Forster N. - Maximum performance (2005)(en)
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illustrating ‘how things are done around here’. Two examples of these are cited by Boje (1991). The first one describes ‘Nurse Bryan’s Rule’, a story that enriched understanding of patient care in the hospital where it was told, and also came to represent organizational shorthand for the way all patients should be treated:
A new hospital administrator, holding his first staff meeting, thought that a rather difficult matter had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction, when one of the participants suddenly asked, ‘Would this have satisfied Nurse Bryan?’ At once the argument started all over and did not subside until a new and much more ambitious solution to the problem had been hammered out. Nurse Bryan, the administrator learned, had been a longserving nurse at the hospital. She was not particularly distinguished, had not in fact ever been a supervisor. But whenever a decision on patient care came up on her floor, Nurse Bryan would ask, ‘Are we doing the best we can do to help this patient?’ Patients on Nurse Bryan’s floor did better and recovered faster. Gradually, over the years, the whole hospital had learned to adopt what came to be known as ‘Nurse Bryan’s Rule’. This story is an excellent example of an unwritten commitment to ‘doing what is best for the patient’ which focused staff minds on the best way of doing things in keeping with the hospital’s core values.
(Boje, 1991:110)
The second example he cites is the use of a story to communicate complex or abstract concepts in a more appealing way:
Let’s say you’re at a staff meeting to present the company’s strategic plan. If someone says we’re going to take the business from $US two million to $US twenty million in five years that may or may not make employees feel a connection to the goals of the company. Or, if I want to ask people to get more involved in the volunteer program we provide, I can say I want to move from 40 per cent to 80 per cent participation. But that’s only me speaking. If, however, you tell stories about bringing a better product to the marketplace and how that serves the well-being of another person, or if you instead ask someone who is doing volunteer work to tell about the role that he or she is playing in the community and what that means to him or her, then everyone connects around the humanity of the story. It moves communication from the heads of the company to the hearts of the company.
(Boje, 1991: 116)
Some of the best-known examples of the use of mythology and storytelling in organizational communication are associated with the American company Hewlett-Packard (HP). While many computer companies struggled in the late 1980s and early 1990s, HP enjoyed the most successful decade in its history. It rose from relative obscurity to become sixth-largest company of its type in the world. It was the only major computer company to remain in profit during the last world recession. It also enjoyed a long-standing reputation of being one of the most benevolent and forward-thinking employers of the postwar years. Why was this company so successful? The answer may well lie in the management of its corporate culture. During the early years of HP, its founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard developed a number
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of management concepts and attributes that evolved into a directing set of corporate objectives and a business style known as ‘The HP Way’ (Forster, 2002).
These were first put into writing in 1957 as part of the company’s strategic objectives. With minor modifications, they remained the most fundamental and active guiding forces at HP for more than 40 years. The HP Way effectively represented a formal statement of HP’s corporate culture (Packard, 1996). One of the most important methods of conveying HP’s culture was through the telling of company stories. These helped to clarify, as well as communicate, the values and attitudes that were important to the company. These stories also had an important symbolic function when describing important historical moments in the company’s history or exemplifying company role models and heroes. At HP some of the most common stories known by employees concerned the following:
•How Bill and Dave (as Hewlett and Packard were always referred to by HP employees) started the company with a $US538 loan in the garage behind the Packards’ rented house in 1937.
Messages: from small seeds, great trees can grow. Be entrepreneurial in your thinking. Don’t borrow more than you can afford to fund your enterprise.
•How they called their first instrument the 91200A19, so that potential clients would not know they were just starting out and would not be afraid of doing business with a small, unknown company.
Message: think big and create a positive image with potential new customers.
•How the ‘Call to Coffee’, announced by a bell chime in all HP offices, originated when Dave Packard’s wife rigged up a bell in the garage they worked in to let them know when meals were ready.
Message: we encourage socialization and communication with fellow employees.
