Not only was the Cirque du Soleil a huge business success, but also the story about the Cirque du Soleil was a huge success for Kim and Mauborgne in terms of communicating their complex idea of a blue ocean strategy. The story helped sell more than 1 million copies of their book and communicate their strategic concept to a vast audience.
The story they told contrasted what would have happened without the change idea with what actually happened. It compares the conventional strategy of competing with the existing dominant players in a shrinking industry (a “red ocean” of sharks) with the successful “blue ocean” strategy of creating a new market where there is practically no competition. Why swim in the red ocean with all those sharks when you can have the blue ocean all to yourself? It is like night and day. Black and white. The contrast is painted in such stark terms that everyone can grasp that what is being discussed is different. The contrast enhances the probability of communicating the change idea.
Strip Out Unnecessary Detail
A springboard story is told in a minimalist fashion. It's quite unlike the way that anyone would tell a story for the purpose of entertainment.
In this respect, the springboard story is a descendant of the minimalist tradition of storytelling of which the biblical parables and the European folktale laid the foundation. In these stories, there is what Max Luthi calls “depthlessness.”10 The persons depicted in these stories have no psychological richness or complexity. The subjective plane of the feelings and viewpoints of the characters is limited. The story typically has none of the sights and sounds and smells that Aristotle's Poetics considered essential for creating the reality of the story.
In springboard storytelling, there are good reasons for this strategy. In the first place, the listeners in a business setting don't have time or the patience to listen to a fully detailed account of the situation. More important, the minimalist style leaves plenty of space for the audience to imagine a new story in their own context. In fact, it's the listener's story that is crucial because it springs the listener into a new future.
Thus, for each member of the audience, there are two listeners: the physical person you see in front of you and a second listener known as “the little voice in the head.” You know what the little voice in the head is. And if you're asking yourself, “What on earth do you mean by ‘the little voice in the head’?” that is exactly the little voice that I mean!
You are talking to the audience about one subject. But the little voice in the head of each listener may well be focusing on something else, such as: I've got all these problems back in my office, my in-box is filling up, I've got e-mail to answer. If only I could slip out of here! So the little voice may be distracting the listener from paying real attention to what you're saying.
The conventional view of communications is to ignore the little voice in the head and hope that the message will somehow get through. Unfortunately, the little voice often doesn't stay quiet. Often the listener is getting a new and possibly unwelcome perspective on what the speaker is talking about.
So you do something different. You don't ignore the little voice in the head. Instead you work in harmony with it. You engage it by giving it something to do. You tell a story in a way that elicits a second story from the little voice in the head.
When this occurs, the little voice is already racing ahead to figure out how to implement the change idea in the organization. And because the listeners have created the idea, they like it. It's their own wonderful idea!
And this can happen very quickly. The first time I noticed this was back in April 1996 in the World Bank.
After pounding the corridors and talking to anyone I could find about the strange new idea of knowledge management, I finally got ten minutes in front of the change management committee of the World Bank. This was a committee of the most senior managers, the ones who were supposed to be orchestrating change in the organization. It wasn't obvious to anyone that this was what they were doing, but certainly they were an obstacle on my path to persuading the World Bank to adopt knowledge management as a strategy. Up to this point, no one in senior management was willing to give me the time of day, let alone pay attention to my idea.
So when I got ten minutes in front of the change management committee of the World Bank, I told the Zambia story. And what happened? Two of those executives raced up to me after the presentation and started asking why wasn't I doing this or that to get the program off the ground. And I thought to myself: This is a very strange conversation. Up ‘til ten minutes ago, these people weren't willing to give me the time of day, and now I'm not doing enough to implement their idea. This is horrible! They have stolen my idea! And then I had a happier thought. How wonderful! They have stolen my idea. Now they own the idea. It's become their idea! And indeed, it was one of those executives who was able to get to the president of the World Bank and explain to him that knowledge management was the very future of the organization.
What makes the minimalist story so powerful is that it resolves a fundamental paradox of transformation. Transformation must be both personal to all participants and centrally directed in order to be coherent.
Thus, on one hand, everyone involved needs to internalize the change. All the participants must undergo a kind of identity transition. Getting thousands of people to move across that threshold is the hardest task facing a leader aiming to spark transformational change. Yet on the other hand, if the change is to have any coherence, there must be some way of achieving a common direction. Without some capacity to set direction, the transformation risks splintering into multiple factions.
