A "pull" strategy

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".   ~ Maya Angelou

Influential story telling is one of the quickest and most effective ways to gain executive understanding, buy-in, action or funding.  It attracts support and cooperation from reluctant users during times of change, implementation and operation.  We spend too much time "talking to" a person's rational brain; while we neglect the needs of their emotional brain.  A strong story is a pull strategy.  If your story is powerful enough, people of their own free will come to the conclusion that they can trust you and the message you bring.

Find The Feeling - Make People Feel Something

People don't just want information; they want faith - faith in you, faith in the information you share, and faith in your goals, vision and your commitment.  Faith needs a story to sustain it - a meaningful story that inspires others to believe in you and renews hope that your ideas offer what you promise.  That belief can overcome any obstacle and accomplish any goal. It can engage you with your listener in a deeper, more meaningful way.

An executive was recently asked to give a strategic sales presentation to a large client audience regarding innovative advances in their field. The pressure on the executive to perform well was intense, as the competition had provided numerous incentives and had made significant promises regarding how they would service the client, should they be selected. The executive took a deep breath, began reviewing highlights and looked up to see the audience with glazed eyes. He searched in the audience for someone he knew and took the risk. He went off script, sharing what he valued the most, not the newest technological improvements, but the real value that his organization represented. He began to tell the customer stories, the ways in which every day, lives were being cared for. This executive's presentation was the turning point for the audience. They recognized the deep caring, along with his competence and credibility- he touched them with his vision of what can be done.  

If you want to influence others significantly, you need to ignite them with a story that will provide value, context and give them understanding.  Create a vision story- one that weaves all the pieces together which is the antidote to meaningless information overload. To live in this world with purpose and meaning, we must tell ourselves and those we lead the stories of vision that give our true meaning.

"Just Telling" Is Not Enough 

The following story is true and resulted in the company changing its purchasing process and saving a great deal of money in many areas. The executive knew that if things were going to change, he had to get his colleagues to understand and to commit to change.  While this example focused on a single problem in the company that impacted bottom line costs, this powerful visual example and story, created a significant awareness of the importance of each person committing to cost savings assessments and strategies.

Jon Stegner believed the company he worked for was wasting vast sums of money.  "I thought we had an opportunity to drive down purchasing costs not by two percent but by something on the order of $1 billion over the next five years," said Stegner, who is quoted in John Kotter and Dan Cohen's The Heart of Change.  To reap these savings, a big process shift would be required, and for that shift to occur, Stegner knew that he'd have to convince his bosses.  He also knew that they'd never embrace such a big shift unless they believed in the opportunity, and for the most part, they didn't.  Seeking a compelling example of the company's poor purchasing habits, Stegner assigned a summer student intern to investigate a single item - work gloves.  The findings?  The factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves from different suppliers and they were negotiating their own prices with a range of cost of $5 to $17 for the gloves.   

To prepare for the story, the student was asked to collect a specimen of every one of the 424 different types of gloves and tagged each with the price paid.  As the division presidents walked in the boardroom, they immediately saw a table stacked high with gloves.  Of course they were shocked with the variance of prices for the same or similar gloves. The story, in visual form, hit home!