Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Narratives Are Not Stories | John Hagel - Founder of Center For The Edge

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Lessons - Narratives Are Not Stories | John Hagel - Founder of Center For The Edge · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  First one, narratives are not stories.
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  What does that mean?
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  So just conscious, somebody hearing that, they're not going to say, what do you mean narratives
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  are not stories?
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  How does it have any impact on whether I'm going to lose my job?
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  Well, most people, again, be narratives and stories to be the same thing.
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  They're synonymous.
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  You know, you can use either word.
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  I make a big distinction between women.
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  For me, a story is self-contained.
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  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end to it, the end, the story's over.
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  And the story is about me, the storyteller, or it's about some other people, real or imagined,
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  but it's not about you.
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  You can use your imagination, figure out what you would have done in that story, but it's
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  not about you.
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  So that's a story, at least the way I talk about it.
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  For me, a narrative is very different.
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  First of all, it's open-ended.
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  There is no resolution yet.
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  There's some kind of big threat or opportunity out in the future.
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  Not clear whether it's going to be achieved or not.
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  And the resolution of the narrative hinges on you.
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  It's a call to action to say your choices, your actions are going to help determine how
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  this narrative resolves.
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  So it's a call to action, and I think trying it back to fear, and I talk about narratives
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  at many levels.
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  So I think there's personal narratives.
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  I think there are corporate narratives, geographic narratives, movement narratives, that
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  starting with the individual, I believe most of us, first of all, we've never really
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  stepped back to articulate what's the narrative that's driving our life.
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  What's our view of the future is a primarily driven by threat, a primarily driven by opportunity.
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  And if so, what threat or what opportunity?
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  And then what's our call to action to others?
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  Do we have a call to action to others?
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  Because in my experience, many of us who are increasingly consumed by fear because we're
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  focusing on threat in the future, we lose trust in other people.
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  We can't afford to rely on other people.
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  We have to do it all ourselves.
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  So there is no call to action to others.
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  We become increasingly isolated versus no, where I want people to come together and help
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  me to address this really big, exciting opportunity that's out in the future.
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  And so I think the process of just stepping back and articulating that narrative that we
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  have today, what is it that's driving our actions and choices today, but then reflecting
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  on it to say, is this really the narrative that's going to help me to get the most impact
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  that's meaningful to me?
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  It can be very powerful.
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  I view it as a catalyst in the journey beyond fear because in my experience, people who
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  go through this exercise, they come up with this aha moment that they actually are
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  focusing on fear and threat in the future.
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  And that's what's driving their fear.
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  And they're end to it's driving their current day actions, right, because they've got
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  the movie.
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  Yeah, very interesting.
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  So this is almost taking like, you know, it's always best practice to even have a personal
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  one, three, five year plan, but many people don't even have that.
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  This is taking it to another degree is to have your own personal narrative for your
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  life.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  What's the big long-term threat or opportunity, and not just like six months or even
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  a year, decades ahead, what's the big red or opportunity that's motivating you today?
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  That's motivating your actions today.
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  And so that's, yeah, amazing.
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  That's very powerful.
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  That's very, it's a very, very good, incredible idea for people to take on.
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  Okay.
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  The second piece.
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  Well, actually, can I just mention a corporate narrative because I think again, I talked
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  about personal narratives, but corporate narratives, increasingly, I think, are important.
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  And here, the challenge I find is when I talk to executives about corporate narratives,
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  they say, oh, we have a narrative, we began in a garage, we faced incredible obstacles,
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  we overcame them and accomplished amazing things.
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  That's our narrative.
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  And my point is, no, that's about you.
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  What's your call to action to your customers, to the prospects out there?
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  That's the big, exciting opportunity for them, and what action do they need to take?
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  And it's not by your product, it's some action that is meaningful to them that will help
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  them get that opportunity.
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  And just a quick example on that, because I think they're very few corporate narratives,
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  but hugely powerful in the world, increasingly driven by fear, is what Apple computer did
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  in back in the 90s.
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  They had this narrative that was framed around as slogan of think different.
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  But if you unpack the slogan that was, you know, for decades, we had digital technology
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  at tip-aware names, gave us numbers, put us in cubicles, narrow for the first time there's
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  a generation of technology where we can express our unique potential and individuality.
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  But it's not going to happen automatically.
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  You need to think different.
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  Will you think different?
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  It's the reason why for many people, I think Apple became the equivalent of a religion.
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  They were talking about such a deep aspiration that customers had, and they weren't talking
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  about Apple.
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  They were talking about the customer and the opportunity for the customer and the actions
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  they needed to take.
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  So anyway, I'll just offer that as I think an additional opportunity here that is missed
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  by most companies.
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  What does passion mean in the context of fear and overcoming fear?
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  Yeah, so first of all, again, I get everybody in my experience has a different definition
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  of passion.
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  Based on my research, I've ended up focusing on a very specific form of passion.
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  I call it the passion of the explorer, and it has three components to it.
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  One is people have this passion have a long-term commitment to having an increasing impact
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  in a domain that excites them.
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  So they're there for the future and having more and more impact there.
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  Second item is when confronted with unexpected challenges, they get excited.
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  This is an opportunity for them to learn how to have even more impact.
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  So they're excited by it.
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  And then the third element is when they're confronted with these unexpected challenges.
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  Our first reaction is, who else can I connect with?
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  Who can help me get to a better answer faster?
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  So they're extremely well connected.
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  And I think that that's the combination of those three elements.
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  Now you turn mounting performance pressure into excitement.
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  This is an opportunity to have more and more impact in the area that really excites me.
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  So I think that I would say one of the challenges we face is that I'm going to generalize,
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  but I think particularly in large organizations around the world, passion is deeply suspect.
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  You don't want passionate people.
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  This kind of passion, when I talk to executives about passion, oh yeah, we want to
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  passionate workers who will work nights and weekends for one of the signed tasks.
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  No, the passion that I'm talking about, those people ask a lot of questions.
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  That's distracting.
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  Why do we ask so many questions?
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  They take too much risk.
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  They deviate from the script that they've been assigned.
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  No, we don't want passionate workers.
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  We want workers who will do their assigned tasks reliably and efficiently.
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  The reason why, again, I did a survey in the US workforce at most 14% of US workers have
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  this kind of passion of the explorer about their work, 86% do not.
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  So I think it's a huge opportunity and need for all of us to really find the passion that
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  excites us and find a way to really focus on it and that in an environment and culture
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  where we're discouraged from it.
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  I mean, again, even in school, we were taught, you know, listen to the teacher, memorize
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  what the teacher has to say.
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  If you've got a passion, do it out on the playground or maybe at home after school, but when
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  you're in school, just listen and do the assigned tasks.
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  And that was to prepare us for the work environment that we were going into.
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  So now.