How Storytelling Can Shape the Corporate Brand and Culture

By Jay Gronlund.

"Technology has transformed our world into a data-obsessive circus where information is unbelievably accessible, connectivity is constant, and unpredictable events always surprise and engulf us. Call this extreme clutter and volatility. With so much information and multi-tasking surrounding us, it has become a challenge to restore simplicity, clarity and focus in our communications. These excessive conditions provide the main impetus for the re-emergence of storytelling for inspiring, engaging and connecting to others.

Storytelling is ageless and remains the most powerful form of persuasion. Socrates recognized the value of storytelling, so did Aesop, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius and even Mark Twain. Today the power of storytelling has been scientifically proven:

    Neuroscientists have shown that the brain was built to wander on average over 1,000 times per day (e.g. including daydreams). They also found that storytelling stops this wandering and engages the listener (they call this “neuro-coupling”).

    Bruce Perry, an expert on brain development, says that “neural systems fatigue quickly, actually within 4-8 minutes, and become less responsive,” but can be stimulated and sustained by storytelling.

    Artificial Intelligence specialists have been studying how our brain actually works, especially how we file and store all this information that the brain absorbs every day. They discovered that the brain does not process information in “files” (e.g., like a computer program). As an example it sorts information from a PowerPoint presentation in a way that the first and last items on a list are usually remembered (also any item that has an emotional impact), and the rest is discarded as “trash” and never retrieved. Instead, the brain more effectively files and retrieves information when there is a context, as in the form of a story.

    Reinforcing this discovery, author and marketing professor Jennifer Aaker from Stanford notes that people remember stories as much as 22 times more than they do facts alone.

So what can storytelling do to improve communications, process our changing world, and especially help shape a corporate brand and culture? Vibrant leaders now recognize that storytelling can create an emotional connection, which is the heart of good branding. It engages listeners emotionally, creates empathy, and inspires action. Importantly, neuroscience has also concluded that humans are more likely to make decisions based on emotions, not rational thinking.

Our world is changing dramatically and so leaders are more challenged than ever to adapt to such a groundswell of populist trends, technological advances, declining trust in the establishment, globalization, growing uncertainty (particularly with the incoming Trump administration), and fundamentally what a corporation should stand for today. All these changes can affect a corporate brand and culture, so it is incumbent for a CEO to explain and especially inspire support for any updates on its corporate values and strategy. Simply using words and sharing data with customers and employees can be too cerebral and esoteric, but using storytelling to communicate “who we are,” “what we have learned,” and “why we are changing” will be far more captivating and motivating. Storytelling describes a journey and is ideal for meaningful change.

For millennials, storytelling represents an ideal form of communication. This “first digital generation” thrives on social media, which is different from traditional media mainly in that it involves a one-on-one conversation that begs for engagement, versus the one-to-many in mass marketing. Many older managers don’t understand or even resent the independent, restless, unpredictable tendencies of millennials. However, millennials represent a huge opportunity for creativity and innovative ideas, so they should not be ignored. They do want to learn and respect experience, albeit sometimes in trying ways, but the key to maximizing their potential is to engage them. And this is what storytelling does.

More companies today are using storytelling to recruit and train new employees–Apple, IBM, 3M, Nike, Coca Cola, Disney, Microsoft, NASA, and other forward-thinking organizations. In addition, as social media becomes more mainstream for advertising, they are using storytelling to engage prospective customers in blogs, videos, newsletters, content branding, and other digital communication vehicles.

Millennials simply don’t trust traditional advertising–95% rely on feedback from friends for purchase decisions instead and find stories much more credible and trustful for learning about products. Storytelling is also ideal for young entrepreneurs who focus more on cost-efficient digital media and realize that stories about their personal experience can create a strong emotional connection.

To update a corporate culture and strengthen a brand, one must learn more about the types of stories that will work, depending of course on the audience and their aspirations, the different situations (e.g., for a new leader, change in direction, new challenges, etc.) and the various nuances for making a story credible, compelling and emotionally engaging. But it all starts with a recognition of the power of storytelling in communications.

