The Power of Story

by Jim Loehr

  Another executive made the small but significant change of scheduling meetings only at 11:30 AM or 4:30 PM, knowing that attendees were more likely to be focused and wanting to get out quickly, thereby increasing the chance that he would get out quickly. The alteration became a ritual; the actual time spent in meetings was cut by half, with no loss in effectiveness. Another team leader who felt that her existence during traditional business hours had been reduced largely to putting out one fire after another, e-mailed everyone in her company, “I will not be reading e-mails between 3 PM and 5 PM.” The result? She got far fewer e-mails, period, and “they know if they want to get hold of me between three and five, they have to call or walk to my office—and most of them don’t.” There was even an unexpected ancillary benefit: “It’s amazing how many things that were problems before, simply because they could be rattled off in an e-mail, are no longer problems now,” she said. “I don’t know if they solved them by themselves or they really weren’t problems to begin with, but now I get actual work done in the office, while I can feel my team’s confidence has grown noticeably, since they’re handling much more and don’t need always to fall back on me for support.” Instituting even the simplest, most obvious rituals—the low-hanging fruit, as it were—can yield profound results.

  Another client, a professor, realized that her morning routine—her husband would drive her and their son to school, then drop her off at the university, then go off to his work—was deficient on several counts. The drive to school was too quick to allow for any meaningful conversation with her son; she got no exercise sitting in the car; she had no time to herself. What she did, then, was to tweak it. She and her son walked to his school, during which time they had fifteen or twenty minutes to talk and make up haikus for each other about what they had done the previous day and they were both getting exercise (and she relieved her guilt that her husband had to play chauffeur every morning); then, once she’d dropped off her son, she took the bus to her office, instituting a rule that her bus reading could only be books she wanted to read for pure pleasure, not work-related material. Compared to how she used to feel when she set foot inside her office each morning, now she felt more physically, emotionally, mentally—and spiritually—alive.

  If some of these rituals were so simple and obvious, everyone would be doing them already. Indeed, the moderately creative innovations documented above are, I think, even more than that. I would venture so far as to call them “counterculture,” something that gets done almost subversively.

  Counterculture? Subversive? Isn’t that a tad melodramatic for describing relatively modest changes to our work lives? I don’t think so. I use such provocative language not so much to overpraise those who have the nerve and fortitude to do things differently, but to acknowledge that creating rituals anywhere—inside the office and out—really isn’t as easy as perhaps I’ve made it sound. Indeed, it is you who have to figure a way to rise above the typically staid, status quo nature of corporate culture. You have to exhibit the steadfastness and strength to change within a work environment that is unlikely to change, at least not in any dramatic way. Almost all of these rituals—which are premised, as is everything in this book, on the belief that it is the energy we give things that really matters, not the time—flouts that verse in the corporate bible that says “time is everything.” That bureaucratic belief doesn’t evaporate just because you’ve finally resolved to change. Your micromanaging boss is not suddenly going to disappear. He or she will never come to you in the morning to point out that it would be wise for you to eat a better breakfast so you’ll feel more energetic during the day. He or she will never tell you to change your work habits and look at the imbalance in your life because you’re a walking heart attack. The HR person will not e-mail you that it’s been eight months since you expressed to your wife that you love her.

  So it’s up to you.

  Once you understand the importance of creating rituals, of repeating them with consistency until they become habits, you will soon enough be able to maintain them easily—that is, without much conscious investment of energy. And the energy you were unwittingly depriving yourself of all this time will once again be yours.

  Beware: The new levels of engagement, wakefulness, and enthusiasm you experience may actually shock you.

  Let’s revisit the group to which I referred way back in Chapter 1—that staggeringly smart gathering of engineers employed by a giant telecom company. To refresh your memory: They complained of being stuck in a culture where—it felt to most of them—they could make no meaningful improvements to their three primary stories (which are almost everyone’s three primary stories): the story around family, the story around health, the story around work. Everything in the vast organization was entrenched, futile, impossible. The typical business day is so full of surprises and chaos, I couldn’t structure it if I wanted to…Exercising during the workday sends a bad message…My family just has to understand that this is what’s expected of me and everyone. The signature sentiment, as one person put it: It is what it is. Remarkably, almost none of these brilliant, accomplished people could at first see the extent to which their three stories were interconnected, or that their family story and their health story were influenced by their work story—not the other way around. They accepted, if not embraced, their situation even as its effect on their life was potentially devastating. Of the thirty-two engineers in the room, only four were “counterculture” enough to have instituted rituals to bring balance to each of their three stories, and balance to the three stories together.

  After getting mostly shoulder shrugs and the occasional protestation of paralysis from them, I asked the room what would happen if their boss walked in and tasked them to reinvent the corporate culture so that (a) it would remain as profitable—or more so—while (b) also allowing for more balance, connection, fulfillment. Did they think they could do that? I asked. Every arm shot up.

