a leaders book. This book is written for people who want to make a difference; people who want to build, create, learn, share, and inspire; people who want to give themselves and others the powerful gift of story. "What's Your Story?" helps leaders enhance their performance by looking at their everyday communications differently. By learning how to use the right stories at the right time - success and failure stories - Craig will show you how to create strong connections with people and with the organization's strategy to enhance your performance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sales Engine
• Release date: Sep 21, 2006
• ISBN: 9780985325312

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A RUSHING RIVER

This book is written for people who want to make a difference; people who want to build, create, learn, share, and inspire; people who want to give themselves and others the powerful gift of story.

What is your story? Have you thought about it? Certainly, you are full of stories. We all are. Stories are one of the things that make life and work fun and fulfilling. They are all around us every day as we move through the to-dos, experiences, ups and downs, and all of the other stuff of life.

Imagine for a moment that you are standing knee-deep in the middle of a rushing river. The water flows past you, and underneath your feet are rocks and sediment. You are holding a dented metal pan with a screen on the bottom, and you reach down into the riverbed and pull up a panful. As you shake the mud and grit out of the pan, gold appears. Gold nuggets. These gold nuggets represent the experiences—the stories—of your life. The mud and grit that get shaken back into the river represent all of the forgettable data and details of your life—the stuff that happens in between the stories and experiences.

Now imagine yourself getting off of the elevator at work and walking into a meeting. You are in the midst of a rushing river of information. You have e-mails to attend to, voicemails, presentations, and paperwork. You have responsibilities and goals and a limited amount of time. Empowered by technology, information comes at you nearly 24/7 from many different angles. Your pan fills very quickly. In fact, your pan may fill so quickly that you often find yourself just trying to stay ahead of the mud and grit without ever getting to touch the gold!

But it is in experiencing and telling these stories—the gold nuggets—that we establish a connection to each other and to the organization. The gold is the stuff that allows leaders to lead and people to perform. All of the rest is just mud and grit.

INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Over the past couple of decades, technology has transformed our organizations and our work lives. We now have access to more information than we could ever hope to use. Indeed, information is now, quite literally, in the air.

Technology has helped us capture most of the high-value information in our organizations. Thanks to technology, we now know who our most profitable customers are, how they behave, what they purchase, and how much they spend. We know how our entire supply chain is affected by a change in pricing strategy and we know how to distribute trucks or call volumes across our different resources. We can give our people access to their benefits information through an employee portal, their training through a learning management system, their customer information through customer relationship management (CRM), and the company’s resources through enterprise resource management (ERM). That is an incredible amount of information that has now been parsed, categorized, tagged, and made available to leaders and employees.

Unfortunately, we haven’t captured the highest value information of all, the stories that hold all of the people and tools and technologies together. Stories about what’s expected of people in this organization. Stories about how we succeed and how we fail, what’s important and what’s not, how to get things done, how to manage, how to sell, and how to lead. We haven’t captured stories that show people how to make ethical decisions, how to delight customers, how to streamline operations, and how to balance work and life. But these are the stories that hold all of our systems together. In fact, these stories are the glue that holds the whole organization together, just as stories of our history, our parents, and our friends hold families and communities together. These are the stories that become the fabric of large organizations and the grit that helps entrepreneurial companies succeed in the face of overwhelming odds. These are the stories that need to be told—the gold that should be passed around.

The truth is that we don’t have a system to hold this most valuable information. And if there is no system, it doesn’t get captured. This book is a kind of system. Its purpose is to show you how to capture the high-value information that is all around you—the gold—and put it to use to impact your own performance and the performance of the organization. This book will show you why stories are powerful and how to capture, organize, and tell those stories in a way that inspires your performance and the performance of those around you.

Lest I be accused of being a Luddite, I think that most technology is extremely beneficial. As leaders, we have a plethora of tools to use in our communications. We have more ways than ever to reach out to people and build relationships, and we must make daily choices with our communications. But we must be conscious and intentional about how we use these tools.

