small
business
SAM TROU T
Telling Tales
The art of corporate storytelling
By Steve Fisher
ONCE UPON A TIME: Those four simple Clark continues, “that had been celebrating Successful companies get it. “Good cor-words conjure up the anticipation of a tale of sales on a monthly basis, honouring the top porate stories are more likely to conjure up
wonder and fascination. One might think this sales person by showing numbers. When they tangible visible images than anything in a
is something for a campfire, classroom or bed- started telling stories about how the person did PowerPoint presentation,” says Chip Heath
side and not a tool for business. One would be it, the others learned how to do it themselves.” ( www.madetostick.com), a professor of organi-very wrong. zational behaviour at Stanford University’s grad-
The definition of story here is an account uate school of business in Palo Alto, California.
of incidents or events, a statement regarding “Stories are flight simulators for our brains,”
the facts pertinent to a situation in question— he observes, explaining that they portray expe-not a work of fiction. riences that members of the audience may not
Everyone’s been in a business or sales have had yet. Heath teaches a course called
meeting where the speaker clicks through a “How to Make Ideas Stick” and has co-written
PowerPoint presentation showing charts and a book with his brother, Dan, Made to Stick:
numbers. All too often people take nothing Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
away from those meetings other than a sense (Random House, 2007).
of confusion or ennui. But put the same information in the context of a story and the results
can be very different.
Additional
resources
Chief Storytelling Officer
(Armstrong International, 2002),
by David Armstrong
Managing by Storying Around
(Armstrong International, 1992, 1999),
by David Armstrong
Parables into Profit
What’s in a story?
Evelyn Clark ( www.corpstory.com), a Costco
member and business consultant in Washington state, and a corporate storytelling guru,
explains, “When you tell a story, people understand what the mission is and they understand
how they can enact it. If you just talk at a high
level of mission and vision, the reaction is
(Armstrong International, 1995),
by David Armstrong
Introduction to Corporate Storytelling
( http://tech-head.com/cstory1.htm),
by Hilary McClellan
Clark spoke to leaders of companies who
“understand the power of story” for her book,
Around the Corporate Campfire: How Great
Leaders Use Stories to Inspire Success (C&C Publishing, 2004).
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
“Evaluate Your Own Story”
( www.corpstory.com/process/
evaluation.htm), by Evelyn Clark
“There was a sales management group,”
One such company is Medtronic, which
started as a home hobby and has grown into a
worldwide creator and manufacturer of medical technology. Medtronic has embraced storytelling as a key ingredient of its success. Every