•How they made their first big breakthrough by supplying some of the technical wizardry for Disney’s Fantasia in 1939.
Message: innovation and cutting-edge thinking are core competencies in this company.
•How during the 1970s business downturn, when companies across the USA were laying off employees, every employee at HP took a 10 per cent pay-cut and took every other Friday off to prevent any layoffs.
Messages: we genuinely care about our employees’ welfare and job security. We make sacrifices together when we encounter difficulties.
•In the early days of the company, Bill Hewlett tried to get into a supply room to get some equipment. He found it locked after
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normal working hours. Unable to find a key, he broke into the locker with a bolt cutter. He then left a note indicating that all such rooms were to be left unlocked in future. This has remained standard practice in HP since.
Message: we trust our employees not to steal company equipment from us.
•How new recruits to the company often hear about the time when Dave Packard awarded a ‘Medal of Defiance’ to house-engineer Chuck House in the late 1970s. This was awarded because House had persisted in working on a new monitor despite being told to drop it by Packard. This monitor became a huge commercial success in the 1980s. Today, all HP staff still look for ways to introduce new ideas before senior management tell them what they should not be doing.
Message: we encourage independence of thought and innovative thinking – even if senior management don’t agree with your ideas.
These and other illustrative stories were not only used during employee induction and development sessions, but were repeated in many different circumstances on a continuing basis. They were used in staff training workshops, recalled during management meetings and retirement parties, and were incorporated into reminiscences in speeches and letters from Bill and Dave and other company leaders. Furthermore, these were stories that were told throughout HP’s global operations. When Collins and Porras were doing their research on long-lasting visionary companies, they found one hundred documented instances of HP managers talking about HP’s values and objectives – in external speeches, internal talks, in individual conversations and in company documents. They also encountered dozens of ‘Bill and Dave’ stories during the time they spent with HP (Collins and Porras, 1996: 211).
In a very different organizational context, Lee Iacocca was able to convey an important message to his employees by leading through personal example, during his struggle to take Chrysler from nearbankruptcy to profitability in the 1970s and 1980s. He did this by announcing that he was going to pay himself a symbolic salary of one dollar for 12 months. Despite the fact that his previous annual salary had been $US360 000, and his pay-cut only lasted a year, this became a story that spread very rapidly throughout the organization and acted as a powerful catalyst for change. The story enabled him to win concessions from all of his employees (including very suspicious labour unions) through what Iacocca called ‘equality of sacrifice’. As he observed at the time, ‘although my reduced salary didn’t mean we had to skip any meals, it still made a big statement in Detroit. It showed
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that we were all in this together. It showed that we could only survive if each of us tightened our belt. It was a dramatic gesture, and word of it got around very quickly’ (Iacocca, 1988: 242).
Another example of how a story was used in another struggling US car company, Ford, to create a picture of a better world is recounted by Austin (1995: 18):
At a meeting of 300 Ford managers in Detroit, held after the company announced changes that would significantly alter the way its cars are built and how its employees work together, a senior executive told a story about Willie B., a majestic silverback gorilla who for 27 years had lived in isolation in a dismal bunker at the Atlanta Zoo. The executive had helped raise money for a new, state-of-the-art habitat, where Willie B., for the first time in his life, would regularly feel the sun on his shoulders and the rain on his head. But it took him several days of venturing a few small, tentative steps at a time to fully explore his new domain. A photographer caught the moment when the gorilla gingerly tested the grass with a toe, and the portrait hangs in the executive’s office today. ‘It’s there to remind me that no matter how attractive the new surroundings might appear, it takes time and courage to leave the comfortable security of a place – even an ugly, cramped space – that you know well.’
