The Main Elements of the Springboard Story
The springboard narrative pattern has the following main characteristics:
The change idea being communicated by the story is clear and worthwhile.
The story is based on an actual example where the change was successfully implemented—that is, it's a true story.
The story is told from the point of view of a single protagonist.
The protagonist is typical of the audience.
The story gives the date and place where it happened.
The story makes clear what would have happened without the change idea.
The story is told in a minimalist fashion with little detail.
The story has a positive tone and an authentically happy ending.
The story is linked to the purpose to be achieved in telling it.
Of all the elements, the four most important are that the idea must be clear and worthwhile and the story must be true, positive, and told in a minimalist fashion. The following sections focus on the elements in the order in which they generally occur in crafting a springboard story.
Have a Clear and Worthwhile Purpose
The first step in crafting a springboard story is getting clear on the change idea that you are trying to get across. What are you trying to change in the world? What is the specific idea that you are attempting to get others to understand and implement? What are they not doing now that you want them to do in future?
The idea must be a worthwhile one that has the potential to resonate with people's hearts. An idea that merely imitates what others have achieved or focuses on the organization's numerical goals is unlikely to inspire anyone. Instead, the company needs a genuinely new and superior idea for a product, a quality standard, a technology, or a managerial model.6
Having a clear and worthwhile idea is one of the principal differences between organizational storytelling and entertainment storytelling. When you're telling a story to entertain, you may get the audience to laugh or to cry, and that in itself is enough. But when you're telling a story in an organization, particularly a springboard story, you are telling it with a purpose, and you must keep that purpose steadily in mind.
Getting clear on the change idea is also important because it is the basis for all the other steps in crafting a springboard story. You refer back to this purpose in terms of deciding what to include and what to exclude from the story. For each of the other steps in the process, you ask, Is this part of the story relevant to communicating my purpose? If it is, it may stay in. But if it's not relevant to purpose, you have to ask yourself, Why is it in this story? If it's not relevant, it must be deleted, no matter how entertaining it may be.
If the storyteller isn't clear on the purpose, the story usually fails. For instance, when people start crafting a story, and I ask them, “What's the purpose?” they sometimes reply: “I want to change the world.” I reply, “That's fine, but could you give us a hint as to which specific part of the world you want to change?” The change idea has to be specific enough so that people could see whether they are making progress to implement it.
In other cases, people are very clear on what's wrong with the current situation, but they haven't thought through what things would be like if the problems were resolved. The problem might be absenteeism at work, or the lack of healthy food choices in a fast food chain, or the lack of a common approach among the various parts of a global consulting company. Unless the storyteller has thought through what the organization would look like once those problems were resolved, it's going to be hard to tell a powerful story that will help the organization get there.
Not being clear on the change idea is one of the most frequent mistakes people make in crafting springboard stories. If you're having persistent difficulty in coming up with a powerful story to communicate a change idea, check the clarity of the idea!
Find an Example
The second step in the process is to think of an incident where the change idea has already happened. You want an example where the change has already taken place, at least in part. It may be in your own organization or community. Or it may be in another organization or community, preferably similar to yours. A place where this piece of the future has already happened.
Here's another example from a company that I'll call Global Consulting, a company that was trying to energize the staff around the idea of becoming a truly global corporation. To communicate the idea, the change agent crafts a story based on an example where the change has already happened:
As you know, Global Consulting aspires to become the leading provider of consulting services in its field. So we're trying to implement lots of changes to make that happen. Let me tell you about one recent example of how this is working out.
It's about James Truscott, who works for us in London. A few months ago he heard about an invitation to bid on a large consulting engagement for one of the biggest industrial firms in the U.K.—British Engines. What had been happening even as recently as a couple of months ago is that we weren't winning many of those big consulting engagements, because our staff from different countries would compete among themselves for the same engagement and end up totally confusing the client.
What James did in this case, when he heard about the invitation to bid for this worldwide account, was that he contacted all the people in Global around the world who deal with British Engines. He brought them all together as a team and together they developed Global's pitch to British as a global team.
As it turned out, a competitor undercut us with a lower price, but James went back to British. He didn't lower the price. Instead he went back to British with other experts from the firm to explain why we were more expensive, so that in fact British could see that they were getting a better deal.