E-mail, PowerPoint slides, pagers, and phones are the most common ways we communicate. In the crush of the average day, we make many snap decisions about our communications, often unconsciously. But what happens to the content of the message? As media analyst and philosopher Marshall McLuhan pointed out, too often the message gets shaped by the medium, so leaders strip away the extraneous material and give us the bullet points; just what we need to know—delivered fast. Most communications end up as disembodied information that is out of context, and, as such, doesn’t connect with people. This means that we end up filling people’s pans with more mud and grit and detail instead of offering them a gold nugget that will be much more valuable to them.

Learning is like Velcro. An unfiltered fact is not a complete fastener. Only one side of learning is made up of facts; the other consists of stories—that is, ideas and images.

– RICHARD SAUL WURMAN¹

Stories bring information to life by making it actionable, memorable, and lifelike. Stories bring back the context, color, feeling, and meaning of our work. By showing people how to have success and where the pitfalls are, stories help people understand what it feels like to be in the situation, and they learn by the examples of others’ decisions. Adding stories makes communications stickier—the degree to which our communications are memorable and actionable.

In my work with leaders and stories over the past ten years, I have found that leaders are hungry for a different way to engage their people. I have also found that a leader’s own stories of success and failure are the most potent for improving performance. It is the leader’s ability to translate his or her experiences into stories that gives that leader a performance advantage.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Stories combine two elements that make them truly powerful tools: utility and significance. Many of the tools that we currently use in organizations have one or the other, but not both. From our cell phones to our CRM systems, our technology tools have tremendous utility. They are packed with features; the Swiss Army knives of our time. But they lack significance—a connection to what we as human beings care about, what builds relationships and motivates us to perform better.

The tools in our organizations that do connect with what we care about, the tools that we use to enhance performance and motivate people, have significance but limited utility. The pay packages and incentive systems, benefits, vacation policies, training conferences, and awards dinners that help us show up and perform, don’t scale. They often are one-use-only tools whose effect is felt and then dissipates quickly.

Stories don’t dissipate. They hold their utility and significance long after the originator of the story is gone. Anyone who has worked for a large organization like the Red Cross or IBM, or even an entrepreneurial business that has some staying power, knows that some stories never die. The legends have utility long after their namesakes have disappeared.

Unlike other tools, techniques, consulting services, and systems that we have to purchase, stories are natural resources. They lie just under the surface of any organization, like an aquifer. Just as countries tap into their natural resources in order to create wealth, leaders must do the same in our organizations. We must tap into this well of stories and share them, because they eventually evaporate into the atmosphere only to come raining down again and again. After all, they are our stories.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book is about panning for gold. Not gold in the real sense, but the gold we find in our work, our communications, and our relationships. Gold that people share with each other and that illuminates ways to perform better and have more fun.

It is my hope that you use this book both as a set of ideas and as a set of tools. The book is a paperback by design, and as such it is meant to be carried around, written in, and referenced. The stories in this book are meant to ignite your imagination—to get you thinking about your own stories, why they matter, and where they will help you take positive action.

The book is organized into four parts. Part One begins with a description of the problem leaders face, followed quickly by a solution in Part Two. That solution is then put into action in Part Three by a powerful set of tools—the Win Book, Story Matrix, and Story Coach. In Part Four, I focus in on the techniques of using stories in three particular contexts: leadership, sales, and motivation. I believe that these are the three most critical skills in business. We all need a solid combination of these three skills. Think of it this way: Can you think of a great leader who was not also a great salesperson? Or a great salesperson that wasn’t a leader or strong motivator?

The best way to read this book is, predictably, from start to finish. That way, you are certain to see how each part builds on the preceding one, and you will get your arms around the whole story. Reading one part only is certainly an option, but you run the risk of missing some key stories and concepts that you can apply immediately.

FIGURE 0.1 How to Use This Book

That said, each part explores a concept in its entirety. In addition, the story tools described in Part Three function independently of one another. Although I use them as a complete set, you may find one of the three much more in tune with your personal style, and I encourage you to run with that.

The book has several other features to which I want to draw your attention. There are, of course, lots of stories. I have used stories to elucidate certain concepts and simultaneously provide a demonstration of why stories work. You will find many of these stories set apart from the main body of the book with a special gray background. You will also find several definitions that I use to frame the problems we face as leaders. Similarly, I have included many pictures that are designed to provide another way to access and think about these ideas. Pictures are just stories too. I’m fortunate to have a mentor who always draws me pictures to help me understand and make sense of what is happening, and so in that spirit I share these pictures with you.

