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Eggs 442: The Power of Storytelling in Business Strategy with Guillaume Wiatr · EGGS! The Podcast

0:13
Hey everybody, what's? Up and welcome back to another
0:15
exciting episode of Eggs. Today we have a very special
0:18
guest, Yum Vyatta. Yum is a business strategy
0:21
consultant, leadership coach, writer and artist who's also the
0:24
founder behind the consulting firm Metahelm.
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A former big firm strategy consultant, Hume has founded 4
0:30
ventures of his own and is a widely sought after coach by
0:33
senior executives of top tier companies like Alaska Airlines,
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The Gate Foundation and Google, not to mention governmental
0:39
agencies in France and the United States.
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In his role at Medahelm, Hume and his team guide CE OS
0:45
founders and business owners to align teams and accelerate
0:48
innovation adoption. One strategy he's championed, so
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much so in fact, that he's literally written the book on
0:53
it, is the importance of developing a strong strategic
0:56
narrative that will not just align teams and clients, but
0:58
will accelerate the adoption of your product and service tenfold
1:02
and allow you to grow your business twice as quickly.
1:05
Here for an exciting conversation about the
1:06
difference between simple storytelling and crafting A
1:09
narrative for our business. The big thing that entrepreneurs
1:11
miss when it comes to mobilizing their teams and clients.
1:15
How to create impact within your company and so much.
1:17
More. Please join us in giving a warm
1:19
welcome to our. Guest Gyum Viata.
1:22
Hey there. How are you?
1:24
Awesome guys, excellent to be here.
1:26
So much for for being here and being willing to do the show.
1:29
We're thrilled to death to have you on.
1:30
Well, likewise, I, I am, I, I feel very honored and I'm, I'm,
1:36
I'm intimidated almost. I.
1:39
I, I, you, I saw you guys were on on really cool podcasts and
1:44
like you're. Yeah.
1:45
So I'm humbled. Let's put it this way.
1:48
We're thrilled to death to have you, and hopefully I mean you
1:51
didn't seem visually bumped by my butchering of your name, so I
1:54
appreciate. It I'm used to it.
1:57
That's all right. No, I have a last name that's
1:59
kind of like that. I, you know, eventually just
2:02
kind of roll with it, you know, whatever people say.
2:03
Fine. No, you did a great job.
2:05
You did a great job. Perfect.
2:06
Well, thanks so much. Well, so cool.
2:08
Let's, I guess, start a little bit at the beginning, you know,
2:11
talk a little bit about just sort of who you are, your
2:13
background, where you came from and how you got into this game.
2:16
Well, you know, as you can tell by my accent, I'm from France
2:20
and I immigrated here in 2008 and based in the Seattle area.
2:27
My wife is is from here, so she dragged me over here across the
2:31
ocean. I took a one.
2:32
I got a one way ticket to come to Seattle because I thought I'm
2:36
going to immigrate here. There's no plan.
2:38
There was no return back. That's pretty good.
2:41
I mean, I would say, you know, pretty hard to leave France and
2:44
the wine and the food culture and everything.
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But I mean, you did pick a pretty good city if you had to
2:48
come over the stakes. I, I think I did.
2:50
I think I did. And I, it's, I, I say, I also
2:53
point that out in my journey because I think that's been
2:55
always a mentality. I've had to go one way and not
2:59
think about necessarily a Plan B and everything in most of the
3:02
things I do. I came here when I was 35.
3:06
I had already launched 3 companies, you know, I had, I
3:11
was established in France. And then I, I come here and I
3:14
know no one. My English is kind of so so and
3:18
I picked the summer of 2008 to come here and look for a great
3:23
job, as you know. No one perfect timing.
3:27
What else happened in 2000? 8 So yeah, yeah, for for those
3:30
who remember, it was more like, you know, everybody scare like
3:33
the Great Recession, the company's laying off and who
3:36
wants to hire some kind of French consultant for their
3:40
business? No one.
3:42
So, but, but I, I've always cultivated my creative side, you
3:49
know, in my, in my life, I've always done that.
3:51
I've always, you know, as you, as you, as you said in the
3:54
intro, I'm an artist too. I'm a musician, visual artist
3:58
too. And I also have this business
4:00
background. I majored in finance.
4:02
I'm really passionate about making turning businesses as a
4:06
force for good because I always thought that big or large
4:10
businesses really provide amazing opportunities for people
4:13
inside, outside. If you have a great product, you
4:16
know, you, you, you should seek to improve people's life, but
4:19
also inside. So I'm here in 2008, can't find
4:23
a job in my field and I decide, OK, what should I do?
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I heard about this thing called the American Dream and I had
4:30
this picture in mind of yeah, you go knock on doors and you'll
4:33
find and soon you'll find some kind of a job, which is what I
4:36
did when I find. I found odd job that first my
4:42
friends and relatives back in France were like they they're
4:44
like they could not believe their ears when I was telling
4:47
him what I was going through here.
4:48
And they're like, what What are you doing there?
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You should come back like this is not, this is not what you're
4:53
about. And I, my gut kept telling me,
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no, I really wanted to assimilate, you know, get to
4:59
know people, the culture and improve my English and, and
5:03
figure out what could be the next chapter for me here in the,
5:06
in the United States. So eventually I, I went back to
5:09
consulting and, and it was incredible to see that as, as I
5:15
was first, first of all, I, I got back as an, as a, you know,
5:18
as in like an employee kind of job, right?
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It was not my, my own business. At first all all people wanted
5:25
to hear about was how did you weather that tough economic
5:28
time? Like how did you survive this?
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That's all they cared about. They didn't care about my, my,
5:33
my degrees, you know, former experience because of, you know,
5:35
I, although I had translated that in English that it didn't
5:38
make sense for them anyways. Like they're, they're, they're,
5:42
they're really interested in, in finding out like what, what did
5:45
I come up, what I come to do here and why did I stick to the
5:48
plan And what, why I thought, you know, I could, I could make
5:52
it here. So.
5:53
What, what was that first role that you took on when you got to
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Seattle? The the regular job?
6:01
What did you do? Oh.
6:02
OK, so my very first job was was working at in Tacoma at a small
6:08
pharmacy called Renko's Pharmacy in the Stadium District.
6:11
And I was there, cashier slash painter slash gardener slash
6:15
janitor slash whatever you want as my very first assignment.
6:20
You had some time in Tacoma. I Oh, you did?
6:22
Yeah. I lived on Hilltop, right?
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Looking over the Bay. It was great.
