How do we gauge a company’s culture? Is it via mission statements, written policies and publicity materials? Or is it the intangible qualities of “atmosphere” and “vibe” that reveal the nature of an organisation’s ethos? Purple Monster suggest that one measure of company culture is the stories that people tell, throughout every level of the organisation.
Stories are part of every business, whether you like it or not. At their best they move, persuade and inspire us to achieve the impossible. At their worst they are damaging, spiteful and reinforce bad behaviours. Stories may not feature as KPI’s in most companies, but they tellingly reveal the values and beliefs at work in the organisation. The current crop of stories being shared might prove to be more valuable to potential shareholders, than the quarterly financial report.
So what makes stories so powerful? In the light of power-point presentations alone, if a picture paints a thousand words, a good story contains a thousand pictures. Why? Because the mental pictures a great story plants in your head, are ones you create yourself. Your imagination puts those images there and as a result they will resonate on a deeper level. By sharing a part of themselves that they may not normally bring to work, people begin to build a deeper level of communication within their working culture. In this way, stories serve to break down barriers, building an atmosphere of openness and trust, whilst also helping people to think creatively and be inventive. By enabling colleagues to communicate differently, storytelling again reinforces the desired cultural outcomes of an organisation.
Purple Monster’s experiential methods provide tools and techniques for creating and sharing inspiring stories. They believe that the stories that are told by, and about, a company are a cultural barometer of that organisation. The conclusion is inevitably that whatever stories people are telling about you and your business, make sure you are telling the most authentic ones yourself.