The Body Shop is another company that has used storytelling in an active way since it was created. The company’s founder, Anita Roddick, has long espoused clear values of care for the environment, equal opportunities, concern for human rights and opposition to animal exploitation. In her first autobiography in 1992, Body and Soul, she recounts, in story-like fashion, her life journey in creating the Body Shop and the development of her values and ethical management philosophy. Every Body Shop stocks the book. Roddick was a leader who used storytelling in a positive way to lead her organization and to sell its products:
I still see story-telling as a major component of communication within the Body Shop, both stories about products and stories about the organization. Stories about how and where we find the ingredients bring meaning to our essentially meaningless products, while stories about the company bind and preserve our history and our common sense of purpose. We realised that we need to learn more from our own storytellers within the company, because the penalty for failing to listen to stories is to lose our history, and the values we seek to promote. As we have grown, the stories that have been told and re-told about the company have entered the chronicles of the company.
(Roddick: 2000: 80)
Summary
Through stories we gain a deeper understanding of our relationships with the people around us, whether in the workplace, the home, or
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with our friends and acquaintances. More importantly, the use of stories can significantly influence thinking, attitudes and behaviour. Through stories, employees come to know what is important about the work they do and why they are doing it. Stories bring key individuals (heroes) to life. Some highlight myths and/or significant real-life events that have shaped a company’s fortunes. Others emphasize rituals and ceremonies. Organizational leaders can use storytelling to paint the big picture, to teach new management values and to change their companies’ cultures (see Chapter 8 for an example of this). Memorable stories can act as potent culture change mechanisms, because they can encourage behavioural and attitudinal mind-shifts. In Chapter 1, we saw that leaders are, in effect, people who interpret reality and explain this to their followers and, when necessary, reshape and remould their employees’ perceptions of reality. So, if a leader can make important points in a consistent and memorable way by using memorable and engaging stories, then – over time – their followers will listen, because it is only through these media that emotional connections can be made. Effective leaders have long known the value of connective symbolism in directing the efforts of their followers, and storytelling is one of the few media through which symbolic and emotional connections can be made.
The long history of storytelling shows us that it has always been central to the human experience and to our ancestors’ ability to survive and adapt to new circumstances. History is rich with examples of leaders who inspired others to higher levels of performance, or encouraged their followers to look at themselves and their environments in a different way. Churchill, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are examples of political leaders who achieved this. In business, Akio Morita, Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Steve Jobs and Andy Grove are all examples of leaders who have understood the power of storytelling. History is also full of examples of what happens to leaders who lose sight of the importance of symbolism and the ability to manage this through evocative language. Sooner or later, they always lose their grip on power. A manager who is incapable of storytelling may never hope to aspire to senior leadership roles, so it is a skill worth developing and, like other communication skills, it can be developed through self-learning. Kaye has even suggested that organizations that don’t utilize storytelling are, in effect, not communicating with their staff and, if people aren’t communicating, then the organization will eventually fall apart (Kaye, 1996: 49). Of course, while important, storytelling alone will never make anyone an inspirational and engaging communicator. This requires high-level formal presentation skills, which are reviewed in the next section.
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Exercise 3.5
Having read through ‘Communicating from the top’ and ‘Leaders as storytellers’, think about how you can translate the insights you have acquired into your organizational communication strategies in the future.
Insight |
Strategy to implement this |
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Formal communication skills
Once upon a time there was a very inexperienced junior lecturer, who was about to deliver his first lecture to 150 second-year business students, in a very large auditorium, with steep banked rows of seats running as far back as the eye could see. He was more than nervous; he was terrified, with a very dry mouth and, at times, visibly shaking. After getting the assembled mob quiet, he then proceeded to commit all the cardinal sins of public speaking. He was incoherent, he mumbled, he was monotone in delivery, he ‘ummed’, ‘aahed’ and ‘okeyed’ all the way through, he talked far too quickly and, in prePowerPoint days, used a ridiculous quantity of overhead slides (most with plenty of words on them). His students had to suffer this for the next six weeks, two hours at a time on Friday afternoons. Soon after the end of the semester, his teaching evaluations arrived. Not surprisingly, many of the students thought he was an awful lecturer. On the reverse side of their evaluation sheets, the students had the opportunity to add personal comments and feedback. Under the heading, ‘How would you improve this course?’, were helpful comments like, ‘Shoot the lecturer’ and ‘Bring back hanging’. Under the heading, ‘What did you most like about this course?’ were ‘Thank God it’s Friday’, ‘Knowing I won’t have to study this ***** ever again’ and ‘Going to the Happy Hour in the Union bar afterwards to recover’.