The paradox is that transformation must proceed with some central direction and yet ultimately individuals must make this decision for themselves.11 A springboard story told in a minimalist fashion resolves the paradox by creating a vehicle that encourages listeners to craft similar stories, each of which is the listener's own story. The result is personalized coherence across large numbers of people.
Have a Happy Ending
Here's some unusual news. Hollywood is right! Yes, in a story aimed at sparking action, you have to have a happy ending. Springboard stories thus differ from knowledge-sharing stories, which tend to have a negative tone. But to spark action, the positive tone of the story is an essential element. And not just a positive tone but an authentically positive tone. This isn't spin. This isn't about whitewashing problems. This is about telling a story that is at once authentically true and ends well: this is the way it actually happened.
Thus, when Adrian Hosford had to communicate why British Telecom, a private organization, should be devoting a large sum of money—23 million pounds sterling—for social and environmental causes, he used the following example of the impact of the program, with an authentically happy ending:
On the 25th December 2001, an operator with the charity Childline took this call. We'll call the child Julie—although this is not her real name.
Julie is thirteen. She's ringing from a payphone, from a back street in Deptford. She is very upset.
It's Christmas Day and Julie is desperate, in tears. She feels that nobody cares about her.
Julie lives in a children's home. She's run away. She hates being on her own—hates it “in there.”
Julie received a Christmas present. Just the one.
She says, “No one cares. I'm on my own.”
She says, “I feel like jumping in the river so nobody will find me.”
The operator and Julie talk. They discuss what might happen after Christmas when Julie is due to move in with new foster parents.
Julie accepts that things might improve, although she's worried they won't like her.
The Childline operator spends thirty-five minutes talking to Julie.
After thirty-five minutes Julie says she feels better and is going to return to the care home.
The postscript is dated April 2002.
Julie rings Childline to say thank you for being there and listening when she desperate
ly needed to be heard.
Julie says she is getting on well with her new foster parents.
For now at least, Julie is happy.
Julie's story is rooted in communications breakdown. It shows very clearly that everybody needs to have the ability and means to communicate effectively. Because everyone—and particularly young people—deserves to be heard. Everybody wants to be understood; to have their contribution recognized.
Ultimately everyone wants to make a difference.
So, what if BT could help everyone benefit from improved communication—starting with young people who are in real distress? Because although Childline does an incredible job, handling three thousand calls every day, at the moment twelve thousand more calls go unanswered. That's 80 percent. How many children like Julie do you think go unheard in those twelve thousand unanswered calls? This is a tragedy which we have to fix, urgently, and with the help of our customers and staff, we can fix it. What if we were to support Childline, so they could answer every call from every child that needs to be heard?
What if we were to work in the education system to teach basic human skills of talking and listening in thousands of schools, to millions of children?
And support teachers by deploying thousands of BT volunteers to use their communication skills in the classroom, and by volunteering in the community?
What if we were to work in some of our country's most economically deprived areas—to see what can be achieved when we act to energize communication within communities?
And what if BT were to take its responsibility to society seriously, and practice what it preaches by using better communications to run its business more effectively, at lessa cost to the environment, and to engender a better work-life balance for its employees?
The story was successful in communicating to a wide range of British Telecom's managers and staff, as well as outside stakeholders, the rationale for British Telecom's social and environmental program. British Telecom calculated that its social and environmental performance accounts for more than a quarter of its overall business and reputation, which is the second biggest factor driving change in its customer satisfaction rates.12
It might sound melodramatic to ask for an ending that makes people want to stand up and cheer. But for stories aimed at inspiring action, there are solid reasons for insisting on it.
If I tell a story with a happy ending, the limbic system kicks in with something called an “endogenous opiate reward” for the human brain, the cortex. It pumps a substance called dopamine into the cortex. Basically it puts the human brain on drugs. This leads to a mild sense of euphoria, the kind of warm and floaty feeling that you have after a wonderful movie. This is the perfect frame of mind to be thinking about a new future, a new identity for yourself or your organization.
This is not to say that all stories need a happy ending. Stories to share knowledge typically have a negative tone because they deal with issues and problems and difficulties. Other stories—for example, stories to communicate to transmit values—can be either positive or negative in tone: the tone is less relevant because those stories are not aimed at getting people into rapid action. But if your goal is inspiring people to action, then Hollywood is right: you have to have a happy ending.
