I have been getting into some of the most interesting discussions about stories and storytelling during my morning workouts at the gym lately. Some revolve around personal stories and some revolve around business and corporate stories. I thought that I’d start to write about some of them and see where we go and what happens with them.
This first one happened this morning as I was finishing up my workout on the aerobic deck. A friend who works for a pretty good sized corporation climbed on the stair climber next to me. On previous occasions, when we’ve both gotten on an aerobic machine at about the same time, we have had some good conversations about stories and storytelling in the corporate world. We exchanged pleasantries as he was getting going and as I was wiping down the machine I had beaten into submission (yeah, sure).
As I was saying goodbye and wishing him a good day, he blurted out “Storytelling just isn’t part of our DNA!”
Don’t you just love corporate speak? But I left that alone and asked, “Are you bragging? Complaining? Or, doing something altogether different?”
“Complaining I guess,” he said. “We wouldn’t know a good story if it jumped up and bit us in the ass.”
There’s a lot of that going around I thought but instead said, “That could very well be, but what does that have to do with your DNA?”
“We don’t know how to tell stories.”
“Of course you do. Everyone does. You do it all day long. It’s how we all make sense of our world.”
“I get that”, he said, “but from a corporate, company wide standpoint, we don’t know how. Or maybe it’s that we don’t know why we should.”
“Maybe you should because they make great life rafts when the corporate ship is sinking?”
“That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. Think about it a bit, take two aspirin and we’ll talk about it some more tomorrow morning.”