Jay Gronlund is President, founder of The Pathfinder Group, a business development firm specializing in emotional branding, ideation facilitation and international expansion. His background has focused mainly on marketing and new product development with executive positions at reputable companies in the US and abroad – Richardson Vicks/P&G, Church & Dwight, Seagram and Newsweek. Jay has also been teaching a branding course at NYU since 1999 and recently wrote a book on the “Basics of Branding”, published by Business Expert Press. Jay has a BA from Colby College and MBA from Tuck at Dartmouth (see www.ThePathfinderGroup.net) for previous articles and blogs."

Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller: Explanations of some economic events can be found in sociologically important narratives, not the conventional data favored by economists

See How Tales of ‘Flippers’ Led to a Housing Bubble in the NY Times. He has written several articles  on this issue.  But to see an opposing view to the use of narrative in this way, see Heterodoxy at the AER by economist Scott Sumner. Excerpts:

"Real home prices rose 75 percent from February 1997 to December 2005, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, corrected for inflation by the Consumer Price Index. And then, from 2005 to 2012, real prices reversed course, falling to just 12 percent above their 1997 level. In the years since 2012, they have climbed 29 percent, about halfway back to their 2005 peak."

"The problem for economists is that these changes don’t correspond to movements in the usual suspects: interest rates, building costs, population or rents. The Consumer Price Index for Rent of Primary Residence, compiled by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and corrected for inflation, went up only 8 percent in 1997 to 2005, so unmet demand for housing services can’t explain the huge increase in real home prices. It doesn’t explain the 29 percent rise in real home prices since 2012 either, because inflation-adjusted rents increased only 10 percent in that period."

"I believe the price swings have something to do with the changing mentality of the times, changes caused by narratives that have gone viral and swept across the population. Looking for answers in such popular stories contrasts starkly with the prominent approach of modeling people as though they react logically to economic forces."

"The prevalent narratives of 1997 to 2005 did not include the concept of a housing bubble, not at first. A computer search using ProQuest or Google Ngrams shows that the phrase “housing bubble” was hardly used until 2005"

"during the 1997 to 2005 boom there were multitudes of narratives about smart investors who were bold enough to take a position in the market. To single out one strand, recall the stories of flippers who would buy a house, fix it up, and resell it within months at a huge profit. These stories appear to have been broadly exciting to people who didn’t flip houses themselves but who appear to have begun to think that stretching a little and buying a house with a large mortgage would make them wise investors.

In his book “The Complete Guide to Flipping Properties,” published in 2004, Steve Berges extolled what he called “the O.P.M. principle,” meaning “other people’s money.” He wrote, “Your objective is to control as much real estate as possible while using as little of your own capital as possible.” In other words, borrow as much as you can. He wrote about the upside of leverage but not about the perils of leverage during the kind of big price drops that were just around the corner."

See also The Role of Narratives in Economics: Narratives are vectors of ideas. Nobel laureate Robert Shiller suggests that in the age of social information networks, economists need to rethink how and why information really spreads by Prateek Raj of The Stigler Center's Pro Market blog.

Manipulating Metaphors, Selling Products That Tell Stories And Using Narratives To Become More Productive

Three Items:

"political advisers have long known that if you manipulate metaphors, you can influence policy: Is a rise in crime portrayed as “a wild beast rampaging through the city that must be stopped” or as “a spreading virus infecting the city that must be stopped”? In one study in which people read one or another version of these two news accounts, the “beast” group recommended “catch-and-cage” solutions (lock ’em up), but the “virus” group recommended “remove-unhealthy-conditions” solutions (deal with poverty and joblessness)."

See Want to Get People to ‘Yes’? Follow the Lessons of Robert Cialdini’s ‘Pre-Suasion’: Carol Tavris explains why the most important part of an argument can be preparing the audience to receive it.

"Prof. Christensen has been developing this theory of “jobs to be done” for the past 15 years, and it has produced a range of insights. American Girl, for example, doesn’t just sell dolls, he says; because the company’s dolls come with a story, it is also selling an experience that represents times and places in U.S. history."

See Clayton Christensen Has a New Theory:When is a milkshake more than a beverage? The Harvard Business School professor on what drives consumer choices by Alexandra Wolfe.