6:26
So very close, very, very close. And I always believed in the
6:30
power of relationship. So I came as a stranger in that
6:33
store and I left that store a few weeks or months later as a,
6:36
as a friend. And so I had really, to me it
6:39
was different. The definition of success is
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like, can I make a meaningful connection with people here?
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Can I do something of value for them?
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Can I help them? Can I improve their whatever
6:48
they're trying to do? So that's, that's my very first
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thing. And then, and then the first
6:53
year I, you know, I was subbing in a school, I was tutoring in
6:58
French and then gardening. Gardening was my thing.
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For some reason that old lady was walking by in front of the
7:08
pharmacy when there was, I was planning stuff in the fall and
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she's like, I look, I really like what you do.
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Are you a landscaper? So I, I'm not a landscape.
7:22
I mean, I am not an official landscaper with a degree in
7:25
experience. And I, I look at her and I think
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I have two ways to answer this question.
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Yes or no. I said yes, yes, I'm a
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landscaper because that's what I do right now.
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I am a landscaper. You have to make, you know, you
7:35
have to, you have to make it till you no fake it till you
7:39
make it. Yeah.
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And she's like, great, you know what?
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I need you to re landscape my whole yard.
7:44
And so that paid for my bills for the next two months, that
7:47
job there right there. So see, see, kind of using
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always my entrepreneurial adventurous risk taker mentality
7:55
to make ends meet in the in the first months that I was here.
8:00
And then I took on the job at at a retail store in the Tacoma
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Mall where they were looking for sales people for the season and
8:09
in the first weeks. So it was a coach store, you
8:12
know the brand Coach, the leatherware.
8:14
So here I am selling women's purses.
8:17
I have no clue. And I just, I just sell.
8:21
And after a while, the manager came to me like, you know, I
8:24
looked at your numbers. You're actually number one in
8:26
the district. What do you tell these people?
8:30
Like, I don't know. I tell them the truth.
8:33
I listen to them first of all, and then I tell them the truth.
8:36
So that to to answer your question, Michael, that was my
8:38
first official kind of quote UN quote stable normal, you know,
8:43
job with the with the company was to be a store manager with
8:47
coach. And it's been an incredible
8:49
experience for me to just, you know, work, learn to work with a
8:53
team in the US here as you come from a different country, well,
8:57
I think. I, I wanted to take just a
8:59
second and sort of recognize 8. So one of the things I observed,
9:01
you know, just in you hearing, in hearing your story, I mean,
9:04
there are a lot of people who I guess chase this American dream,
9:07
right? They come from all over the
9:08
world. You know, obviously this country
9:09
is a melting pot full of people who've come from all over the
9:11
world to make their way. And I think there's sort of two
9:15
ways of approaching that. One is the I'm going to come and
9:17
get it and whatever it is is owed to me.
9:19
And I'm coming to America and I'm going to just take it.
9:22
And then there's the version of it that you've described, which
9:24
is you came here, you were humble, you worked hard, you did
9:26
all the things right. You did all the things of the
9:29
American immigrant. And so your story is so cool
9:31
because you know, the the importance you put on the the
9:33
relationships and being willing to sort of come from a role
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where you're highly educated and you're doing all this work in
9:40
France, yet here you are working retail in the States.
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But that's OK because it's part of the mission.
9:44
You know, like, that whole story to me is like, I think, sort of
9:48
reminiscent of what you would think of as the Immigrant's
9:50
tale, but it's a, you know, modern version of it, I guess.
9:54
It is it, it really is. I, I make it, I probably make it
9:58
sound as you know, easy to tell now because I've I've told this
10:01
story before many times and. You've got a little distance
10:03
from it. Now and, and, but at first I was
10:08
really, I had no clue I did, I didn't know how to make sense of
10:11
it. Like I was like, what am I doing
10:13
here? You know, And my, my family in
10:15
France and friends were, were reinforcing that voice of doubt
10:20
because they, you know, they, they, they, this image that was
10:23
projecting was not at all consistent with what they had
10:25
known for me. And yet in the, in the United
10:28
States, no one knew about my, I mean, I could tell them about my
10:31
background, but for them, they kind of, you know, well,
10:34
whatever did register, they, they, they knew, they knew me
10:37
from what, for what I was doing here.
10:40
So, So what was the background in France?
10:42
What did you do there? Well, in France professionally,
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the the last gig I had was to run a training and coaching
10:49
company in Lyon, France. And it was about helping mostly,
10:56
yeah, leaders of all sorts of companies in their day-to-day
11:00
relationships, mostly internally.
11:02
So it was a lot of conflict resolution coaching, counseling,
11:06
helping them make their organizations run more smoothly,
11:09
a little bit of sales too, sometimes outside facing, but it
11:13
was more, it was a lot about interpersonal relationships.
11:17
And the company used to be called Talisa.
11:20
So is that similar to what you do now as far as with the
11:23
Medahelm? So it's different.
11:26
There is definitely that component that I bring in.
11:29
But what I do with Medahelm, so it's still about leadership,
11:31
still about growing businesses, but it's more about bringing
11:36
people together, aligning them. So I guess yes, in a way,
11:39
Michael is like aligning people is for sure just a big part of
11:44
it. But I focus more on the holistic
11:47
view, the strategy and the communications that needs to be
11:52
built to make the company run. OK.
11:55
So you're, you're store manager at Coach, you've had experience
12:01
in France with doing what kind of what you do with in Medihelm.
12:06
How did you kind of take that and go and get your first client
12:10
here in Seattle? 1st I got hired in, in the
12:15
consulting firm called people firm here in Seattle was a young
12:18
firm, probably 30-40 people. And there was really one thing
12:22
that was interested in is what in it was in leveraging my
12:27
creative visual abilities, creative ability.
12:30
So you know, I've always been interested in in graphic design
12:33
and, and drawing. And I always thought the way we
12:35
do traditional consulting is very much about content.
12:40
But when it comes to convey ideas visually, my take on this
12:45
is most consultants are really bad at it and they suck to be
12:48
honest, right? What if I come from this
12:51
consulting background? What if I learn how to be a
12:54
better designer? What if I learn how to be a
12:56
better visual information shaper?
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Say so I went back to so I so in that first job, Michael, I also
13:05
took some evening classes and went to School of Visual
13:08
Concepts in Seattle. And I took on their pretty much
13:11
their full entire design UX curriculum there.
