What’s your next step? Leading with storytelling for times of crisis, challenge and change

We all go through crises, major and minor, and for many the Pandemic has created crises, whether they be in business, in your career or in your personal life.

How can story be of help?

There are three reasons to use story …

All stories use crisis or challenge.  They have, for millenia.  We are wired for that.  So if we use story to think through, feel through, a challenge, it feels natural,

not a strategy imposed by some random academic or the latest, flavour-of-the-month change guru.

Looking at a timeline of change can be a very cold, stark way of describing a series of events.

While we need to keep illogical emotion and angst out of decision-making, we do need to bring in the emotion of story because that is what resonates with people (including ourselves if we are doing this alone) – we make decisions based on emotion and then justify with logic when it comes to buying products, the same applies to understanding and committing to a way forward.

 

So whether you are leading a team, an organisation, a business or just your own life

 

and  when all the parts of ourselves, all our viewpoints and understanding,

or when all of the people involved in an organisation

tell the story they see as the best way forward, and hear others committing too,

the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts – connections are formed across a group that strengthen resolve, commitment and creativity.

 

 

your business, all of its parts, people and processes

your team or organisation – all of its parts, people and processes

your personal self – all of its parts, voices and processes

 

And there are three stories that we need to gather, identify and adopt across those part, people and processes

that are vital to creating response to challenges, change and crisis

– to creating a way forward,

the necessary pivot.

 

They are the stories

of continuity, – what we will keep

of creativity – how we will innovate and

of the crossing between past and future,

 

Today let’s look at continuity.

Too many companies and individuals react to a crisis or the need for change by immediately looking for innovation and creating a story of change, without looking at what could be carried forward.

What can we keep that has served well in the past and could be taken into the future?

When I lost my major sources of identity, usefulness and self esteem a few years ago and was left in a limbo of nothingness, I spent a lot of time (and continue now) looking for what I needed for a future that would give me those things back and part of that was going back into my story to see times and places where I felt most alive, most fulfilled, most hopeful and happy.

So if you are looking for the best of yourself, or your career or your organisation, ask yourself or your team

“Tell me about a time where you felt you were, or we were, at our best.”  Do it several times with slightly different questions and if there is a group, hear all of the stories, and listen for what is really important to the resilience of your organisation.

For myself I ended up with 4 words – Create . Explore . Connect  .  Story – Each had a distinct set of stories where I had been confident in myself, my identity and what I needed to do next

and those are the words that will define the stories of where I go now

and I have been expanding each of those ever since, finding ways to implement them.

Oftentimes, the stories are based on values.

The challenge faced by Patagonia, a company founded on climbing equipment, was created, in fact by their own success.  The owner and CEO Yvan Chouinard, loved the outdoors, surfing, rock climbing and was passionate about the environment.  He created his own blacksmithing business and forged the pitons used to anchor climbing equipment in the rocks.  His chrome-molybdenum steel pitons became popular and the Chouinard Climbing Equipment business grew from there.  Unfortunately, the pitons, hammered into the rock, were creating crack and further damage to the rocks.  He could have gone ahead, incredibly successful and making the money had had lived without for so long.  And yet the company decided to stop manufacture.  The value of respect for the environment was strong.  They developed instead, aluminium chocks, that could be inserted by hand without the hammering.  As Chinouard says on his website “This was to be the first big environmental step we would take over the years.”

 

Blackberry, on the other hand had a wonderful product.  It was strong, secure, reliable and government and big business trusted it and used it for those features.  Along came the iphone, a different product, serving a different audience, but exceptionally popular, and Blackberry reacted – compromising its basic reliability by trying to be a better iphone.  It tried to be something it wasn’t when its core strengths and market could have kept it in the marketplace.

So where have you been most aligned with the values and strengths that drive your business, your personal life, your career, that you will take with you into a new future?

What would your new future look like, feel like? Tell stories about a time where you saw that, felt that in the past.

“Tell me about a time where you felt you were, or we were, at our best.”  Do it several times with slightly different questions for example, around strengths, values, people and whether there is a group, or just you, hear all of the stories, and listen for what is really important to the resilience of your organisation.

And we move on, next time to the second change story – creativity and the stories that will drive that aspect of your response to crisis, challenge and change.