"more productive thinking emerges when people tell stories about what is going on around them, whether their assignments and obligations are large or small. Constant narration helps people figure out how to focus their attention where it is needed."

"My father was saying what science now confirms. To truly be productive, it’s best to create your own narrative."

See Habits of Highly Productive People By Amy Dockser Marcus. It is a review of the book Smarter Faster Better By Charles Duhigg.

Storytelling is linked to the ability to be a good provider

See Why Good Storytellers Are Happier in Life and in Love: Studies find the way people tell their own stories has an outsize effect on their life satisfaction by Elizabeth Bernstein of the WSJ. Being a "good provider" is certainly related to economics. Excerpt:

"The results were the same across all three studies: Women rated men who were good storytellers as more attractive and desirable as potential long-term partners. Psychologists believe this is because the man is showing that he knows how to connect, to share emotions and, possibly, to be vulnerable. He also is indicating that he is interesting and articulate and can gain resources and provide support.

“Storytelling is linked to the ability to be a good provider,” because a man is explaining what he can offer, says Melanie Green, an associate professor in the department of communication at the University at Buffalo and a researcher on the study. The men didn’t care whether the women were good storytellers, the research showed."

From Bedtime to the Boardroom: Why Storytelling Matters in Business

By Alina Tugend of Entrepreneur. Excerpts:

"It’s one of the biggest buzzwords in business—storytelling—and it’s how savvy companies are satisfying the public’s never-ending hunger for content. With compelling characters, relatable plots and, most important, authenticity, these innovators are connecting with consumers, colleagues and investors on an emotional level.

“What is a story?”Andrew Linderman asks a group of students, most in their 20s and 30s, who are gathered in a Manhattan classroom for “Storytelling for Entrepreneurs,” a lesson in how to better pitch themselves and their products."

"For the next few hours, each student digs deep to figure out how to create a story related to their business, with characters, a setting, a problem, a climactic moment and a resolution. Then they work on telling it all in just three minutes.
Linderman’s class is one of many that teach an ancient art in a new way by applying it to a business setting. His students learn that if they want to sell their startups, they need to know how to project themselves and their products in a way that is both engaging and effective. And that’s not easy.

“We keep rediscovering and have to remind ourselves of the power of stories in a business context,” says Keith Quesenberry, a lecturer at the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University. “We love stories. PowerPoint ruined that. Bullet points are not a story.”

Storytelling’s rise as the buzzword of the business world mirrors the increasing popularity of programs such as “Serial,” the free 12-part weekly podcast about a real-life 1999 murder that had been downloaded a whopping 40 million times less than three months after its debut last October. The program was the subject of endless tweets, reddit analyses, news stories and parodies. Listeners clamoring for a second season quickly donated enough cash to Chicago Public Media to make that a reality.

And take a look at the rise of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. What are they, really, but a forum for telling stories as a way to convince people to give money?

But storytelling should be seen as more than just a sales tool. Businesses can use stories to get clients to better understand the company’s work, to connect employees to one another and to management, and to give a voice to those who don’t otherwise have one.

When Marie-Reine Jézéquel, founder of real-estate company New York Habitat, hired Narativ, a training firm that focuses on storytelling, she wanted help making her workers a more cohesive unit. “I heard about [Narativ] on the radio and liked their depth of analysis and methodology,” she says. “It was very hard for me to delegate—I needed to build trust and a team.”

The Narativ staff coached Jézéquel’s realtors individually in telling a poignant story about a grandparent. Then everyone gathered, told his or her eight-minute tale and received feedback.
“After they told their stories, one by one, I told my own,” Jézéquel recalls. “They really made you tell things you didn’t want to, but they pushed you to be authentic.”

It may sound like an odd business strategy, but Jézéquel says it worked to build camaraderie—more so than holiday parties or staff meetings—because people had their guard down but felt they were in a safe environment where they could be honest.

“It changed the way people related to each other,” Jézéquel says, explaining that hearing one employee’s tale of an ill grandfather altered her perception of that person. A proofreader, she adds, spoke of a grandmother who was always finding faults, so “I understood why she was so good at her job.”

Everything is a story. That doesn’t mean, however, that everything is a good story. Just as many people can cook, there’s a difference between slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich and finessing a five-star meal. And like cooking, effective stories have recipes—or formulas—but they shouldn’t be formulaic. It’s tricky.