And guess what? We won that multimillion-pound engagement with British. It was a huge thing. It showed to us the power of acting together as a global organization, rather than acting from individual country perspectives. Just think what a company Global could be if all of us would join together and think about the client from a global perspective, so that we could serve the client better as a whole. Just imagine the impact that would have!
The story is thus based on a specific example where the change has already taken place—in this case, in the same organization.
When I ask people to think of an example where the change idea has been successfully implemented, the reply that I often get is: “I can't think of one.” To which my response is invariably, “Think harder!”
If in fact you think harder and you can't find any example where change has been successfully implemented, at least in part, either in your organization or somewhere else, then I have a different set of questions: “Is this idea ready for prime time? If this idea hadn't been successfully implemented anywhere, even in part, is it really ready for implementation across your organization? Maybe it should be tested before you start trying to inflict it on your entire organization.”
So almost by definition, if your idea is ready for prime time, there must be a case where it has been implemented at least in part somewhere in the world—preferably in your organization, but if not, in some other organization, preferably an analogous or similar organization.
Tell a Story That Is Authentically True
A springboard story is about something that has actually happened—not an imaginary story about something that might happen. It's something that has already occurred, something of which the veracity can be checked. It's the truth of the story that can shake the skeptics out of their complacency.
When I say a true story, it's not enough to tell a story that's true as far as it goes. You must tell an authentically true story: a story that once people check it out—and they will check it out—and all the facts are known, people will still say, “Yes, that's pretty much what happened.”
Here's an example of a story that is factually accurate as far as it goes but is not authentically true:
Seven hundred h
appy passengers reached New York after the Titanic's maiden voyage.
That story is factually accurate as far as it goes. But it leaves out the detail that the ship sank and fifteen hundred other passengers drowned. And when those facts become known, if they aren't already known, then the negative backlash on the story and the storyteller is massive.7
Although this is a bad way to tell a story, ironically corporate communications often fall into this pattern. They paint a rosy picture of a situation, but just around the corner is lurking some hidden negative element. Once that element becomes known, if it isn't already known, there is a massive negative backlash on the story and the storyteller.
Give the Date and Place
In storytelling, little things can make a big difference. Here's one. For a springboard story, you state the date and place where the event happened. This may sound trivial, but it's critical. In fact, it's one the secrets that can make the difference between success or failure.
Giving the date and place is important because it signals to listeners that this is a true story. This story actually happened!
If I announce, “I'm going to tell you a true story …” there's likely to be pushback from the audience. When someone tells you he's an honest man, you tend to reach for your wallet to make sure it's still there. So announcing that your story is true may lead the audience to conclude that something is amiss. The better way to signal that you are telling a true story is to give the date and place.
So the story begins, “In June 2010 in London …” In one sense, it doesn't really matter whether the story happened in June 2010 in London or September 2010 in Paris. The gist of it is that it was somewhere recent in Europe. But what the opening does is signal to the listeners the truth of the story.
Pick a Single Individual as the Story's Protagonist
Who is the hero or heroine of your story? It's not a group, not a team, not a company, not a country. You are looking for a single individual—perhaps an anonymous individual who carries out or facilitates implementation of the change idea.
Here you are plugging into an archetypal narrative pattern—the hero's journey. You are taking your audience on the journey of someone who set out to accomplish something that is difficult, someone who met obstacles along the way but finally triumphed. Ta-dah! Everyone has heard this kind of story thousands of times. Sound corny? But it works. This kind of story has deep roots in the human psyche. All of us tend to see our own life as a journey with goals and obstacles that get in the way of attaining those goals. So when we hear a story in the form of a hero's journey, we respond from the deepest reaches of our psyche.8
It's a good idea to link the date, the place, and the single protagonist at the start of your story. In this way, the listeners, who are likely to be searching for someone to identify with, will be grateful. They will understand that here is a storyteller who understands their need for a protagonist. If you introduce the protagonist further on in the story, after you've laid the scene for instance, the audience will be wondering all along, Who is this story about? Where is it heading? Who's the hero?