And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.

—DAN PINK²

The final page of the book is your Story Matrix, which is discussed in-depth in Chapter 5. This personal Story Matrix is designed to be completed as you progress through the book.

Finally, as I’ve immersed myself in the study of what makes great leaders, the many leaders I have met in my travels and the many authors whose books I’ve read have inspired me. You will find many of their thoughts in the margins of this book. All of these different elements are also indexed in the back of the book for ease of reference. I hope you find these additional features helpful in further exploring these ideas.

This book is not an empirical exercise. The ideas, stories, and tools have grown out of firsthand experience working with leaders and their organizations to capture and tell stories in order to enhance performance.

It is my sincere hope that you have at least several aha! moments as you read this, as that is the standard for which I read and recommend books and ideas. And because this work is not empirical, I encourage you to let me know if these ideas fail (or succeed!) in practice.

Finally, I have several other hopes for you. I hope you enjoy this read. Some of my favorite stories are here. I hope they make you laugh and cry and think. I hope this book inspires you to turn your stories into a competitive advantage. And I hope that you use your stories to build better relationships and have more fun.

Be a source of stories. This is the best way to succeed, and the best way to live well.

PART ONE: PROBLEM

PART ONE

There is a problem we are all facing, and it’s sneaky and subtle and hard to see, even though it’s right in front of our faces. The problem is information and its effect on how we communicate and how we live.

You have heard this before. Many pundits, from Neil Postman to Richard Saul Wurman and even Ted Koppel, have decried information overload—how technology and media saturation continue to fill every crack and crevice of time, and how it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what is truly important in our communications. They have pointed our ever-diminishing attention span to how our access to, and facileness with, information has increasingly segmented our time into smaller and smaller pieces. Our lives (and even our children’s lives) and our work are overly scheduled and fragmented.

I want to begin this book with a clear definition of the problem that leaders face as we try to lead people and organizations effectively. As leaders, we need to be cognizant of this problem because it is something with which we are all grappling. And because how we manage information has a profound impact on how we communicate, plan for, and reach our goals, we need to be prepared to be part of the solution.

But it’s only until we understand the situation we are in, that we can begin to look at it differently. We are surrounded—literally—by a never-ending stream of information. Increasingly, it will be our ability to manage this constant information flow and to make meaning out of these fragments that will allow us to be successful in the near future. And the near future is today.

PART ONE: PROBLEM

1

CHAPTER 1:

AWASH IN BITS AND BULLETS

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK…

In life and in business, we are awash in bits and bullets. Bits and bullets are data. Facts. Bullet points on slides. Computer screens full of information. Headlines and scores ticking across the bottom of our televisions 24/7. A constant stream of ads and pitches and talking heads. Sometimes it feels like life has become one big infomercial. And the constant stream of bits and bullets doesn’t stop when we get to work. In fact, it accelerates. As leaders, most of us have never met an e-mail device or a PowerPoint slide we didn’t like. Because technology makes communicating in bits and bullets so easy, we unleash the flood.

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts…they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun, but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric.

– EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY¹

No question about it, leaders have a tough job. We are asked to deliver better performance through our people, implement the latest systems, manage goals, communicate and embody company values, and hundreds of other things. We are brokers of information. Leaders above us hand down information we need—division goals, new systems information, competitive data, new products—and then we translate that information, communicate it to our people, and perform against the goals.

Leaders of every stripe, from senior executives and middle managers to salespeople and consultants, spend an inordinate amount of time creating and brokering information, but we spend far less time standing back from that information and asking, What is the best way for me to communicate this? Not asking this critical question too often results in the creation of just more bits and bullets. That is, we use the same communication methods we always use the same way we always use them, which means that we whip out the laptop, throw together some slides, call a meeting, and then it’s click, click, click.

NUMBERS OR LIVES?

Reviews for What's Your Story?

[chrischong67 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting book to read. Thank you very much. ???

[shadowbarbara · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some excellent ideas for remembering, cataloging and using stories. Writing was a bit simplistic but overall, useful.