Paul J. Zak, a professor of economics, psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University, has been studying the reasons those nuances can cause extreme reactions in the listener, changing attitudes, opinions and behaviors. One of the keys, he says, is oxytocin, a neurochemical that is produced by the brain. It has been called “the love hormone” because it is thought to bolster trust and empathy. When the brain synthesizes oxytocin, people tend to be more generous, charitable and compassionate.

One of Zak’s experiments aimed to test the reaction to stories that attempt to motivate positive behavioral change. Participants were shown 16 public service announcements from charitable organizations that anecdotally illustrated the dangers of drinking, using drugs or texting while driving. When people were given synthetic oxytocin, they donated up to 57 percent more money to the charities promoted in the videos than those who were given a placebo. More important, Zak says, those participants said they were less likely to engage in the dangerous behaviors shown in the ads.
In another experiment, participants had blood samples taken before and after watching videos of character-driven stories tied to charitable organizations; those who showed an increase in oxytocin tended to donate more money to the charity featured than those who didn’t.

“Attention is such a scarce resource,” Zak says. “You need to grab someone within the first 15 seconds. People have to care about what’s going on; stories need to be of human scale. For instance, ‘Jane Smith was a customer of ours for the past 20 years. Last year she left us.’ That’s a good opening.”

Indeed, as most of us learned in middle school, stories need a dramatic arc—starting with setting the scene, building action, some sort of conflict or tension and, finally, a resolution. That’s true for any narrative, from a Russian novel to a three-minute pitch.

Within that beginning, middle and end, a storyteller must be specific, honest and personal. “It’s about connecting,” Linderman says. “You need to be vulnerable and connect to the vulnerability of others.”
One way large companies are putting storytelling to use is in getting staffers to understand the roles of co-workers in other departments. Storytelling can also help prospective clients understand what a company does, or convince them why the business is superior to its competitors.

Kevin Allison, founder of New York’s The Story Studio and host of Risk!, a live stage show and podcast of “true tales, boldly told,” tells of a workshop he conducted for an agency that creates software for doctors.

“They wanted to communicate in a very human way the technical process that doctors might not understand,” he says. “I worked with them for four to five hours sharing stories and then brainstormed with them about the most emotional, heartfelt, frustrating moments in their careers, to the point where they could say, ‘Ah, this is what I can pull out of it to convince potential clients we’re not just another tech agency.’”

One woman told of a client, a warm and personable doctor, who was having difficulty with the software. “She spent a weekend walking him through the software, and he phoned her saying she had really made his life easier,” Allison says. “Tragically, the doctor was killed in a car accident a week after that. So the fact that he called meant so much—she’ll always remember that. The story brought tears to the eyes of a lot of people in the room.”

Storytelling can be an especially effective tactic for philanthropic organizations. Brett Davidson, director of the Health Media Initiative at the Open Society Foundations, a nonprofit that focuses on public health and human rights around the world, has used Narativ trainers. “People we work with are used to telling one particular story about themselves,” he says. “Narativ helped us realize that people have many stories. It can help break down stereotypes.”

So is storytelling just another fashionable business trend? “It does seem like it’s been a bit of a fad in the last couple of years,” Davidson says, although he believes it’s one that could last. “But it has to be approached in a meaningful way. People can’t feel like they’re being manipulated. It has to be honest.”

Odysseus Started The Industrial Revolution

Factory work may have been a commitment device to get everyone to work hard. Odysseus tying himself to the mast was also a commitment device. Dean Karlan, Yale economics professor explains how commitment devices work:

"This idea of forcing one’s own future behavior dates back in our culture at least to Odysseus, who had his crew tie him to the ship’s mast so he wouldn’t be tempted by the sirens; and Cortes, who burned his ships to show his army that there would be no going back.

