Forget
the key messages: tell your employees a story instead.
Shayla Walmsley explains how to break from predictable,
yawn-making corporate presentations to make your internal
communications magic and memorable.
A PowerPoint presentation might make the rational case
for a course of action, but it won’t inspire anyone
to get out of their seats to pursue it.
Instead of designing a point-by-point argument why
employees should follow a particular strategy, engage
their emotions with a story that incorporates the company's
protagonists (leaders and employees), dramas (struggles
and antagonists) and victories (a return to profitability
or beating the competition).
Stories help employees remember. But they also help
make sense of experience and data. In short, they give
people a reason to care. But how do you tell a good
story?
Use your imagination
Borrowed from brand marketing, corporate storytelling
replicates how human beings think. It acknowledges difficulty
(fierce competition, the need to do more with fewer
resources) and helps employees to envisage the company’s
future.
Go over to the dark side
The point of stories is that they allow employees to
face antagonists (the need to do with fewer resources,
competitors) without disloyalty or despair. Try to play
down the antagonists and employees won’t be inspired
to take them on. Instead, embrace antagonism as part
of the corporate story.
The essence of a narrative is the clash between subjective
expectations and objective reality. Focus on what employees
need to do to overcome antagonists: take risks, work
with fewer resources or make difficult decisions.
If you have a corporate myth, use it
Iconic companies are like iconic brands: both use charismatic
images and simple stories. So pare the premise of your
story down to a simple truth. Nike’s myth is individual
achievement through perseverance. (‘Just do it.’)
What’s yours?
Hold out for a hero
To capture employees’ imagination, make them heroes
– or at least part of something heroic. British
corporate Virgin tells a story of plucky eccentricity
taking on big firms in markets ‘where the customer
has been ripped off’. The Levi’s jeans brand
tells a story of rugged (but right-thinking) rebels.
Make sense
To work, stories need to show the cause and effect,
as well as simply before and after. Focus on coherence.
Show how, for instance, rationalisation leads to freed-up
resources leads to investment leads to growth. Employees
need to know that the expectation you set up at the
beginning of the story will be satisfied at the end.
Keep it real
Smart employees are natural sceptics. The hyperbole
pouring out of press offices (liberally sprinkled with
‘exciting’ initiatives and ‘unique’
products) is one reason why all stakeholders, but especially
employees, are suspicious of stories.
Trust the teller and the tale
Use in-house story-tellers – but only if they
have a strong enough personality to spin a credible
yarn. A story of passion for the business won’t
be credible coming from a back-office manager with a
low-key delivery.
Above all, walk the talk. Companies still have to deliver
more than a story. The reason corporate story-telling
works is because it grows out of what employees believe
about the company; to remain credible, it has to reflect
the reality. When the corporate story says one thing
(cut costs to survive) and the management does another
(three more executive jets), that really sounds like
a fairy-tale.
Shayla Walmsley is a Saffron
House Consultancy partner specialising in corporate
journalism and internal communications. She contributes
to a wide range of employee media as well as The Sunday
Times, The Banker and European CEO. She also develops
tools for business understanding and high level intelligence
reports.
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