  They broke into groups and for the next thirty minutes I could practically hear brains humming. Suddenly, after the better part of a morning session in which I’d been frustrated at trying to draw anything out of this group of fine minds characterized mostly by cynicism and resignation, I couldn’t shut them up. It was a breathtaking display of solution thinking.

  To the problem “How do we make our lives healthier?” here are some rituals they came up with:

  Incorporate exercise into off-site meetings (7 AM walk/run as a group, tai chi class, etc.).

  Have more outdoor meetings, to be in the sun and raise serotonin levels.

  Have VPs who attended the program share nutrition and fitness information with admin assistants.

  Offer healthier food in vending machines.

  Offer fruit, nuts, or nutrition bars next to candy.

  Try to avoid lunchtime meetings so people can work out, have planned lunch away from the office.

  Encourage bicycles for transportation between buildings.

  Encourage more face-to-face meetings instead of e-mail (promotes movement and small “recovery breaks” throughout the day).

  Order fruit and protein instead of (or in addition to) cookies for afternoon snacks.

  To the question “How do we engage people better during meetings?” here are some of the rituals they came up with:

  For all meetings, provide clear statement of agenda/goals/ objectives.

  Start meetings at fifteen minutes after the hour so everyone is present.

  Make all hour meetings a half hour to ensure participants stay focused.

  “No laptop / no cell phone” rule at meetings.

  Offer healthier lunches and snacks during meetings (using nutritional guidelines set out by HPI).

  If agenda is complete, end meetings early.

  Hold “standing meetings”—where people literally stand during the meeting.

  To the problem “How can we promote greater efficiency in communication and work?”:

  Create “meeting-free” time zones (best
suggested time: Fridays, one PM to five PM) to allow people to focus.

  Ask VPs and participants in the HPI program to e-mail their organizations about changes they will be making; e-mail direct reports, to encourage key principles—face-to-face meetings, meeting guidelines, nutritional and fitness guidelines.

  Talk to direct reports about the need for mental and physical breaks.

  Demonstrate “top-down commitment”—senior management must model the changes in their own lives.

  Offer e-mail etiquette training to keep messages productive.

  Encourage more breaks (whole wheat pizza and non-alcoholic beer sponsored by a department and its customers).

  Offer senior management roundtable and random invites.

  Ask VPs to provide nutritional guidelines to secretaries.

  Schedule regular meetings with direct reports.

  These somewhat revolutionary (at least for the corporate world) rituals had the effect not only of producing greater harmony and engagement in the engineers’ various stories (health, family, work) but also encouraging them generally from becoming victimized by rote thinking, from feeling that it’s “the system,” unyielding and eternal, that is responsible for their poor health or attitude. No more victim-hood or martyrdom; by ritualizing positive behaviors, the individual takes control, evades corporate rules and mind-set, yet still keeps his or her job and usually thrives at it like never before. Inventive men and women, like those who came up with the insights just catalogued, have shown us that ritualizing even the most minor-seeming changes have a major impact. They score consistently higher than average on survey questions about happiness and engagement. Those who return to us after having been with us once, then making changes in their work and home life, invariably show marked improvement in their level of engagement. Why not? What they’re doing is writing a different story for themselves.

  So, did these rituals stick? Did individuals and departments and entire companies undergo real transformation?

  Absolutely. In about 80% of cases, clients make meaningful headway in one or more of their major stories, personally and professionally. For approximately one-third of our clientele, the changes are profound across the board.

  Certainly, nothing delights me more than seeing entire organizations make top-down reforms, whereby the institution implements rituals designed to help all of its workers, or at least those willing to take advantage. This is thanks, in part, to chief executives who have been through our program and understand that engagement is guaranteed to spur profitability, whereas simply increasing the time demands on employees guarantees nothing. A. G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, is one who realizes that organizing his company’s story around health can improve corporate morale and profitability. At his urging, they’ve begun to provide more nutritional food in their cafeteria, bottled water and healthy snacks for more frequent breaks, encourage “walking meetings,” discourage multi-tasking at meetings. For his company and others that have followed this path, numerous indices of success—including employee retention, lower absenteeism and lower “presenteeism”—are all improved. We’ve worked with many institutions sufficiently excited by the notion of improving employee engagement (and one of its trusty counterparts, greater corporate profitability) that they have made a systemic realignment. The CEO and board of San Juan (New Mexico) Regional Medical Center confronted the fact that they could not reasonably be the best care-givers possible if they violated their principles with their own workers (what kind of story is that?), so they changed the way they care for their staff and run their hospitals. After more than a hundred employees came through our program (more than 10% of their total workforce), they established an in-house program to simulate the Orlando course, so all their workers could benefit. Their trainers aren’t necessarily HR people but nurses, ER workers, department heads. They’ve enjoyed greater employee retention and morale, and the increased attention to energy and balance has translated into exceptional performance by the medical staff. (Can you name a corporate transformation that could have a more palpable, positive impact on its clientele?) Hospital employees who routinely worked twelve-hour shifts with no lunch, much less breakfast, now understand the imperative of smart eating, both for themselves and their patients. The hospital created its own state-of-the-art fitness and training facility—even bought their own BodPod, the next-generation body-fat measurement device—and opened it not just to staff but to the entire community. Because of the shocking rise in the incidence of childhood obesity and diabetes, New Mexico passed a law mandating better education for kids about nutrition and exercise; the medical center is footing the bill to send a dozen local teachers to Orlando to learn from our experience, and to help develop a fitness and nutrition program suitable for children and teenagers.

