Why Storytelling Is the Key to Internal Business Alignment
Think back to team meetings you've had where an idea was brought to the table to discuss it and gain support for it. Without the entire team pointing in the same direction, there’s no alignment, and the idea can’t move forward.
Alignment is about more than just getting people on the same page. It’s about moving forward together. It goes beyond the “what” and the “how” of what we do and is the outcome of what drives us in the first place. How we do things and what we bring to the world is fueled by our sense of purpose — what we want, what we believe in, what we think is right, what we think is wrong, why we think things that way —and our why is that driving force.
Research shows that companies with purpose — with a strong “why” — are more successful. When a company communicates its “why” through story, customers and employees stick around because they believe in what they're doing together; conversely, they fragment when they don’t.
What is your shared sense of purpose?
Advice on political discussion or discourse involves finding common ground: identifying something you can agree on (the purpose) and then building from there. The same holds true for all human interactions.
Work culture is closely aligned with purpose and the “why” — why that company exists, why they do what they do, and how that manifests within the organization (a.k.a. culture). As a CEO, we want everybody to pull in the same direction. As individuals, we want to feel safe bringing ideas to the table to have our opinions heard and contribute to the company's direction.
So, how do you communicate purpose? It’s not through facts, statistics, or statements of capabilities — it’s through the power of story.
For example, take a startup consisting of a passionate group of people whom all believe in changing the world. While it's likely the team naturally and implicitly has come from places where you all have that shared vision, that isn't guaranteed forever.
That’s because as an organization finds success, it grows and adds new people and products to the mix. This can dilute its sense of purpose (in a best-case scenario) — or worst-case, completely lose any sense of focus.
Alternatively, the founder or CEO may not take people on the journey within the organization and instead rely on leadership from a power perspective:
“I'm the boss. It's my company, my idea, and this is what's happening.”
When that mindset happens, you don't create a shared sense of purpose –– and without a shared sense of purpose, you seize up.
‘Tuning up’ the mechanics of your organization with a shared purpose
Unlocking that problem and discovering a company’s sense of purpose requires tuning up the organization, like a mechanical watch or a car. To do so, we help leaders and their teams answer questions like:
Are we still clear on what our sense of purpose is?
Where are we going?
How have things changed with our company products and people?
Is our story the same story that it was a few years ago?
I'm a big fan of saying a leader has one thing and one thing only: at least one follower. If people follow you, you're a leader — but a true leader can shape others’ lives and take them on a shared journey. Being a true leader isn’t reserved for just senior managers or CEOs; you can manage up or lead from below.
So how do you get people to have a shared sense for something?
Consider this: you’re sitting with a group of friends in a coffee shop, and the idea of going to a newly-released sci-fi movie comes up. Everybody jumps at the opportunity to go, but what if somebody in the group absolutely despises sci-fi? That group will not watch a sci-fi movie if that person hates it.
Now you might think, “Oh, well, hold on a second, Matthew. If we convince them that they'll like this movie, they'll actually want to go see it.”
Exactly. But how do you convince them?
You start by thinking about what the person cares about and what motivates them (which is directly linked to purpose). Maybe they don't care about the sci-fi genre, but this is a sci-fi thriller, and they love thrillers. Or, maybe there's a beautiful love story within the movie, and they are a sucker for romances. However you frame it, you are looking for something they care about to find a shared sense of purpose.
The same goes for your organization. If you've got a brilliant idea, get everybody within that immediate sphere of influence first before going out to the team, organization, division, and company — then, you can all move in that direction and get aligned on a shared purpose.
Communicating purpose through the power of story
Story is the best tool for communicating your shared purpose. However, telling the story is only one part of what “story” is. You get to know people through story because each of us makes our own. There are things we want, roadblocks that stand in the way, and a solution to untangle that knot and move forward.
These things are at the core of The Power of 3D StoryTM: Desire, Difficulty, and Denouement (a fancy French word for “untangling the knot”). What did you do? How did you do it? What products did you use? How, what help did you have? What processes did you use? What were the outcomes? What were the measurable results? What were the emotional consequences?
Story is a vital part of how we see the world and communicate. But it's not just about telling a story; it's about how you approach storytelling.
What we've found that's powerful is workshopping. In our client workshops, we go through our Storytelling for Action™ program and use our frameworks for storytelling to capture, consolidate, and clarify the elements of the story. A big part of this is our TRIPS Storytelling™ session which includes an analysis of the following:
Transformation
Reasons to Believe
Innovation (your big innovative idea)
Problems standing in the way
Stories that represent all these elements
You can get more details on our TRIPST Storytelling™ methodology here, but by going through this process, you can get on the same page and come up with a shared story at a team, department, or company level.
Going further together with story-driven internal alignment
One of the things I love about what we do isn't just the strategic narratives we develop. No matter how much a client loves those deliverables the thing that always stands out is also the biggest thing we get referred on, and that is: “the Go Narrative team helped us get aligned in a way that we've been unable to do and faster than we've ever imagined possible.”
In summary
Building that shared story is all about working with your team to understand the structure of that “big story,” — the strategic narrative — and the existing narratives in the world that your strategic narrative is interacting with. When you do that, you create a shared sense of purpose and, ultimately, a shared story.
Ready to start leveraging storytelling tools and frameworks to deepen consumer and employee relationships? Book a complimentary consultation with Go Narrative to learn more about how we can help you craft stories that strengthen brand trust and drive results.