13:16
And I was bringing back that skill set that really helped me
13:19
differentiate in that, in that consulting from so that so I was
13:22
the instantly staffed on very interesting projects, you know,
13:25
high VDBDP projects where they had some such complex
13:30
information that they are kind of lost and they needed me to
13:33
come there and help them distill it.
13:35
And so that's kind of my launchpad to gain confidence to
13:39
and to be exposed to the kind of clients I was used to in France,
13:42
but American version and, and really try to innovate there and
13:46
think, OK, how can we do consulting better?
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So that was kind of my launchpad.
13:50
Then I joined another firm called Point B.
13:53
It's a bigger firm in Seattle. And they, they actually
13:56
recruited me. And what they wanted me to do is
13:58
to rebrand their firm, like visually rebranded.
14:03
And I told them I don't know how to do that, but.
14:07
And they said, yeah, but we do like your work.
14:08
We, we, we like what you, we saw your portfolio.
14:11
We actually like it. And we think that because you
14:13
understand consultants better than any other agencies we've
14:16
met, we think we can do it. So I did it two years and I
14:20
worked really, really hard. And it was it, it worked OK.
14:23
I learned so much there. And after that I say, OK, I
14:27
think the project's done. I'm really, you know, frankly
14:30
guys, I'm really about my own path here and the starting my
14:34
own business. So I said, is there a chance we
14:37
could, I could start something within this company?
14:39
And they said, well, it's not quite the timing.
14:41
So I said, OK, no problem. I just, I just go on my own.
14:44
And I was to set 2017 and I launched Medaham and I launched
14:47
Medaham with a business plan that was not even written down.
14:50
It was all in my head. I thought, you know, I feel like
14:53
I can just go into clients and, and boardrooms and I can
14:58
visually represent what these guys talk about live.
15:02
So I became a graphic facilitator.
15:04
I, I would bring this big board with markers and it was
15:08
facilitate conversations and illustrating what people would
15:11
talk about. And people just loved it.
15:14
They say, wow, this is, this is really cool.
15:16
We have all on one board, a messy conversation.
15:19
Now it's all structured and you capture the essential points and
15:23
we get a better sense of direction.
15:24
We also feel in our group that more people that weren't, we're
15:28
not very vocal. They, they, they seem to feel
15:30
listened to. So could you do that more?
15:32
So that's how I studied mental health.
15:35
Yeah, no, it's really cool and it and it's fun hearing you tell
15:38
your story too. I mean, obviously this creative
15:41
background is sort of like, I guess permeates the whole thing,
15:45
right. I mean, so whether it was
15:46
gardening or, you know, the way that you were talking to people
15:49
about their, their coach purses or, or the way that you're
15:52
illustrating conversations, I mean, the at its core, this
15:55
whole thing is about relationships and listening and
15:58
taking care of people. And it's like, you know, it's
16:00
sort of the same thing all the way through.
16:02
So it's really interesting to hear the through line and it's
16:05
really interesting too. I mean, one of the big things
16:06
that you focus on at Medahelm is this idea of narrative or
16:10
storytelling, narrative storytelling.
16:12
And, but what I think is so interesting about that.
16:15
And so I think for a lot of business consultants, they
16:17
approach it from a business standpoint, right?
16:19
So you're looking at, you know, finance or, or looking at
16:22
different, you know, business training that you've received
16:24
over the years and, and you're sort of coaching people up and
16:27
trying to fill gaps or maybe they're saying something
16:28
differently or whatever. But in your case, you're
16:31
bringing to it or sort of applying this artistic idea or
16:35
this, you know, creative idea where we're basically, you know,
16:38
narrative becomes the the leading indicator like more than
16:42
it is, you know, about so many other things that you would
16:44
consider sort of bricks and mortar business foundation
16:47
stuff, you know, establishing this narrative early on is, you
16:51
know, critical. And and for me, that seems to be
16:54
just sort of another manifestation of your
16:56
creativity. Yeah.
16:58
So, OK, so there's there's many things to unpack here.
17:02
I think the, the first thing I'll say is that, yes, I've
17:06
always, I've always thought about businesses as groups of
17:09
people. First of all, you know, we think
17:11
about branding and there's a lot of talks about branding now.
17:14
It's the kind of the new advertising.
17:16
It's a lot of conversations about how brand strategy and
17:19
branding replaces pure advertising.
17:23
I, I, to be honest, I found branding a little conceptual.
17:27
Still, I think people define it very, very differently.
17:30
There is not a very strong alignment around what, what it
17:32
is. And when I hear people say, you
17:34
know, OK, you need to, if you want to grow your brand, if you
17:40
want to grow you, if you want to build your brand, if you want
17:43
your brand to stand out, I find this to be honest, a little bit.
17:49
I don't hear, I don't picture a human being there.
17:53
So I, my, my approach to this is brand is great.
17:57
It's important. But first of all, let's talk
17:59
about people. So I, I think about companies as
18:01
groups of people and, and very, very simply speaking, what gets
18:08
people to work together is a common hope.
18:11
Like even here in this podcast, why are we having this
18:14
conversation? Why are we spending the time to,
18:17
to get together? Because our narrative, our
18:19
shared narrative is that we can somehow be better creative
18:23
people, build better businesses at a high level.
18:26
Maybe you guys may say this slightly differently, but I'm
18:29
pretty sure this is kind of our, our, our in our Venn diagram
18:33
here, This is our overlap, right?
18:34
We're here to talk about these topics.
18:36
And so the, the way I define a narrative is a system of
18:40
stories. I first of all, I make a
18:42
difference between what a story is and a narrative is.
18:44
And so I use the term narrative as we hear it sometimes when we
18:49
talk about religion or politics or history, you know, their
18:52
narrative around this and this and this, the narrative about
18:55
NFT, the, you know, the narrative about crypto, the
18:59
narrative about social issues, the narrative about politics is
19:02
like the sum of the stories you hear.
19:05
And to me, a company has such a narrative.
19:08
And when this narrative is off, when it's not recognized, you
19:12
can put, you can throw so many things in a company, you will
19:15
still won't go very, very well. You can fix it with better
19:19
processes. You will fix it with better
19:20
branding, you know, kind of like a, a wrapper around the thing to
19:24
make it shiny. If inside the narrative is not
19:28
well established, you know, aligned with your strategy and
19:31
shared with people, it's not going to work.
