What’s your story?
There’s oodles of research proving that organisations perform better when they’re clear about where they’re going and what they stand for. It’s also a fact that people are more energetic, committed and motivated when they understand how they are making a difference to their organisation.
That all sounds very easy. In practice, though, the only constant is change and it very rarely starts and finishes as a neat, hermetically sealed change programme. More likely it’s a bumpy journey with a rough destination in mind and a selection of routes to get there.
I’ve spent the last five years in a big organisation going through enormous change. It involved large-scale job losses, businesses and parts of businesses being sold, new brand launches and one of the FTSE’s biggest mergers creating a £15billion company with over 100,000 employees around the world. That’s where I learned the vital importance of ‘one story’.
I met someone who told me that he’d started his career as a puppeteer for Harry Corbett. He was one of six Sootys that appeared in the children’s show. Before each show started, Harry Corbett would ask them all to line up and wave, cry and do Sooty stuff to make sure they were all exactly the same. That’s because there’s only one Sooty. In the same way, there should only be one story for your organisation, told using different techniques and in different ways for all your audiences, but one story nevertheless. Once you’ve worked it out, simplified it and chosen compelling language that really hits the spot with your audiences, we have the tools and techniques to help you share it with your people…
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