You’ll have guessed that the person being described here is the author of this book (who stills remembers this experience with a shudder).
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But, more than a decade later, I now relish public speaking and also run presentation skills workshops for managers and professionals. The reason for sharing this anecdote is to show that no matter how much we might initially dread public speaking, anyone can learn to become better at this, and enjoy doing it. For some leaders and managers, public speaking is a real buzz and, for an elite few, both highly lucrative and something they clearly enjoy. The ex-British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, used to charge about $US100 000 a talk, Mikhail Gorbachov $US100 000 (but he gave most of this to charity), ‘Storming Norman’ Schwartzkopf, Allied Commander during the first Gulf War, $US100 000 and ‘Billion Dollar’ Bill Clinton about $US150 000. During a visit to Australia in February 2002, Clinton earned $US350 000, for delivering the same speech in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, that he had earlier presented in the USA, Britain and Israel (Carson, 2002). Later estimates put his total earnings for public speaking during 2000–2003 at more than 14 million US dollars. The top leadership and management thinkers of the 1990s, such as Peter Drucker, Charles Handy and Tom Peters, commanded appearance fees of $US20 000– 40 000 a day.
‘Teflon Bill’
’Joe Klein believes that Clinton’s oratorical strength wasn’t the result of language skills, but a consequence of his physical presence – “a mirage of body language”. There was something carnal in the way he embraced an audience: his face bore “a raw pink fleshiness” that suggested jogging and junk food, crude energy, unslaked appetites. For all his unshakable popularity and an approval rating that defied every setback and scandal – driving Republicans to ever more noxious attitudes of bafflement and despair – he never found a way to communicate his larger vision to the American public. He was, Klein believes, a better public speaker than Ronald Reagan, more comfortable behind the podium that any President since John Kennedy, yet he created no memorable rhetoric: he was a great speechmaker who made no great speeches. Once, when he was addressing Congress, the wrong speech was posted on the teleprompter. Clinton ad-libbed for 20 minutes while the right words were found. But even those words weren’t his: they rarely were.’
Source: Abridged from a review of Joe Klein’s The Natural: The Misunderstood
Presidency of Bill Clinton, in The Weekend Australian, 29–30 June 2002.
When professionals and managers are asked to describe the activities they most dislike at work, many will point to public speaking in front of colleagues, bosses, customers and clients, and at conferences, as
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being amongst their least favourite. And most people can recount at least one ‘Beam me up Enterprise’ or ‘Freshly landed fish’ (gasping for air and soundless) moment during their careers, when a presentation has gone off the rails. It has even been suggested that, on average, people fear public speaking (and spiders) more than they fear dying (Roydhouse, 2001: 17). But, love it or loathe it, effective formal communication skills are essential for leaders and managers at all levels of organizations because, whether we are talking to one person or one thousand people, we are presenting ourselves to others.
‘It Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong’
‘Finally, Tariq Ali finished his speech. There was pandemonium. Everyone cheered; somebody hoisted him onto their shoulders. Pretty girls waved admiringly up at him and the camera swivelled in his direction. Then somebody beckoned to me: it was my turn. I had barely spoken in public before, never mind made a speech, and I felt chronically nervous. I had absolutely no idea what to say. I had prepared a speech, but under the scrutiny of a thousand expectant faces turned towards me like sunflowers, my mind had gone completely blank. Dry-mouthed, I mumbled a few words, gave a sick smile and realised with a mounting feeling of panic that I could not do it. There was nowhere to hide. I gave a final inarticulate mumble, somewhere between a cough and a vomit, dropped the microphone, leapt off the podium and disappeared back into the safety of the crowd. It had been the most embarrassing moment of my life.’
(Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity, 1998)
Why do so many people dislike public speaking? Perhaps the biggest fear is exposure. Standing up in front of a large group of people, with a hundred or more pairs of eyeballs all staring in our direction can be very intimidating. There is also the risk of losing face or making complete idiots of ourselves in a public forum. Sir George Jessel, a renowned public speaker, once said, ‘The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public’, and the Irish comedian, Pat O’Malley, observed that ‘Speeches are like babies – easy to conceive, but difficult to deliver.’ But, it’s also important to emphasize that few people experience no anxiety or nerves when performing in public and this includes the greatest actors and political leaders of the 20th century. For example, can you guess who said this?
I have often been described as a great public speaker. The truth is rather different. For many years I was extremely apprehensive about oratory and
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it was only with a great deal of practice, and the help of some of the best speech writers in the country, that I gained this reputation.
(McKenzie, 1980: 375)
The writer was Winston Churchill who had to overcome a childhood stammer, and became regarded as one of the greatest orators of the 20th century.
Getting started
Prior, proper preparation prevents p***-poor performance.
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
You need no preparation to fail.
(Old and widely used sayings in military training programmes throughout the world)
In many ways, making an effective public speech is like baking a delicious cake or cooking an inspirational meal. It should always contain good ingredients, but does not require dozens of these, because simple ingredients can often create spectacular results. These then have to be assembled, prepared and ‘cooked’ in the right order and in the right way. The finished product has to be served up and presented in an attractive and memorable fashion. It should ‘taste’ good and leave the recipient with positive memories of the event. However, all too often, a presentation can end up as a horrible hotch-potch of irrelevant, inappropriate and unimaginative ingredients served up in a dull, flaccid and uninspired manner. Having said this, there are no secrets to effective public speaking, and anyone can learn to become better at this.
Effective presentation skills can be broken down into six principal components:
•researching the audience,
•structuring the presentation,
•enhancing the content of the presentation,
•choosing which audio-visual aids to use,
•delivering the presentation,
•dealing with uncooperative participants.
Researching the audience
By now, you should be comfortable with the simple but important principle that communication is a two-way process of improving mutual understanding. This principle also applies to public speaking. This means that the starting point of good public speaking is not the content, structure or delivery of the talk, but the audience we will be
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presenting it to. Hence the first question we should ask ourselves is not ‘What am I going to tell them?’ but ‘What do they expect or need to hear from me and how can I best put this across to them?’ This is not to say that the first question is unimportant, because at certain times we may have to say some things to audiences that they were not expecting to hear, or deliver unwelcome messages that they may be unwilling to hear. However, before writing any presentation, you should try to find out the following.
Who is attending?
Colleagues, bosses, subordinates or clients and customers (or a combination of these)? Are they experts or non-experts in your field? Is your audience one you know or one that you have never met? The nature of your audience will affect the content of your talk, and the style of delivery used.
Do they know you?
If not, you will have to make a personal connection with them at the beginning of your talk.
Are they in the same profession or a different one?
This will affect the amount of jargon or technical knowledge that you might use.
How much expert knowledge do they have?
This will affect how you ‘pitch’ your talk and the amount of technical jargon you can use.
How many people will be attending the presentation?
The smaller the group, the more informal and interactive the talk will need to be. This requires a subtle juggling act, between maintaining the flow of your talk and getting through the content and addressing their queries and questions. If you are talking to more than about two hundred people, you will need to be comfortable with a microphone and, perhaps, an auto-cue and PowerPoint.
Where is it taking place?
The dynamics of delivery are very different in a large auditorium and a small seminar room.
When is it taking place?
A rule of thumb is that, if you are presenting after lunch or in the evening, you will need more ‘bells and whistles’ to keep your audience’s attention. If you have the option, the best time to do a presentation is between 9.00 and 12.00.