19:33
It's really not going to work. So that's something I discovered
19:36
very early on in my career. I also believe that you should
19:40
not wait to have a clearly defined narrative to go to
19:45
launch your business. I think it's something that you
19:48
discover over time. Most people will think of a
19:51
narrative as a static product. It's it's kind of having the
19:55
fixed mindset of saying the narrative is a, is a, is a thing
20:00
that you can write anyway. There is maybe some guidelines
20:03
around it and that's it. It's done.
20:05
It's not going to change. And I see it completely
20:08
differently. I come at it with a growth
20:10
mindset of, hey, maybe today our narrative is this and maybe
20:13
tomorrow he has evolved a little bit because our context changes
20:16
because we have to adapt. And so when you come at this
20:19
work with these. This slightly, this different
20:24
nuances, but very important nuances.
20:27
What you see is that people will listen more, people will tend to
20:30
collaborate more, they'll tend to relax about their company and
20:34
realize that, yeah, they don't have everything figured out yet,
20:36
and that's OK. Yeah, one of the things I like
20:39
about what you just said. So I I run an advertising
20:41
marketing agency. Myself.
20:43
And one of the things that basically drove me to working on
20:47
my own versus working for agencies and things that as I
20:50
like I've done in the past, is one of the things that really
20:53
bothers me about advertising is sort of the manipulation
20:55
involved in trying to convert somebody or turn somebody into a
20:58
something, right? And so, and it's not to say that
21:01
it's evil or mean or whatever, right?
21:03
But this is them trying to, I guess, sort of convince you or
21:06
trick you into believing what they believe, right?
21:09
And so one of the things that we do at our agency that's a little
21:11
different, like we call ourselves a brand relationship
21:13
consultancy, you know, So I mean, some more parallels here
21:16
on the relationship stuff. But by looking at people as
21:19
individuals, then you can sort of share this story and you can
21:23
market to them and Share your story and maybe it'll resonate
21:25
and maybe it won't, but it's not on us to really convert them,
21:28
right? So the, the idea is that
21:30
basically we can either align around this narrative or not.
21:32
And that'll be the difference between you as a customer and
21:34
not a customer. I'm not trying to trick you or
21:37
convince you or give you some sort of something, you know,
21:39
they'll carry it on a stick to try and get you to come into
21:42
the, you know, come into our clients business or whatever.
21:45
And so and I think that that's the difference, right?
21:47
It is seeing people as people instead of a data point.
21:50
And so I think that that's a really good observation.
21:52
I, I, I love what you're saying here because I think it's, you
21:56
know, here's a, here's a quick anecdote.
21:59
I teach a class at the University of Washington about
22:03
strategic narrative. And one of the first question I
22:05
asked the students, they're all MBA entrepreneurs.
22:07
They're here to create a company.
22:09
And I go, OK, who has heard about the fact that when you
22:12
launch a company, you have to have a good story, 40 people in
22:16
front of me, all hands up in the air.
22:17
Yeah, we all, we've all heard it.
22:19
Yeah. It's kind of the common
22:20
assumption. And I go, OK, what's the story
22:22
for you? Take a moment to write it down
22:24
and then we'll we'll show your answers and it.
22:26
And most of the time, the majority of them will tell me.
22:30
When I hear about telling your story, I hear spinning things,
22:34
lying, manipulation. I hear about the pressure of
22:37
trying to say something that is not exactly true, that
22:39
embellishes, you know, your your your situation.
22:42
So for some reason, the narrative about storytelling is
22:47
exactly what you just described. Brianne And I think that's
22:50
right, too. I mean, even if you look in
22:51
popular culture today, right? I mean, the way that we talk
22:54
about the media, you know, the media narrative, you know, you
22:57
know, and depending on what channel you watch, you're
22:59
getting a different narrative, right?
23:00
And that narrative is made-up of all these little news stories,
23:02
you know, these little things that they're saying over the
23:05
course of the day that sort of shape AI guess like an average
23:07
of what they're talking. An average?
23:09
Exactly. It's a sum.
23:09
It's a sum. Yeah.
23:11
And so same in business, right. I mean you mentioned and I saw
23:13
this in your your e-book that you can download at at
23:16
medahelm.com. The the e-book showed you've got
23:20
a little diagram in there that shows the, you know, all the
23:23
stories inside the business and then this overarching.
23:25
Narrative. Yeah.
23:26
And I. Think that that's really
23:27
important. And I mean, you just articulated
23:28
it moments ago, but I mean, just this idea, the first of all,
23:32
that you can have all these many things inside of another thing.
23:34
You know, I guess think of it as chapters in a book, right?
23:37
And so, you know, the book is whatever story you're reading,
23:40
but that story is made-up of these little mini stories
23:42
throughout. And so so that's part of it.
23:45
And then the other piece is just this idea that, you know, this
23:48
narrative can evolve and change with time.
23:51
I think especially for young entrepreneurs, I think there's
23:53
this pressure or this desire that you must have it figured
23:57
out, right? The day you sit and you've
23:59
committed this business plan to to paper.
24:01
And by God, that's our plan, you know, and we're not going to
24:03
move from it because this is right.
24:05
And so, but I think in reality, I mean if you compare it to any
24:07
other human thing, I mean nothing is so finite, nothing is
24:12
so perfect, you know, I mean everything compares evolution.
24:15
If you, yeah, if you sorry to I, I, I just can't resist to jump
24:18
in here. If you're listening to this
24:21
podcast, let go of that pressure, please.
24:23
Right now, let's go of that pressure.
24:25
That, that, that voice. I don't know who told you that
24:28
you have to have your, you know, so-called message perfectly
24:31
clear. And before you start sharing
24:34
your, you know, whatever it is, you're on social media, you're
24:37
sharing what you do or your knowledge.
24:38
Like you don't have to do that. Just go ahead and say what you
24:41
have to say and you'll figure it out over time.
24:43
Because what is going to happen is that you're going to leave a,
24:46
a trail of, of say emails or, or you do videos on, I don't
24:51
Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever, wherever it is.
24:54
And, and you, you start looking behind you and what do you see?
24:57
You see a path. It's, it's almost like, you
25:01
know, cow path. You see where, where you tend to
25:04
lean and to wander around. And that is where your answer is
25:08
about what your, where, where your narrative is.
25:11
And when you, when you, when you do this, what you're doing is
25:14
that you're just doing these things authentically.
25:16
So it becomes really, really powerful if you if you go at
25:19
your business with just you know, this is what I like, this
25:22
is what I like to say, this is how we work.
25:25
Let's say you have a, you have a digital, you know, design
25:27
agency. This is our approach.
25:29
Like we believe in XYZ, you know, things in the way we just
25:33
just do that and talk about it later.
