Inventing the Future: The Leader as a Story Teller ™

How leaders can construct an authentic organisational narrative

Why does Coke taste better when you know its Coke? What did stories tell us about Enron and the Subprime credit crunch before they tanked? Are Dilbert’s Kafkaesque bureaucratic mission statements more genuine than yours? How did the Australian Aboriginals sustain their environment for tens of thousands of years without a government or the internet? Why are many of today’s leaders stuck in a void between Facebook and indigenous cultures? What stories did the last of the Easter Island leaders tell as they cut down their final tree? Why is checking morning emails more dangerous than smoking marijuana? What can a child snowboarder teach us about leadership?

Effective leaders have a clear picture about their basic purpose and their teams share a common set of values, which provides a vision and drives actions towards high performance. The stories leaders share about the organization reveal the predominant corporate culture. The deliberate use of story can also be instrumental in shaping the culture. By identifying the stories people tell and analysing these, it is possible for leaders  to gain an understanding of significant experiences and issues that may need to be acknowledged and managed. Leaders must be responsible for creating stories that express hopes and desires, based on the needs identified and values and vision for the future, and this in turn will help to transform organizational culture. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

As information becomes a commodity and today’s excellence becomes tomorrow’s norm, companies will have to understand the power of “story” in their organization to move forward. Leaders must ensure that every person in the company knows, understands and can live this “story”. Story telling can significantly influence success, morale and direction of a company. The story telling leader will recognize that delivering good generic customer service will no longer be enough to distinguish a business, and that in order to deliver consistent experiences throughout the organization, every individual will need to understand the important role story telling takes and live by it. Case studies include the Four Seasons Hotel, Enron, Singapore Airlines, Lonely Planet and the American Idol franchise.

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