Stories can also be powerful in helping to shape corporate culture. One of the biggest challenges companies face when creating a knowledge-sharing culture is how to convince everyone to support such an initiative (see Davenport & Prusack – Working Knowledge). One of the best ways to do this is by examining the stories the organization tells. As mentioned in the last segment, the research on leadership indicates that great leaders are those who share a vision that compels others to follow, rather than those who rule by power (Gardner & Laskin, – “Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership”). See also Howard Gardner’s latest book on Changing Minds.
The use of stories for cultural dissemination is one technique companies can use to share the values, environment and behaviors they wish to be embraced or rejected in their corporate culture. Many times these informal stories accurately reflect the environment. It becomes leadership’s role to encourage collecting and sharing of stories to reinforce the values, environment and behaviors they wish to foster.
This also works in reverse. People can share stories about what happens when the esteemed values, environment and behaviors of an organization are violated or disregarded. This may feel uncomfortable, because society tends to dictate that failure is embarrassing, and that negative PR is damaging. Yet a story of failure or disapproval can generate great learning.
For example, the U.S. Army has installed knowledge sharing as a standard part of its work in both training and real duty in the form of its well known after-action reviews. No effort is considered complete until it has been reviewed and its lessons obtained, including the lessons learned from failures. As knowledge is useful only insofar as it guides action, a key success factor has been a rigorous program of applying the new insights gained through reviews.
During the U.S. military efforts in Bosnia, lessons learned were distributed on a frequent basis. Because such observations as, “avoid snow-covered roads with no vehicle tracks, as they are probably mined” were credited with saving lives, members of other cooperating armies frequently requested a copy of the latest “lessons learned.” People can benefit from their own mistakes and the mistakes of others if they are open about the truth and if communication is facilitated.
Openness builds confidence and sharing stories openly builds confidence in employees and in the organization as a whole. This openness also leads to the development of trust that can support innovation as Peter Gloor writes in his book on Collaborative Innovations Networks. This is done by individuals using stories to build confidence in themselves, the direction of their team or the future of the company. In these cases the moral of the story could be “We did it before and we can do it again”, or “Look how bright the future can be.”
Companies can further develop the organization and its employees if people are given the opportunity to reflect on both the positive and negative realities of their workplace. Used in the right way, stories can help develop the type of supportive work environment that Shoshanna Zuboff and James Maxim discuss in their book, the Support Economy.
Learning from each others past mistakes or successes through stories can build awareness, skill and confidence. The “glory days” tales or “war stories” you hear informally or formally throughout a company present learning opportunities without having to actually go through the experience. A motivating story about what you, your team or your department once accomplished can inspire the confidence that success can be achieved again. As mentioned in the second segment, this is what NASA did to convey the culture of excitement around advancing space exploration to a young generation (see David DeLong in Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce).
Texas Instruments is a company that is extremely serious about encouraging re-use of ideas and design by its engineers. To encourage this process Texas Instruments periodically holds a contest within the company to collect the best story based on “We didn’t build it here but we used it anyway.” Teams within Texas Instruments scramble to come up with the best story on design re-use. They then share the story with others at an awards dinner. The stories and the activities of the company serve to foster their knowledge-sharing culture. In a well known example, Texas Instruments has achieved $1.5 billion in additional wafer fabrication capacity as a result of their knowledge-sharing program.
Story telling does not have to be elaborate in order to help change the culture. Examine the communication vehicles that are available. In most organizations there will be some form of newsletter. It does not matter whether this communication vehicle is pushed to the user or pulled down by the user, or even if it is electronic or paper. The newsletter’s content is the most important factor. Blogs can help here as they provide a great means to convey these stories in a way that is archived and can be searched..
To change the culture of an organization, articles should contain stories focusing on the desired culture. If the company wants to focus on customer service, then publish stories about teams going out of their way to help a customer. By collecting and publishing these types of stories, individuals will begin to realize that this really is a priority for the company. This is not to suggest that stories by themselves can change a corporation’s culture.
This serial will take a break for the weekend and pick up again on Monday. Carolina barbecue will be discussed on Sunday
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