Remember that in oral storytelling, you've got only seconds to draw in your audience. You're not writing War and Peace. You don't have the luxury of hundreds of pages to lay out the scene and gradually introduce a vast cast of characters. Make it easy on both the audience and yourself: start out with the date, the place, and the protagonist:
In September 2009, a software developer in Denmark …
That's the simplest and easiest way to start your story. Later, when you've mastered the basics of storytelling, you can be creative and do something different. But when you're getting started, make it easy on yourself. Use a pattern that has worked for your predecessors: begin with the date, the place, and the protagonist, all three, right at the start.
Pick a Protagonist Who Is Similar to the Audience
Tell the story from the perspective of a single individual who is typical of your audience. This makes it easy for the audience to identify with the hero or heroine of your story. It will be one tiny step for the audience to put themselves in the shoes of the protagonist and think to themselves, That could be me! I could be doing that! If you are talking to an audience of economists, the hero is likely to be an economist. If you are talking to a global consulting company, the hero is likely to be a team leader in a consulting firm. And if you are talking to oil drillers, the hero is likely to be an oil driller.
You tell the story from the perspective of someone who will inspire your audience to say, “I know that situation! I've been there! I've had that problem!” And so they identify with that protagonist. In effect, they start to imagine themselves a new story in which they become the hero. In their minds, they begin to undertake the hero's journey in which they encounter obstacles, overcome them, and eventually attain the goal. In this way, your story becomes their story.
Fully Embody the Change Idea
In telling the story, make sure that the narrative fully embodies the change idea. If necessary, extrapolate the story—for example:
In 2009 in Paris, the head partner of a law firm noticed that the staff of the IT department became markedly more productive when they arranged the work in self-organizing teams that worked in short cycles and delivered value to their clients at the end of each cycle. He then introduced the approach to the paralegal staff and got a similar result: the work got done much more quickly and the people doing the work were much happier. So then he began exploring with the other partners: Why wasn't all the work in the firm done in this manner? Just think what the impact would be if everyone in the firm was working in an agile fashion.
Here the narrator is talking about a situation where the change has happened in part of the organization—the IT department and the paralegals. But the idea is larger than that: it's to have the whole firm operating this way. The narrator invites the audience to make a leap in their imaginations: if software developers and paralegals could become more agile in this way, why not the rest of the firm? This is not just a better way of developing software or doing paralegal work; it's a better way of doing work for the entire company. Because people are already in a narrative mode of thinking, it is easy to make the imaginative leap from one kind of experience to another. So even if the example that you have discovered is only a fragment of the overall change idea, you can extend the story so that it fully embodies the entire change idea. In this way, you get the audience to embrace the larger idea in their narrative imaginations.
Spell Out the Alternative
Spelling out what would have happened without the change idea helps make clear that the story isn't about “the way things normally happen around here.”
Now you might think that it would be obvious to your audience what would have happened without the change idea in the absence of your mentioning it. But strange to say, that's often not the case. In the heat of the moment, when you're telling them about something different, it's likely that many of the audience will have forgotten—at least momentarily—how things normally happen. They may be thinking: So what? What's unusual about that? This sort of thing happens all the time. You need to remind them of what would have happened without the story.
The following story was used by authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book Blue Ocean Strategy to communicate the complex new strategic concept of competing in an arena where there is no competition.9
In 1984, Guy Laliberté, a former accordion player, acrobat and fire-eater in Montreal, looked at the existing circus industry and saw a losing proposition. The shrinking circus industry was dominated by two entrenched players—Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey—whose shows appealed primarily to children. “Star performers” tended to call the shots. Relatively inexpensive alternative forms of entertainments were emerging. Animal rights activists were agitating against the treatment of animals by circuses. If Laliberté had followed conventional strategy analysis, he would have concluded that starting a circus company had lit
tle prospect of success.
Instead Laliberté developed a new business model in which he sidestepped competition with the existing players and created a market space where there was no competition. He founded the Cirque du Soleil which eliminated animals and deemphasized individual stars. He combined extreme athletic skill with sophisticated dance and music. He created a new form of entertainment that appealed to upscale audiences of all ages around the world. Its shows have now been seen by more than 40 million people in ninety cities around the world.
The Leader's Guide to Storytelling Page 8