25:35
So. Well, and I, I would say, I
25:38
mean, in my own experience, you know, to your point, you know,
25:41
our, our agencies evolved, right?
25:43
And it's funny because, like, the reason our agency is named
25:47
what it is is because 20 years ago or 15 years ago, when I was
25:50
a young designer, I was working under my name, right?
25:52
It was just Ryan Rogar, independent graphic designer.
25:54
That was my name. And so, and I did business like
25:57
that for a lot of years. And then one day I was just
25:59
like, God, you know, if I'm ever going to grow this business, I
26:01
have to have to sound like I'm in the business.
26:04
You know, I mean, I need to look like the agency, right?
26:07
And so it didn't resonate. It wasn't anything special.
26:10
But now we're called R2. Well, now we just go by R2 only.
26:12
But we were R2 Media Group back then, right?
26:14
And it was still just me and I was still just this, but I had
26:17
this idea that I must look a certain way if I was to be taken
26:20
seriously, right? And so, and I think that that is
26:23
maybe it's a product of this generation, you know, obviously
26:26
kind of, I can only speak to sort of my age and younger, but,
26:29
and maybe it was like this in the past too.
26:31
But it seems like for entrepreneurs, and especially in
26:33
sort of a social media age, we spend so much time looking at
26:37
everybody else. We see their story on Instagram
26:40
or whatever, and man, it looks like they've got it all figured
26:42
out, right? They've got the yacht, they're
26:44
on the right vacation, they've got the cool car, whatever it
26:46
is, right? We look at that thing and we go,
26:48
OK, well, they've got it figured out, right?
26:50
So what am I doing wrong, right? And so I'm spending all this
26:52
time looking at where what they're doing and I'm living
26:54
their life instead of focusing on what I need to be doing.
26:57
And I think that that creates this concept in people's head
27:01
that you need to be further, faster, you know, that you need
27:03
to be somehow, you know, have it, have everything figured out
27:06
or solved in advance. Because look at this guy, he's,
27:09
he's got it, you know, that's it.
27:10
And so when in reality, to back to your point or taking the long
27:14
road back to your point was that, you know, for my business,
27:17
I did a lot of that fake it till you make it when I was young.
27:20
And then as I've gotten older and older and older, our message
27:23
has become more and more pure to how I feel about things, right.
27:27
So now we're this brand relationship agency and we
27:30
really focus on, you know, building good quality
27:32
relationships from top management to end consumer.
27:35
You know, I mean, we just, we, it's all about how do we make
27:37
each other feel better and how do we grow together and how do
27:40
we, you know, all this stuff. But when I was younger, it was
27:42
like, OK, very tactical, like you need a logo, I'll build you
27:45
a logo, you know, whatever, I'll make you a logo, you know, And
27:47
so and just, you know, my whole, I guess ethos is I guess caught
27:51
up to what my authentic self was.
27:53
And. And even at that, it's still an
27:55
evolution, right? I'm still working on it.
27:56
And how do I articulate it and how do I do the things that feel
27:59
right to me? I, I think my point is that I
28:02
think a little bit of it anyway, requires some age and some
28:05
growth and sort of some distance.
28:06
Because I think to try and have all this stuff sorted and to
28:09
have the depth of knowledge that you need at 26 years old or
28:12
something, I'm just not even sure it really happens that way.
28:15
Yeah, I, I, I couldn't agree more.
28:18
It needs to do your work. Do what you have to do.
28:24
So you've mentioned story and narrative a few times and I, I
28:28
think there is a difference between the two.
28:29
And I think the, the way you've defined it in the past is that
28:34
the story has a beginning, a middle and an end and a
28:37
narrative doesn't. Can you maybe break that down a
28:39
little more for us? What's the difference between a
28:42
story and a narrative? Yeah, absolutely.
28:46
The reason why I say has a beginning, the story has a
28:49
beginning in middle and end. It's you know, you look at every
28:52
story. That's kind of the archetype.
28:54
That's that's how we we've learned to tell our tell
28:59
stories, also craft and construct stories.
29:02
And you open most, you know, business storytelling books or
29:06
storytelling books, period and or children's stories.
29:10
You know, there is a character, there is a back story and all of
29:12
a sudden something happens and the character gets either good
29:17
fortune or bad fortune, right? There's, there's trouble.
29:19
And then the whole thing is about how the character is going
29:22
to, to, to manage that, that struggle and then and then, you
29:28
know, get to success. That's the look at any movie.
29:31
That's how it works. And it, it, it works every time
29:34
it draws, it draws us in, right. But The thing is that is that
29:37
there is, we know that there is a resolution.
29:39
We know there is a conclusion. And so we can see ourself in a,
29:46
in the character a little bit, but we're not in full control
29:50
of, of the, of the story. In fact, somebody else has
29:53
written the story for us, right. So we're not really participants
29:57
of that. What a narrative does.
29:59
On the other hand, it has a beginning.
30:02
There is probably a, you know, a back story and then something
30:06
happens like, you know, if, if I can talk about black life
30:09
matters and that's that's that those events.
30:13
You know, there is there, there's been many defining
30:15
events, but one that we just, you know, just passed the two
30:19
year mark is the the assassination of George Floyd,
30:22
right? But.
30:23
That's the defining events. Is the story over?
30:26
No, we've not come to full circle, full conclusion, but the
30:30
narrative is full on right now. We keep adding it's open-ended.
30:34
We don't know how it's going to end.
30:37
And because we don't know yet, many people feel compelled to
30:41
join the movement, put their fingerprints with their
30:44
fingerprints on that, on that narrative, whether they agree or
30:48
disagree, whatever this might be, whatever form this might,
30:51
this might take. And, and, and so that's, that's
30:54
a great illustration for what a narrative is.
30:56
So I just took that that example, But now turn to a
30:59
company. Do you guys know when your
31:02
businesses are going to close doors and end?
31:05
Never. Hopefully not.
31:06
You don't know. I don't know.
31:08
Maybe maybe some people say, yeah, my business is is built to
31:11
design to to last for two years and two years.
31:13
I close. OK, well, that's you.
31:14
You've already predicted the story, but who who is really so
31:18
sure, right? I mean, you never really know.
31:20
So a business is based on the narrative and the narrative is
31:24
always open-ended. And so if you keep that mindset,
31:27
what you do is that you will talk to your clients like that,
31:30
you will talk to your team like that, you will talk to yourself
31:33
like that. And what you do when you, when
31:36
you do that is that you, you give them a role, you give them
31:38
something to do with your business idea.