Link the Change Idea to the Story
Finally, it's critical to link the change idea to the story with one of these magic phrases:
“What if … ”
“Just imagine … ”
“Just think … ”
If you don't have any link at all, then the listeners are likely to say, “So what?” They may ask, “Why do you bother us with the anecdote about a health worker in Zambia? What relevance was that to us? We don't work in Zambia. We don't work in health.” And they are likely to miss the point.
So you need to give them a hint, a suggestion, some guide-rails as to where to go, as to what's the point. But if you are too directive, it will backfire. For example, suppose you tell your springboard story and then go on:
This is what that story means for you. This is what it means for you tomorrow morning when you go into the office. You need to do the following sixteen things…
Of course, if you say anything like that, you are back in command-and-control mode. You will have lost all of the energizing impact of narrative. You will have switched from the listener's story back to your own ideas, your own decisions, your own instructions, and so the listener becomes another passive disgruntled employee, waiting for the next management directive. Ramming home the point is counterproductive.
So how do you give enough guidance but not too much? These phrases—“What if…” and “Just think…,” and “Just imagine…”—reflect a middle way of neither too little nor too much guidance. They're like Goldilocks's porridge: just right.
By asking, “What if?” you are inviting the audience to dream. You're issuing an invitation to imagine. The listeners have to make the decision as to whether to dream and whether to decide to live that dream. You point them in the direction. And with luck, some or even most of the audience will dream the dream and start planning their own implementation of it.
There's an old Brazilian proverb that when you dream alone it's just a dream, but when you dream together, it's already the beginning of a new reality. So these little phrases have just the right balance to inspire audience to dream together: “What if…” and “Just imagine…” and “Just think…”
Just think what it would be like if this incident was happening here, not just in this instance, but all across our division. All across the region. All across the company. All across the world.
You're inviting the audience to make a leap of the imagination—and they are usually willing to do it if you provide them with the right guide-rails for them to dream.
Avoiding the Main Pitfalls
The elements of the springboard story look relatively obvious and straightforward when expressed as performance criteria. But implementing these elements in performance isn't as easy as it seems.
Embody the Right Idea
You might think that being clear on the change they are pursuing would be something that leaders routinely do. And yet on a daily basis, the business world is full of CEOs who are telling stories that don't embody the change idea they are trying to communicate. Here's a spectacular example:
On September 4, 2001, Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced her plan to buy Compaq for the equivalent of some $25 billion, which was a significant premium over the market price at the time. For two days, Fiorina talked to the major financial institutions in New York and Boston explaining the reasons for the acquisition. The implications of whether Wall Street accepted her proposal were significant. Unfortunately for Fiorina, the news on September 6, 2001, wasn't good. The headline in the Wall Street Journal summed it up: “Wall Street still doesn't buy Fiorina's story.” In just two days the market had erased some $13 billion off the combined share value of the two companies. Eventually, five months later, after a massive and divisive proxy battle, Fiorina won a slim majority of shareholders in favor of her plan.
What went wrong? In retrospect, it's clear from an interview that Fiorina gave on CNN on the afternoon of September 4, 2001, that one factor was telling the wrong story. In those first few critical hours when the merger was being presented to the world, interviewer Lou Dobbs asked a simple question: “Why is HP taking over Compaq?” Here is what Fiorina said:
Well, I think, as you point out, we've been thinking about this for some time, beginning with the recognition that our companies shared a strategic vision. And I think Michael [Capellas, CEO of Compaq] and I first began to figure out twelve to eighteen months ago both when we would get together in industry kinds of events, and share notes but also importantly, as we watched each other move in the marketplace. Then what we saw was, each company making similar technology decisions. Both companies have signed up for the Itanium platform with Intel. We've also made some similar organizational moves. Bo
th companies have organized themselves in similar ways about how to go to market and in product development. And we have cultures that have a lot in common, particularly around engineering discipline and a spirit of invention and innovation.
The gist of Fiorina's story was that HP and Compaq were two very similar companies. Her argument for the merger of the two companies was that they would enjoy significant synergy, which justified a premium over the current share price. Now, corporate synergy doesn't come from partners being alike. It comes from firms being different, so that the sum of the two firms together is greater than the sum of their parts. The more alike the firms are, the less likelihood of synergy there is, and the less reason to pay the premium that HP was offering to make the deal work.
The Leader's Guide to Storytelling Page 9
