When you have a broken company story, your story seems to change on a daily basis. Then, it is difficult to remember the story you tell to colleagues, employees, vendors and clients. Because, your story continuously changes.
You know you have a broken company story when:
- First, your story about the company differs from everyone else’s story;
- Next, your story focuses solely on the features and benefits of what you make;
- Then, partner and client experience and feedback conflicts with the story you tell them; and
- Finally, your company experiences employee and customer churn.
Over time, your broken company story reflects the actions you take to address the story’s disconnects.
Is the real story of your workplace a story about continuous tactical damage control to fill business model gaps in people, processes, deliverables and quality?
Thus, your story becomes an endless series of internal fire-fighting activities to mitigate further fallout. As a result, the workplace dynamic becomes addicted to the adrenaline rush of putting out fires and operating in continuous crisis mode. Instead of continuous improvement mode.
When the workplace is full of busy people, working full time, on reactive and tactical tasks, everyone thinks they are doing something. Which they are. Except, at the end of the day, your company story does not move along any further and you do not get to where you need to go.
Eventually, instead of a company story well-told, another story emerges. Your employees, partners and clients lose faith in your ability to get them to where they need to go. Consistently, reliably, dependably. Together.
When you have a broken company story, eventually business growth, expansion and sustainability are impeded.
Alternatively, creating a story-driven company culture uncovers the people, process, software and machinery disconnects which fuel continuous chaos. When people understand how “what they do” is connected to, and impacts, “what everyone else does,” daily fire-fighting is reduced. As employees become more proactive about how their input and throughput impacts output and client success, they create more enduring stories. The types of stories which retain both employees as well as clients.
Take the next steps in exploring how purpose-driven storytelling pokes holes in organizational value silos. Create the stories that employees and customers are invested in.
Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset® Storytelling for STEM Professionals and Left Brain Thinkers speaking programs leverage purpose-driven value differentiation through storytelling, to create and retain successful employees and clients. Engage me to present one of my Storytelling for STEM Professionals and Left Brain Thinkers speaking programs, workshops or moderated facilitation services. Contact me here.
Find out more about Babette’s professional story here. Babette is a member of SME, ASQ, SHRM and the National Speakers Association. Her playbook of communication hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Babette’s speaker profile is on the espeakers platform.
Image source: Adobe Stock
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