31:41
You can tell them stories because they are from the past.
31:44
What happened to you 01 day? I was working on this project
31:48
and this happened and that's how we figured it out.
31:50
And that's my case study. And look, great result and great
31:53
outcome. We made more money and or
31:54
whatever this may be. OK, that's a story.
31:57
I, I can tell you many stories like that because we have many
32:00
case studies and examples. But our narrative here and our
32:04
narrative in this company is probably, I'm making up an
32:07
assumption here. I'm making up something.
32:09
Our narrative is to turn. That's my, I'll tell you mine.
32:13
My, my narrative that is completely open-ended is to turn
32:17
every organization I work with into a source of inspiration.
32:21
Will I ever be able to fully 100% do that?
32:24
I don't know, maybe, maybe never.
32:28
That's what pretty ambitious, right?
32:30
But that's what drives me. That's my mission.
32:33
But that's but I, I can articulate many other things
32:35
around this. That's how I do it, why I do it,
32:38
who I'm looking for to help me do it, because I guess what I
32:41
don't have all the answers. I need help, right?
32:43
I'm I am, I am excited about it. And a narrative exists because
32:48
other people are so excited about it.
32:50
Like, you know, in the music industry, Michael, you're
32:53
probably excited about one thing.
32:55
I don't know what it is. We haven't, I haven't asked you
32:57
Sure. Maybe I should ask you.
32:58
What are you excited about in your in your field?
33:00
Oh I love doing audio engineering for live events.
33:04
Audio engineering for live events?
33:05
How many how many other people are excited about this?
33:08
There's probably 10 or 12. OK in the world.
33:15
Yeah, sarcastic. There's a lot of people that are
33:18
interested in in live music and in the actual narrow field of
33:23
actually doing and mixing the audio for them, that's more
33:27
narrow. But in the live music industry,
33:30
there's millions. OK, so you share, you share that
33:33
passion for that. Yeah, like, like, you know, the
33:35
audio engineering in live events.
33:38
So you could see, you could probably see yourself running
33:41
into issues or problems you're trying to solve, maybe new
33:44
challenges you're trying to take on.
33:46
Can you do all these yourself? No, you probably need help from
33:48
others. So that's where the narrative
33:50
is. So long answer to your simple
33:53
question, that's the difference between story and narrative.
33:55
I hope this shed some light. But yeah, so many others.
33:58
Your narrative almost sounds like the company's mission
34:00
statement that kind of on the same mindset of what that is.
34:08
Let's talk about statement. I love that conversation.
34:11
Yeah. So like I, I actually, I, I had
34:12
a business coach at one point that was trying to help me
34:14
define my mission statement. And it was the hardest thing in
34:17
the world to just kind of like figure that out.
34:19
What what, what am I doing? What's my statement?
34:22
And I finally came down to create document and produce 3
34:25
words and how much. Time did I take you?
34:29
A long time it it took me a month or two to figure out what
34:33
what I want to do, but it kind of encapsulates everything that
34:37
I want to do this podcast, I'm creating content, I'm
34:41
documenting it and I'm producing it.
34:43
And that's kind of like how it kind of came to be.
34:45
And then it it works in everything that I do.
34:48
Like for audio engineering, I record bands.
34:51
I, I document this, the live show and then I produce it and
34:55
it, and it's just, there's so many little niche things that it
34:58
kind of goes into and it's broad and it can, it can go into
35:01
different aspects for, and I'm like, I'm doing software
35:07
engineering right now. I'm creating a product, I'm
35:09
producing the product, you know, and it, it, it's, it works.
35:13
But I I your narrative scenario kind of encapsulates the mission
35:18
statement of a business and it aligns everyone that that
35:23
alignment, I think is the part that matters the most.
35:25
It's getting everyone on the same page, going down the same
35:28
road and getting to the end result.
35:30
Yes, I love this. You know what?
35:32
Whatever. OK so I I love statements and I
35:35
hate them. Yeah.
35:37
Let me explain. I love statements because sure,
35:40
if you, if you have a good statement to describe what your
35:43
mission is and you're proud of it and you're comfortable saying
35:46
it, first of all, and people can relate to it, that's great.
35:49
Good for you, right? But spending two months on it, I
35:52
think, I'm sorry, I think it's way too long.
35:55
I think it took me that long to define it into 3 words and
35:59
encapsulate it into something that small.
36:01
I had, I had like kind of like this, you know, what are they
36:05
done? The diagrams of like what, what
36:08
do I do? How do we do this?
36:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trying to put them all into 3
36:12
words was tough. And that's what what he was
36:14
trying to get me to accomplish was to kind of get it into, you
36:17
know, a 10 word sentence or less kind of thing.
36:20
You know, just this is what I do.
36:22
This is how I do it. The problem I see is I don't
36:26
want to judge the approach for this person or what you did, but
36:29
here's what I see from where I am.
36:31
The problem that I see with, you know, maybe like locking
36:34
yourself up in the room for a weekend with your team and
36:37
trying to come up with the best statement is that it really
36:39
fails all the time. It fails for several reasons.
36:42
Very quickly. People feel like it's a, it's a
36:45
death by 1000 paper cut. You know, it's like trying to
36:48
wordsmith something. It doesn't have any more sense
36:51
after a few hours. So it really takes more, more,
36:54
you know, more time than that. You know that, that, that type
36:58
of exercise, because obviously I'll fall, I'm, I will fall on
37:01
my sword. I did that type of exercise
37:03
because I thought it would work and it did not work.
37:06
And so for, for me, finding a mission statement is like
37:12
putting the, it's like coming up with the title for your book.
37:15
If you write a book or a title for your podcast, you've been
37:18
thinking about it, but you can only put a good title once you
37:22
know what the book is about. Once you have a manuscript or at
37:25
least a draft, then you can start defining it.
37:27
Then you can start defining it. But I see too many people going
37:30
the way around, like they start a company and they go, what's
37:33
our mission statement? OK, maybe it's a draft.
37:36
So if you know from the get go that it's going to be a
37:39
tentative thing, a draft thing, something is going to evolve.
37:42
Don't spend more than 5 minutes doing that.
37:46
But you, you but, but, but you will have a chance to come back
37:50
at it anytime you want. And maybe that iterative
37:53
process, that's the kind of the, the two months you, you
37:56
describe, Michael, you came back at it, you know, kind of
37:59
thinking about and then you got, you went, oh, easy, 3 words
38:03
done. Boom, let's say.