  At GlaxoSmithKline’s main training facility in North Carolina, all 1,200 members of its recent recruiting class are being trained in our basic principles of physical energy—eating, exercising, resting and recovering. At PepsiCo, recently departed CEO Steve Reinemund made energy management and storytelling core elements in their leadership program.

  At a five-hundred-person Southwest-based textile company we’ve worked with, the president, a dynamic leader and former college athlete now sixty pounds overweight, realized that two of his three most important stories—the one regarding his family (“I want to be a role model for my four sons and an extraordinary companion to my wife”) and the one regarding his work (“I want to ensure that over the next generation, we innovate and perform better than our company ever has”)—were guaranteed to fail because his third important story, the one regarding his health, would likely culminate in a premature heart attack or some other life-crippling condition. So he put on his executive calendar—“where everyone can see it”—the three-times-a-week aerobic workout he would be doing at the company gym. Not only did doing so make him accountable to himself but “it’s good for everyone else to see the role that exercise should have and can have—and maybe some of them will start to put it on their weekly schedules.” When he works out at home, it’s almost always with one of his sons.

  Whether it’s the individual or the company instituting rituals to improve their story, it’s advisable not to make fifty major changes at once; minor change is difficult enough. It’s often helpful just to start by adopting one small ritual and sticking to it. Take flossing, for example—yes, flossing. It’s got everything one wants from a life change: It’s targeted, manageable, and of course beneficial. Tell yourself that you will be religious about flossing for thirty to sixty days—the amount of time needed by most people before an activity becomes habitualized. Or take the habit, to some, of automatically putting one’s keys away when one walks in the door. In almost every workshop I’ll ask the room, “Who here never has trouble finding their keys?” Roughly half the group raise their hands. When I ask them how they’ve achieved this, the answer is always the same: They put their keys in exactly the same place, every single time. There is no sense of uncertainty surrounding their keys; when they need them later, there is no confusion, chaos, or lost time or energy. It’s something they long ago stopped thinking about at all. It’s automatic. If you’re in the half who are not in that habit, then choose a hook or dish or corner of a countertop to put your keys and make yourself do it every single time you walk in the house for three weeks. You’ll never again have to worry about lost keys. The energy and time that now disappears down a sinkhole while looking for them can then be used for something far more interesting and important.

  Of course, this is a very small example. But take the energy wasted on a bigger task, or multiply the time wasted by many such small examples, and you’ll free up phenomenal amounts of energy (and time) each day.

  By instituting rituals and following them, you satisfy the third and final rule of good storytelling: taking hope-filled action. Slowly, you disengage from faulty stories that don’t work, and begin investing energy in stories that do.

  Eleve
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  MORE THAN MERE WORDS: FINISHING THE STORY, COMPLETING THE MISSION

  This book is all about the metaphor of story, an abundantly powerful and rich one, so I’d be unwise to dilute it with a whole new metaphor. However, for the longest time—since my business partner, Jack Groppel, and I began our work as coaches and advisors to world-class athletes—we have used the concepts of “Ultimate Mission” and “Training Mission,” and have integrated them, as you’ve already seen here, into our work. In our workshops, we often extend this “mission” idea to include “Mission Critical,” “Mission Success,” and “Mission Failure,” terms more likely to evoke thoughts of NASA than of narrative.

  Convinced though I am that no metaphor compels and stays with us quite like the story metaphor, the “mission” idea has also served us and our clients well, and no contingent more than the athletes and business leaders with whom we’ve worked. After all, athletes and executives (to take two constituencies) are intensely goal-oriented creatures and so the NASA-tinged concepts of Mission Critical, Mission Success, and Mission Failure compel them. Just as the people in the space program have a mission—to conceive a plan, build the vehicle necessary to carry out the plan, launch it, have it accomplish what it’s supposed to (orbit, research, stay aloft for x days, repair a space station), and return safely—so, too, does an athlete (to come up with an ambitious but reachable goal, condition herself, train, compete, win), and so, too, must the business leader (to conceive of a discrete, ambitious, reachable plan within a timeframe, to gather the team, resources, and data needed to give herself the best chance to accomplish that goal, inspire the team, execute the plan). For anyone in the space program or for an individual athlete or business leader, mission success is non-negotiable. Nothing short of that suffices. Not accomplishing your mission means one thing only: You have failed.