CORPORATE STORYTELLING:
Discovering Fire for the Second Time
Vol. 8, No. 2, 2008

Publisher: Evelyn Clark
evelyn@corpstory.com http://www.corpstory.com

(c) Clark & Company 2008

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“A leader’s/manager’s job is to rekindle the fire inside every person.”
--Dr. Michael Kroth
University of Idaho

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IN THIS ISSUE

1. Banking on Storytelling

2. Filling the Talent Gap: A “Perfect Storm” Brewing?

3. Stories: The Heartbeat of a Company

4. Corporate Storytelling Live

1. Banking on Storytelling

Storytelling may be the latest “buzzword” in the business world, as one of Evelyn’s clients asserted recently. And the fact that even conservative bankers are adopting the practice adds to the growing evidence that storytelling has established firm footing as a well-established, proven business tool.

Cascade Bank, a regional organization north of Seattle, is one example of how storytelling can be applied in business. On the bank’s Web site, expertly crafted customer stories are posted to demonstrate how the bank tailors its services tailored to business customers’ needs. They begin by featuring interesting background tales about the customers themselves and how they started their businesses; then the stories segue into an explanation of how the bank’s services meet the customer’s needs--in part by working with customers whose values are aligned with Cascade’s values.

To see how Cascade Bank has woven customers’ Success Stories into its business services, go to: http://www.cascadebank.com/businessbanking/capital_architects.cfm

2. Filling the Talent Gap: A “Perfect Storm” Brewing?

Once you have your stories together, who do you tell them to besides employees and other current stakeholders? Certainly, telling a powerful story about your organization is an advantageous recruitment tool in a globally competitive marketplace. But how do you find the talent you want? “At most multinationals, a host of problems in recruiting and developing talent are converging to create a perfect storm — a crisis that could derail the company's growth strategies,” according to the authors of an article in MIT Sloan Review of Management.

“To meet the challenge,” say Douglas A. Ready and Jay A. Conger, “companies must rethink how they hire, train and reward their employees, placing those tasks at the heart of their business plans.”

3. The Heartbeat of a Company

Once you have the right staff, how do you retain them? One way is to keep them engaged by treating them as the important members of the team that they, in fact, are.

As promised in the last issue, we’re including a link to a video produced by Germany-based BASF—The Chemical Company as part of a series that marked the company’s 140th anniversary on April 6, 2005. (Carol Sizmur, Senior Manager of Corporate Messages, led a roundtable discussion on this event and showed another BASF story video at the European Storytelling Congress in Salzburg, Austria, last November, where Evelyn conducted the master class.)

“The Heartbeat of a Company” is the title of the story project, which was beyond successful! The goal was to capture the essence of the company by relating 140 personal experience stories from the workforce of 95,000. Altogether the company has published a total of 292 stories that embody the multi-cultural, multi-faceted face of the company through the words of employees and retirees around the globe. As explained on the BASF Web site, “Individually, every one reflects a small facet of BASF's corporate personality; together they help to paint a collective portrait of BASF.”

The company also makes effective use of other online technologies, include iPod broadcasts and RSS feeds that tell the company’s story. To explore the wonderful applications of online storytelling, go to: http://www.my-basf-ory.basf.com/cms/basf/en/dt.jsp

4. Corporate Storytelling Live

Since the last issue of Corporate Storytelling, Evelyn has been on the road several times. In Vienna, Austria, she led a one-day workshop for the communication team at the Bank of Austria (now a part of UniCredit Group, based in Milan, Italy). She helped communication professionals from 23 countries in Central and Eastern Europe tell the story of their acquisitions by UniCredit Group and showed them how to manage communications in a rapidly changing and, in many cases, challenging environment.

Then she was on her way to Las Vegas to lead a three-day session as part of a regional conference for United Way, one of several United Way conferences where she will lead programs this year. Agency executives and resource managers learned how to update their stories and tailor them to a variety of audiences through a wide range of print and digital media. The comprehensive agenda generated a lively exchange of ideas and gave attendees a rich knowledge base of resources to help them increase their effectiveness when they returned to their offices.

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