38:04
Well, that's what I was going to say for Mike.
38:06
I mean, obviously, you know, he landed on something that was a
38:08
perfect fit. My guess is if you heard the
38:11
long form version of his mission statement, it was probably
38:14
articulating the same idea, right?
38:15
It became much more succinct. But this was Mike to a core,
38:18
right? Like, and so I think, you know,
38:20
in, in the defense of the, the business coach or whatever,
38:23
trying to pull this out of somebody, I think they're trying
38:25
to get you to open yourself up to an idea or reveal something
38:29
about your thinking. Right.
38:31
And I think what ends up happening a lot is the same
38:33
thing that happens in marketing and sort of what we were talking
38:35
about earlier, which is you end up writing something that's kind
38:37
of manipulative. You write something in the
38:39
spirit of checking a box or fitting a, a, a, you know,
38:44
whatever vibe you think you need to fit so that you can sell your
38:47
business or, you know, you know, that kind of thing.
38:48
Like I think it puts you in a position to sell more than it
38:51
does to, you know, really pull something out of your heart, you
38:54
know, so for mikes, it's a perfect fit.
38:56
I too have done this kind of exercise and, and maybe I'm
38:59
speaking from my own experience or laying myself out there, but
39:02
you know, in creating that mission statement and that
39:04
vision statement and trying to check off all these items on a
39:07
list, you know, I, I think I came up with something that I
39:10
like pretty well, But I mean, I wouldn't say it fell out of me,
39:14
right? Like, I don't know that we
39:15
tapped into the piece of my brain or something truly
39:18
authentic about me was, and it just sort of was dumped out onto
39:21
a page that we could then live by.
39:23
Instead, I think I tried to put together the right way of saying
39:26
the thing that I was trying to position our business in this in
39:31
the way of right. So I mean, so I came up with a
39:33
statement that, you know, put the business, I think in the
39:36
light that I wanted, but I don't know if it's as clear and
39:39
succinct as Mike's. And I don't know if it was truly
39:41
an authentic thing or if it was more like me wordsmithing ad
39:44
copy or something. And.
39:46
So that's my problem, I think with that exercise versus what
39:48
you're describing in a narrative, which is, you know,
39:51
looking back at your history and trying to evolve this thing.
39:54
But I did want to, I did want to ask you about that narrative
39:56
thing, the difference between, you know, so and I think it's
40:00
relative to this mission statement talk too.
40:02
So you're ACEO that came into a company and it's your job to
40:05
clean up the place and you want to tighten up your mission
40:07
statement and you want to do all that kind of stuff.
40:09
Maybe you don't have any relationship to the founder of
40:11
the company or, or you know, you're taking over the mantle
40:14
from somebody or whatever. And now you want to create a.
40:16
In your own vision versus the entrepreneur who's starting his
40:19
own business and maybe leading with a passion, is there some
40:22
difference in, or is it maybe easier or more complex or harder
40:27
to, to net out this narrative statement if you were maybe not
40:32
the founder of the product or whatever, versus if you were an
40:35
entrepreneur starting a business on something you love?
40:38
You know, like, I mean, is there a, an easier way to get to the
40:40
narrative? And I don't know if that's a
40:41
very clear question. So, but trying to understand or
40:45
trying to articulate the difference between the way that
40:47
somebody might approach in a business way versus somebody
40:49
who's willing to be a little bit more emotional about it.
40:51
OK, Well, I, I, I built a system, I have an approach that
40:55
works for both scenarios, big or small.
40:58
But obviously in a large company you will have to work with more
41:01
people. So it's going to take more time,
41:03
more conversations, you know, it's more complex to do
41:07
obviously. And the the stakes are at this
41:09
stage maybe higher financially. Whereas if you're just starting
41:14
on your own or with a smaller team, it's probably decisions
41:18
that can be made faster with these people.
41:20
So I'm just talking practicalities, but the approach
41:24
is radically the same. It's four key dimensions, your
41:29
origin, where you come from, your opportunity, what's what
41:33
you're shooting for, the perspective that you, you, you
41:37
bring to your, your business. And then how do you talk about
41:40
the product? Because the company's about a
41:41
product and product. I mean, the offer, let's put it
41:44
this way, cuz maybe it's a product or service or a package
41:48
or whatever you want to call it. One thing I caught in your in
41:51
your question is for someone who's bringing passion and
41:55
heart, you know, to their business, whereas somebody who's
41:59
taking over a company that has already, you know, existed, I
42:03
think it's worth challenging the assumption that if you start a
42:07
business on your own, you, you, it's all based on passion.
42:10
I think there is what there are some aspects of your business
42:14
that are you should be passionate about and there are
42:16
some aspects of your, of your business that should be really
42:19
detached from. And so, so that's from the get
42:23
go. Building a good narrative is
42:24
also identifying what can you let go of what what is it that
42:29
you're not going to be so attached to?
42:30
What happens if your business fails and well, it's a fault.
42:34
Sorry, you know, are you going to be are you going to die or
42:37
going to be the best stated that you have a Plan B?
42:39
Maybe things like that. So, so so bringing also not just
42:44
passion, but also rationality, reason within the mix.
42:48
I think that that would be a piece of advice that would, that
42:50
would encourage, you know, anyone wanting to do to build a
42:53
good narrative. But it's true that very
42:56
successful founder. I'm, I'm thinking about the
42:58
founder of, of Zappos. You know, he, he's at first
43:05
Zappos was not very successful. I don't know if many people know
43:08
that, but before he was widely successful and got purchased by
43:12
Amazon, the company was really struggling really, really badly.
43:16
And he, the, the founder had a, he had some mistake, like he had
43:21
apartments in San Francisco that he bought through the exit of a
43:25
previous company. I think it was eBay or PayPal, I
43:28
can't remember. Don't quote, don't quote me on
43:29
this. And he went on to sell most of
43:32
his properties, most of his, most of his assets.
43:34
He was so passionate, right? And that that was his own
43:38
decision. Maybe somebody taking over a
43:41
company would not have done that.
43:42
They would have separated their personal assets to their, to
43:45
their, to the company they're they're really leading.
43:48
So he decided to do that. That was his choice and he
43:52
decided to really put, you know, his success, his life on the
43:55
line there. And so I think a lot of us think
43:58
about entrepreneurship this way, but it's, it's a very personal
44:01
cursor that you're setting, right.
44:03
So yes, you can bring passion, but up to what point?
