CHAPTER 13

Knowledge/Information Based Stories

No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.

—L. Frank Baum, The Lost Princess of Oz

The great, late physicist Albert Einstein was traveling on a train one day. Shortly after the train left the station in Princeton, the conductor walked down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger as he went. When he came to Einstein, the brilliant but notoriously absent-minded scientist reached into his vest pocket for his ticket, but it wasn’t there. He checked each of his trouser pockets. No ticket. He looked in his briefcase. No ticket. He looked on the seat beside him. No ticket.

At that point, the conductor said, “Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.” Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back. “Dr. Einstein, don’t worry,” he said. “As I told you, I know who you are. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.”

Einstein looked at him and said, “Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going.”

As this story illustrates, sometimes we need to create stories to discover where we’ve been or where we are going. Stories are a great way to convey information that will be remembered, so this chapter will look at knowledge/information-based stories and how they can be useful. In a nutshell, these kinds of stories are a compact, easily retained, powerful way to convey the knowledge and information that you need to communicate to your target market, whether that’s employees within your company or consumers and customers out in the world.

For example, a few years ago, I was hired to work with a company to help them compile a virtual bonfire, which could be used by both old and new employees. In a nutshell, old employees could gather around the fire and tell stories both about the company history as well as the best practices and techniques used by members of the company. And then, new employees could join the bonfire and learn both about the past of the company as well as best practices and shortcuts used in the field and the office by members of the company. It was a great way to capture the culture of the company as well as to allow new employees to quickly learn about that culture.

Think about the knowledge/information stories you tell all the time. We do this constantly and hardly think about it. You walk into the copy room in a rush, push print, and then, of course, the machine gets stuck; so you go find somebody for help. An older employee walks in to help you and she tells you, “Oh my God! That always happens to me. You can’t do more than 10 pages at a time and it doesn’t like it when you shove the pages in too far or use the double-sided function. Once, like four years ago, it even started smoking. It almost set off the fire alarm. So I unplugged it and waved the smoke away and then waited 10 minutes and just plugged it back in and it worked great. And it helps if you talk nice to it and rub it like this.” So, you unplug it and start over and—voila!—it works great. This kind of information/knowledge storytelling goes on all day, we just rarely think about it.

Let me give you another example. Let’s look at knowledge/information stories used to deal with the issue of change in a company. Trevor Garlick, a business consultant who specializes in change management, was kind enough to offer his thoughts to me on how the right knowledge/information story can help a company survive change and I think you will find them illuminating:

RK: How do you see the role of storytelling in business today?

TG: The role of storytelling in business change is crucial. At a “big picture level,” it makes the difference between creating a coherent and thorough picture that everyone can see and understand at all levels of the organization (which can be openly challenged and criticized) versus a command: “You will do this, and you will change—or you’re out!”

At a more detailed level, within individual change programs and projects, for example, a system replacement or a desktop upgrade, there will be moments of enormous challenge to the team where agreement from on high is required to solve a problem. The last thing to do in this instance is throw the problem up the chain and ask for a solution. Placing the problem into context within a short though concise story can not only soften the blow, but it can relate the problem directly to the culture and the situation of the organization exactly. In other words, it can make it both understandable and palatable.

It should be remembered, at this level not only does the story have to make sense, more importantly, it has to give the executive ammunition to explain simply and in acceptable terms what is going on, how the problem came about, and why the recommended solution is the course to follow. In short, identifying and explaining the size and scale of the elephant on the table, and how to get rid of it.

Perhaps this is an over-arching narrative for the life of the change program propagated with mini-stories as required.

RK: How do you see the role of storytelling in business meetings?

TG: PowerPoint presentation can lead to the death of many business meetings, but it must be remembered that PPT is simply a format, and it can be very useful as a tool of communication when used correctly. However, it is important that narratives are used with or beyond PPT. The story that is told then must “land” properly and that it is appropriate to the audience.

For example, within the same headline “story” this will be chunked down according to the level (seniority) and size of audience, thus the format of presentation will change depending on many things, such as time constraints and the “need” for information (not the want). Also, you may want your audience to stand and physically “walk through” the story with you in a session, or you might need this to propagate around key stakeholders first to sound them out. Alternatives to this are the 30-second “elevator pitch” which serves as the hook to get your agenda onto the table. Whichever it is, to be successful, your need will be in the form of a succinct narrative.

Once you have landed a successful narrative, you should have enough credibility to be listened to in the future. The trick is to ensure you then continue to build the relationships with the important audiences to build this into a rhythm. You can then refine your storytelling with the input of feedback from your peers/seniors. This will mean each time you have the opportunity, your audience should be ready and willing to listen to you. This is important if you are on a long change journey, as you sometimes need a huge stock of “credibility chips” on your bank to successfully navigate through major business change programs.

