"Some years ago I said to a friend of mine that storytelling in business was an important art. His reaction was to ask "what’s the point of that then?" A bit flummoxed by that, I’m not sure I gave a very convincing answer! Time to put that right, then…"

Word count: 756 words (reading time 3 - 4 minutes)

Storytelling in Business (1) - It's All About Engagement...

I remember some years ago mentioning to a friend of mine that I believed storytelling in business was an important art and that it was an area in which I intended to specialise: in my naivety, I was a bit taken aback when his reaction was to ask “what’s the point of that then?”

At the time I was, I’ll admit, a bit flummoxed and I’m not sure I gave a very convincing answer!

Time to put that right, then…

(I’m not sure I can do it all in one go, though, so here’s the first of many).

It can seem at first glance that ‘storytelling in business’ is merely a ‘fluffy nice-to-have, would be lovely in a boom-time, get real we’re up against it so let’s just focus here shall we?’ sort of a thing.

I think that’s profoundly underestimating the power of story and storytelling to change people’s decision making, emotional state and level of engagement.

And that’s important. Here’s a quote or two from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills:

“Employee engagement is a route to business success. An engaged workplace encourages commitment, energy and productivity from all those involved to help improve business performance.”

And get this:

“…engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones.”

And this (from  the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel Development)

“…just under a third of employees are actively engaged with their work.”

And what are the recommendations for improving engagement? From the BIS:

    •    Create and Communicate your Strategic Narrative
    •    Become a more engaging manager
    •    Establish an employee voice in your business
    •    Create and communicate business values with integrity.

And from the CIPD again:

    •    allowing people the opportunity to feed their views upwards is the single most important driver of engagement
    •    keeping employees informed about what is going on in the organisation is critical
    •    employees need to see that managers are committed to the organisation in order to feel engaged

So what can we do about it?

Well something seems to have gone wrong with our ‘old’ model of communication: we’re in the middle of an economic crisis; the people trusted to be custodians of the wealth of our nations have failed; less that a third of people in jobs are engaged in what they are doing.

It seems to me that our ‘old’ model has been based on the belief that our organisations - indeed our modern culture - are mechanistic and that ‘truth’ is enshrined in the dry, logical facts we present, and the more logical we are in our presentation then the more believable the ‘truth’ becomes:  the bullet point and death by slides carries the day (it’s not for nothing that they are called bullet points). It’s all too easy to stick with the party line and perpetuate the myths that underlie them.

And there’s our opportunity for the future.

If we can let go of the mechanistic and the facts for a bit, and instead understand that it’s about community then we can start to work with each other in new ways. The evolution of our communities arose not out of any disposition of facts, but out of a web of myth and legend and anecdote and the shared cultural wisdom enshrined in them.With that goes a way of communication that allows us to engage with the human beings around us in community (the clue is there in the word, I notice now) instead of as ‘human resources’ in a machine. If we can re-learn how to engage with our colleagues and economy as communities, and engage with the myths that underlie them, then people will engage with us. And when people engage with each other - when people turn up as individuals and show that they care - then extraordinary things can start to happen in communities. New stories start to emerge and new outcomes become possible.

And what lies at the heart of it all? The art and craft of the storyteller: the ability to draw upon the old stories, craft new ones and bring the telling alive for the communities that live and die by the stories they hold.

It was true around the communal hearth two thousand years ago, and it’s still true around the water cooler, the smokers’ back door and the boardroom table now.

We’ve just forgotten it, that’s all.