Economists call this method of pushing your future self into some behavior a “commitment device.” [Related: a Freakonomics podcast on the topic is called "Save Me From Myself."] From my WSJ op-ed:

Most of us don’t have crews and soldiers at our disposal, but many people still find ways to influence their future selves. Some compulsive shoppers will freeze their credit cards in blocks of ice to make sure they can’t get at them too readily when tempted. Some who are particularly prone to the siren song of their pillows in the morning place their alarm clock far from their bed, on the other side of the room, forcing their future self out of bed to shut it off. When MIT graduate student Guri Nanda developed an alarm clock, Clocky, that rolls off a night stand and hides when it goes off, the market beat a path to her door."

 See What Can We Learn From Congress and African Farmers About Losing Weight?

Something like this came up recently in the New York Times, in reference to factory work and the Industrial Revolution. See Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind. From the NY Times, 9-27. By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN, a professor of economics at Harvard. Excerpts:

"Greg Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, has gone so far as to argue that the Industrial Revolution was in part a self-control revolution. Many economists, beginning with Adam Smith, have argued that factories — an important innovation of the Industrial Revolution — blossomed because they allowed workers to specialize and be more productive.

Professor Clark argues that work rules truly differentiated the factory. People working at home could start and finish when they wanted, a very appealing sort of flexibility, but it had a major drawback, he said. People ended up doing less work that way.

Factories imposed discipline. They enforced strict work hours. There were rules for when you could go home and for when you had to show up at the beginning of your shift. If you arrived late you could be locked out for the day. For workers being paid piece rates, this certainly got them up and at work on time. You can even see something similar with the assembly line. Those operations dictate a certain pace of work. Like a running partner, an assembly line enforces a certain speed.

As Professor Clark provocatively puts it: “Workers effectively hired capitalists to make them work harder. They lacked the self-control to achieve higher earnings on their own.”

The data entry workers in our study, centuries later, might have agreed with that statement. In fact, 73 percent of them did agree to this statement: “It would be good if there were rules against being absent because it would help me come to work more often.”"

The workers, like Odyssues, tied themselves to the mast to resist the temptation of slacking. This made it possible for factories to generate the large output of the Industrial Revolution.

My Response To Esther Cepeda Who Said You Should Work Hard Instead Of Doing What You Love

It was printed today in the San Antonio Express-News. Here is the link: False choice to separate work and passion. In the print edition it was titled "Passion not antithesis of hard toil." Here is the link to her article: Esther Cepeda: The rewards of hard work.

"I think Esther J. Cepeda presents a false dichotomy between “following your bliss” and “grinding it out” (“Hard work trumps doing what you love,” Other Views, Jan. 24). She says we need more people who “grind it out” and work hard starting businesses instead of people doing what they love and that “love and passion” are no “substitutes for hard work.”

What if hard work and passion complement each other? This would erase the conflict she sees.

Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor at Florida State University, says “when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good.” And he advocates hard work — lots of it.

You will “grind it out” if you are doing something you love. Some neuroscience research says that when we do what we love, we form new connections in our brain that increase our skill. At the same time, the release of dopamine that gives us pleasure also helps form these connections.

Cepeda did not mention mythologist Joseph Campbell, who championed “following your bliss” in the 1980s. He wrote the book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” (one of the inspirations for “Star Wars”).

It is not commonly known that Campbell said entrepreneurs, the grinders Cepeda lauds, were the real heroes in our society. Business can be a fulfilling adventure, like art or science.

Maybe our society does not have enough grinders starting new companies because of our negative attitudes toward business. Look at popular portrayals of capitalists such as J.R. Ewing and Gordon Gekko. This may be why young people are not likely to see business as a noble and worthy quest. Our national narrative needs to change.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps has pointed out that we have lost our innovative spark, and certainly the images of capitalists in movies and TV do not help.

Calling entrepreneurs heroes does not mean we should exempt them from ethical behavior. It is not a license to defraud or harm the public. We cannot, however, completely avoid some negative effects of business, such as pollution. But that is something we can tax.

Educator Candace Allen has pointed out that if we do not honor entrepreneurial accomplishment, we will not get enough entrepreneurs.

As President Barack Obama has said, “No government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur.” Our national dialogue needs to include the vital role they play. Even those who start, as Cepeda says, boring businesses such as dry cleaner and fast-food franchises.

Those entrepreneurs may be the heroes on the front line of our economy. And who does not love being a hero? That might get people to do the hard work Cepeda wants done."