Less PowerPoint, more stories

Stories travel better across the organisation than clinical PowerPoint presentations. They have the power to create organisational glue. Switching to stories and slide-less presentations is a small revolution in itself, but with great positive consequences.

Stories are the natural vehicle of learning. Stories form the basis of the world’s religions; they are used to pass on traditions; they are the cohesive force between people in any community from remote Polynesia to suburban London, and they provide a comfortable closure of a child’s day at bedtime. Stories create literature, plays, a Hollywood script and they’re even at the heart of everyone’s recollection of events in old age. Stories define political and geographical boundaries. They induce laughter, fear, hope and revulsion. Stories make the news every day. Stories don’t need to be defined, we all are a story.

In organisational life, we also have stories: heroic stories, gossip, talk about people’s behaviours, market adventures… But we have completely underestimated their power and have favoured the clinical set of bullet points and PowerPoint slides. The language of bullet point lists is factual and descriptive. People remember stories more easily. They have more difficulty remembering the six strategic objectives and the ten core values presented on screen. Because you can’t encapsulate a story in a bullet point list on a PowerPoint slide, stories have not been given the same status as other ‘presentational’ forms.

• If you want to ask people for resilience, you would be better off telling a story about somebody’s resilience in dealing with a difficult customer.
• If you want to describe accountability, you would be better off telling a story about somebody taking action in a way you can only call accountable.
• If you want to tell your people that innovation is key to the organisation, you should tell a story about a group of people that systematically asked, “Can it be done differently?” and in doing so came up with a different solution to a recurrent problem.
• If you want to declare honesty, integrity and collaboration your three key values, you’d better have good stories about what each of these ‘things’ look like when practiced, because this is the best way for people to remember honesty, integrity and collaboration.

The best stories in organisational life are the ones that:

• Engage people: those listening can relate to them; the stories may even feel ‘transferable’ (”The story is not about my department, but I can find commonalities”).
• Describe behaviour: they mention what people did (or didn’t do) in a way that can be modelled. (”Aha! If this is what it is, then it is about…”)
• Are ‘sticky’: they ‘stick’ to people’s minds, making it easy to remember (”I remember, it’s simple enough.”)
• Mobilise people: to act, create ‘buy in’ and show more and more possibilities for everybody to explore (”Aha, we could do the same or we could try out B or C.”)

Stories are the main organisational glue and storytelling is an art intrinsically linked to good leadership. There are lots of things that need a PowerPoint presentation, but many more that don’t. Think of how you act outside your management life. How many times have you used PowerPoint to tell a friend about something? We have converted organisational life into a long ‘presentation’ and we have somewhat lost the ability to engage people the way stories do. But we can remedy that!

• Try giving your next presentation without slides. If you want to go even further, restrict slides to particular presentations, for example for financial data only.
• Try to seek/create stories that explain different wanted behaviours.
• Ask your people to spot and share stories about colleagues dealing with customers.
• Create a competition for good/best stories.
• Practice verbal presentations, asking people for five-minute summaries or updates.

It is something to practice and inject into the organisation and the best way to do so is by example so that it can be imitated virally. Stories have great power to transform the way we learn inside the firm! But it is very easy to revert back to your default position of using stacks of slides. At one of my presentations on storytelling I used lots of slides to explain what storytelling was! My audience laughed and pointed out how I was contradicting myself. Now that’s a story I will always remember!

Organisational life is not a presentation, it’s a conversation. Switch from presentation mode to conversation mode.

Imagine a success story that you would like to hear about your organisation. Then imagine the same success presented to you in bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. Choose!

Tell a story to describe strategy, to explain desirable behaviours, to illustrate the kind of customer interaction that you want.

Bring as much storytelling to the organisational/business life as you probable use in your ‘other life’ and enjoy it!

Copyright © - Leandro Herrero - 2008