Location: Could have been any conference room in any company. In this case it was a conference room in a company where I worked.
Occasion: Annual sales review
Participants: Four Regional Sales Managers (RSM), National Sales Manager, Heads of Production, Finance Quality, and HR (That was me) and of course the CEO.
The Story: The atmosphere in the room was quite tense. Sales targets had just about been met in the previous year. Some pockets had done quite badly, and those pockets were more or less evenly spread across the regions. The CEO had on several occasions had talked unhappily about ‘lost opportunities’ and how the sales guys were not ‘pulling their weight’. No one knew when and on whom lightening would strike.
The meeting began with the RSM – South starting his presentation. His region had been the best performing. Yet just five minutes and four slides into the presentation, he got an earful from the CEO about how useless he was and how he could have actually doubled his sales if he had been more enterprising and ‘seized the moment’. Next two presentations met with the same response. Even the National Sales Manager got it that day for not being an effective leader. Nothing was good enough. It was pure mayhem.
And then the final presentation from the RSM – North. Not exactly a presentation. Just one slide and then he began to tell a story. A story about his team, their bravery, fear and resilience in the wake of huge market setbacks. He spoke about failures and fighting for small successes. For everyone in the audience, this was a new experience. I could see, from the corner of my eye, the Head of Finance biting his lips. The CEO sat in rapt attention. At the end of it all, everyone just stood up and clapped.
Fast Forward: Nearly seven years later, I happened to meet the Head of Operations and the National Sales Manager socially. I had quit the company three years back. We chatted about old times and the conversation veered to that particular sales review numbers. No body remembered the numbers or the sales figures. But we all remembered the story in every minutest detail.
Wrap-up: We all love stories. Yet for a long time story telling and story listening was considered to be a frivolous activity, certainly not to be encouraged in the corporate world. It is only recently that story telling has been recognised as an important tool, when organizations seek to align their employees with the vision, manage change, build brands, or even build teams. I this crazy world of ours, much has been said about the VUCA environment. Change is happening – too fast – and people in organizations are exhausted. Its like riding the white water rapids all the time and anything that offers continuity of identity and a meaning to people is like a life boat. In such a situation stories become the most effortless and efficient technology threads of meaning, purpose and identity in a world gone crazy. The most humane thing to do probably is to find a good story and share it.
It does not matter whether you are an organization or an individual. It begins with asking the fundamental question, “What is my story that I want to tell the world”
