and understand. Second, this document was no John Grisham novel. It was dry, procedural, and written in the legal language of attorneys. Third, the company’s leadership had an audacious goal for this document; its purpose was to affect a major change in how each individual in the company behaved when faced with an ethical dilemma. Because this company had watched competitors crumble under the weight of ethics scandals, its leaders had a high degree of urgency to protect the firm.
To save time and money, the leadership team was tempted to just e-mail the document to all employees, support it as best they could in meetings and company communications, and hope for the best. But they knew better than to do that. They knew that if the employees didn’t truly understand the contents of the document, why it was important, and how to behave differently, the firm would be at much greater risk.
So what did they do? They told stories. They told stories of partners asking managers to bury the hours from one client into another client’s fees. They told stories of managers asking clients for inappropriate favors. They told stories of analysts and consultants photo copying and sharing the answer key to continuing education classes. They told stories of clients taking partners to gentlemen’s clubs by the airport. They told stories of administrative assistants sharing inside information to stock-trading friends at a backyard barbecue.
These stories were sent to all 33,000 employees. But they didn’t stop there. In the middle of each story, they would ask employees: What would you do if you were in this situation? They asked employees to think through how they would address the partner in the elevator or the client who suddenly pulls into the parking lot of a gentlemen’s club. They also provided employees with a problem-solving model and asked them to apply it to all of these situations.
And what happened to the 65-page document that outlined all of the policies and procedures? Was it a waste of time and money? Not at all. The key points of the document drove the creation of these fictional, but real-life stories. The stories connected back to the document and showed why certain behaviors are unethical. The document became a key supporting resource instead of the main event.
To date, the company has been very successful in helping employees understand how to take action with the ethical problem-solving model. The company also got an unexpected bonus: it is now winning large clients based on its unique and marketable approach to solving this complex problem. In fact, the company’s employees are talking about the stories. They are repeating the stories at work and telling their clients about their unique experience. Because of the success they have had with ethical decision making, the company is now looking at how to apply stories to other challenges, such as improving its client service, increasing sales of large engagements, and building leadership skills.
In short, the company turned a dry, boring e-mail into stories and the stories into results. Stories became the link that turned routine compliance into an experience.
As evidenced from examples like the one above, the use of stories as a leadership tool is gaining recognition and getting traction. Tom Peters is talking about it. Harvard Business Review is writing about it. Academia is studying it. And, increasingly, business leaders are learning and using it.
Stories are in the middle of an important migration from being considered too folksy or “soft” for business to being discussed as serious leadership tools in the very serious pages of publications like The Economist, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. What these publications and many other business leaders and academics are finding is that our messages and communications, even inside our own organizations, now have to compete with so many more sources of information. So stories, after spending many years being ridiculed as “soft” or “fluff,” are gaining respect as tools that just might help these leaders get performance enhancements to stick.
“Many true statements are too long to fit on a PP (PowerPoint) slide, but this does not mean we should abbreviate the truth to make words fit. It means we should find a better way to make presentations.”
– EDWARD TUFTE5
Consider for a moment another business tool that was once widely criticized and often referred to as “a toy” by serious business leaders. This tool was ridiculed by much of the media as being unfit for serious work. It was thought of as a poor alternative to the much larger, more powerful tools used by successful organizations. And it was thought of as a plaything that only kids would use and enjoy. This tool is the PC, and it is now as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. No serious business would last a day without the PC. (As a former IBM salesperson selling midrange systems before the widespread adoption of the PC, I too was guilty of referring to the PC as a toy.)
It is curious that stories are gaining traction now. Many of the world’s top business schools like Kellogg, Harvard, and the University of Chicago use stories to teach their students complex topics. But instead of stories, these schools use the term case studies. However, there is an important difference between case studies and stories.
The difference between case studies and stories is the same as the difference between narrative and stories. A narrative is the explanation of a sequence of events or actions that happened to someone or something. A story, by contrast, adds a layer to narrative by including elements that make people care about the action, such as how someone in the story was affected, the emotions involved, and possibly even the “values” of the people involved in the story.
A CASE STUDY IN STORYTELLING
While attending business school in 1993, I took a class called “Entrepreneurial Finance,” taught by a smart, imposing professor named Steve Rogers. If Professor Rogers was anything, he was intimidating. He knew his subject cold, and he loved to find out if you knew the subject as well as he did by calling on you and sticking with you until he had wrung you dry. One night, Steve had put only one foot into the classroom when he loudly demanded of some poor, lost soul, “ROBERT, TELL ME ABOUT THE CASE!!!” As Robert’s life undoubtedly flashed before him, he began to mutter some unintelligible grunts and groans about the entrepreneur who, in the case study, had just formed a company and raised a couple million dollars in loans by mortgaging everything he owned. He told of how the man, married and a new father, had given his creditors personal guarantees on his cars and his house in order to finance his business.
As Steve and Robert unfolded the case study, it quickly became a series of events. The guy raised money, hired few employees, started to build a product, and began to sell it. We dug into the numbers and the competitors for this new business and the discussion became very dry—until Steve started to add color to the case. He asked us: “So, if you were this guy, what would you be saying to your wife around the dinner table as your expenses are piling up and it’s becoming harder to make payroll? How would you feel looking at your little daughter when you know your house is on the line for this business?”
At that moment, we began to look at this case differently. Suddenly, we were in the action, and we had an emotional connection to this entrepreneur. The case came alive and we started to see it as a story that could end badly. That night, Steve taught us some important lessons about how to (and how not to) finance a new business. More than 12 years on, I don’t remember the name of the company, the industry, or the other characters. But I remember the lessons of the story. And that’s the only thing that counts.
This difference between case studies and stories is precisely what great teachers, doctors, and business leaders understand so well. You bring case studies “back to life” by adding the details that connect to what we care about, transforming an otherwise dry sequence of events. As the case unfolds in front of you, a story develops when you talk about what the characters were feeling—what scared them and what exhilarated them. That layer of extra information makes all the difference. It is what helps us engage with the content and what helps us remember.
“I