Therefore, just as in product marketing, you need to know your audience, target the messages, build and sustain those relationships with the key stakeholders. It is simply that the messages within your stories will tend to be about internal affairs, although with key references to the customer (the usual objective behind the business change) to anchor the story into the reality of either today or the future.

RK: Can you give me some thoughts on how the stories you tell inside a company about change should and need to evolve?

TG: Within the context of a particular program, all stories need to evolve, and this will be for different reasons. For example, the holistic narrative around the whole piece of change needs to continue from concept and through and past implementation; people should be begging for your change to come down the line to them if you have done your job correctly.

Additionally, as you meet certain challenges, stories will need to be created that deal with succinct challenges or opportunities that may go to smaller segments of the overall audience, for example key stakeholders. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the narrative evolves and keeps apace with the program and its environment.

The context of today’s change programs will tend to be large, complex, and rarely anything but global. This means multi-year programs are the norm, not the exception. Dealing with what might be significant change external to the change program itself—for example, major customer behavior shift that we have recently seen in UK shoppers’ supermarket habits, or the effect of a merger/acquisition—both of these may call all or part of the program into question.

Being on top of this and having the capacity to get the stories out to the appropriate audiences is crucial. Ensuring that you find value for money out of the investments already made whilst being able to make the right decisions on the life or death of a program, or how to take onboard a large change of scope, can make a significant contribution in such turbulent times. Acknowledging that not everyone in a large organization will be able to do this, those who shine early will tend to get the attention of those required at the right time to ensure success continues.

RK: Can you talk about myths within a company?

TG: The death-knell of any major program is the propagation of myths that are far removed from the realities or the important truths of the situation. This can be driven by the lack of acceptance or indeed the rejection of a change program, most commonly a new piece of software, or a headcount reduction scheme by the user group(s). This is where the voice of the user is louder and more consistent with its storytelling than the program itself. Simply put, this is a story about competing stories.

One of the most challenging roles for storytelling within change programs is its use in enabling the truth, or more likely the ugly truth, to come into the open and enable the program to move forward on a secure footing. This might have to include the discrediting of various myths in circulation at the time. Not an easy task that generally requires going back to square one to understand the basic business needs of the piece of change in question.

In the very worst of cases, these stories will focus upon answering the most demanding of questions: What went wrong? How and why did this happen? Who is responsible? How much exactly did it cost, and how much more do we need to invest to get us back on track? Alternatively, how much if anything can be salvaged? Worse still, where does this figure get placed on the balance sheet?

Irrespective of the management and technical skill required to answer these questions, a story or set of stories will need to be created to get the messages out. Where this involves consequences for people’s careers, care and skill are needed.

RK: What types of story are we talking about?

TG: How a headcount reduction in one country can benefit the customer when the work is to be moved to somewhere lower-cost like Eastern Europe or India. How does what is a cost-cutting exercise benefit those in the existing organization? Getting that into an understandable and acceptable story is one that is regularly required today.

This new mega-system actually makes my tasks more complicated and manual rather than automated and streamlined! This is not progress. The big picture here is important; there are winners and losers in all business change. The important thing is not to lose sight of the major objectives and to be sure of the overall business benefits.

Every executive has her/his key relationships. Each of these has a credible, trusted voice, voices that maybe change-averse, or unwilling to accept changes to their universe. The storytelling of a program needs to be able to deal effectively with this.

The inevitable “anti-stories” that appear—generally when people who are in a flux of change get nervous and voice their opinions in such a way they seek to simply discredit the program in any way possible. This needs to be understood and taken account of within the overall storytelling of the program if it is to successfully navigate through such challenges.

RK: What about emotion?

TG: The key to successful business change is a rational approach with detailed information to support the findings and activities of the program.

Anyone who doesn’t support or want the change will generally respond and challenge this with powerful emotionally driven stories—perhaps wrapped in rational statistical clothing—in an attempt to discredit part of or all of a program.

Emotional debate should be left aside wherever possible. If it exists, take it off the table at the earliest opportunity. This is a cultural issue, as both countries and organizations are very different in both their basic makeup and approaches to problem-solving. However, within the context of global programs, evidence-based argument will tend to win the day.

The most common emotional heartstring is the “how will this make our people feel about (us and) the organization as a whole?” A leader with a natural disposition of “emotional” rather than “rational” will always find that question throws them into a personal flux from which they may not extricate themselves without outside help.

Emotional debate is not helpful here.

RK: How do you create the best business story/narratives you can?

TG: There is a method, though the context is always important and within a major program there is usually a stream of work, which deals with all internal (and perhaps external) communication.

This does not mean that the team will create all stories, but it will certainly be a key stakeholder in disseminating the word out of the program to large audiences.

Management of key stakeholders to the program will generally be controlled by the program director and her/his immediate team.