44:06
That's the question there. Yeah.
44:08
And cuz I think of examples like Apple, right, where you've got a
44:10
Tim Cook style of approach to management and leadership and
44:13
then it's Steve Jobs version, right?
44:15
And not to say that they weren't both very active business people
44:20
who were running and looking at metrics and doing all this stuff
44:22
too. But there was an approach that
44:24
was sort of the pre Tim Cook era Apple, which was a lot of
44:28
innovation and a lot of really interesting things.
44:31
And then when it got to the Tim Cook era, the business grew
44:34
exponentially. They're making more money, but
44:37
the changes are much more incremental.
44:38
There's a lot less, I guess what you would see is external
44:40
innovation. I mean, obviously they do some
44:42
amazing things with processors and, you know, they're doing
44:45
innovation all the time. But I mean, you're not seeing
44:47
this dramatic shift from, you know, the Saved by the Bell
44:50
phone to the, you know, iPhone. You know, like you're not seeing
44:54
dramatic leaps in technology the way you once did.
44:56
Yeah, maybe part of that is just life.
44:58
Like maybe the the next transition isn't as big as that
45:01
one. I don't know.
45:02
But but I just, I guess my point is, I would think that the the
45:06
narrative or the the ethos of a guy like a Steve Jobs might be
45:10
different than that of an analytical guy like a Tim for
45:12
sure. And not say that either one is
45:14
right or wrong, but I'm just what you thought about that.
45:16
No, I think as you, as you say, this one, one of the companies I
45:21
help right now, that's actually a great example.
45:23
And I they, they, they brought me on to for their post COVID
45:31
phase of growth, right? They want to grow, they want to,
45:33
it's a it's a nonprofit and they want to start getting more
45:41
involved with more unrestricted donors.
45:44
And so they're wondering, you know, how innovative they should
45:48
be. They're wondering how, you know,
45:50
people say disruptive, but that's not, we're going to go
45:53
into the details right now, but how they should really change
45:56
the way they operate. And so your narrative is also
46:00
defined by this. How differently do you want to
46:03
work in your industry? Are you trying to be a an
46:07
completely challenger to break away from the crowd and really
46:10
differentiate very strongly, or do you find that actually being,
46:14
you know, staying traditional is, is actually a good thing for
46:17
you? Many people are very confused
46:19
with that question. They're at the same time
46:22
they're, they're, they put out a marketing that is very they're
46:25
trying to be out there very forward thinking.
46:27
They say we're innovative. They, but if you look at how
46:30
they operate, they operate completely differently and they
46:32
don't notice it. That's the thing.
46:35
Your narrative is very something that is very unconscious.
46:41
You know, you're not really aware of it, not very easily
46:44
aware of it. So I think it's, it's, it's
46:47
setting the right cursor for how innovative, how you know, do you
46:52
want to change the narrative within your industry or do you
46:56
just want to keep rolling with the current narrative because
46:59
it's a, it's a good enough one. It's great.
47:01
And that's what you want to do, right?
47:03
Do you want to be a disruptor or do you want to be an optimizer?
47:07
Just, you know, being bringing incremental adjustment and make
47:10
it slightly bigger in the tech industry, Everybody wants to be
47:15
a disruptor. That's the that's the narrative
47:17
of the tech industry. We all want to be, you know,
47:20
great disruptors, But I know companies who are not trying to
47:23
do that. They're just trying to make old
47:24
technology work and their business is really good.
47:28
Their business is growing really, really well because
47:32
you'd be surprised how many, how many of our daily life is run by
47:36
very old antiquated technology. And they have a very profitable
47:40
business. They love doing that thing.
47:43
They're kind of the antique shop of, of the tech industry, right?
47:47
Like, you know, maintaining and, and renovating and remodeling
47:52
old things that are not going to change anytime soon, large
47:55
systems, for instance. So you have to be conscious
47:58
about it. Who do you want to be like what,
48:00
what, what game do you want to play?
48:02
That's part of the question around building a, a strategic
48:05
narrative In in strategic narrative, there was the word
48:08
strategic. So strategic means it's
48:10
intentional. You're aware, you're conscious
48:13
of it. You've explored deeply what this
48:15
means for you. You've made some good decisions.
48:19
So in developing that narrative, do you go to the employees and
48:24
ask them or does the CEO just kind of define it and say this
48:29
is what we are jump on? I don't.
48:31
I don't care about employees. OK.
48:34
Just kidding. It's like this is good, let's go
48:37
down this road, this. Is going somewhere This is going
48:40
to be interesting. I like this.
48:42
No, I mean I, I am probably the most inclusive person, you know,
48:48
I, I really care about actually from the get go, I define a
48:52
company as a group. So yes.
48:55
So first of all, I, I also clarify what the, what my client
49:01
Co role should be. I say, OK, what, what you know,
49:05
who do you want to be for this company?
49:08
Who? And I do that before I decide to
49:10
work with somebody. I do, I do that in my sales
49:12
process. I assess if there is a fit
49:15
between their philosophy and my ideology.
49:19
And I prefer to work with CE OS and leaders who see themselves
49:23
as a facilitator of the group versus a dictator.
49:26
That's my preference. And so the facilitator style
49:29
will be more interested in building, in building a company
49:35
with empathy and bringing people into the mix.
49:38
But also there will be cognizant of their, their, the decision
49:43
makers, right? They make the, they make the
49:44
final call at the end and they explain people why, why they
49:48
made this call also. And they bring people in, in
49:51
really into, into the thought process.
49:53
So right now I just started working with two new, new, new
49:58
companies. And the first phase is I'm doing
50:00
interviews. I go listen to people.
50:02
That's what great leaders do you know, I what, why do I know?
50:06
First of all, I'm not an expert in their field.
50:09
So I'm a total lay lay person. One company does a flavoring and
50:15
raw material for the food industry and so I have 0
50:20
experience in that. So I'm not, I need to learn
50:23
right? And I need to listen carefully
50:26
to everybody's or at least most stakeholders point of view.
50:29
What's their, what makes them tick, what's their interests?
50:33
What are they scared about? You know, what's their vision
50:36
for success? Things like this?
50:38
Where do you, where do they see themselves in one year, 2 year,
50:40
three years? So it's, it's, it's, it's about
50:43
doing this. So one company I did, I did
50:45
here, I did this with at a large scale in the Seattle area is
50:49
Alaska Airline. We actually did this exercise
50:52
for one of their subsidiaries, Horizon Airline in 2017.
50:57
It's a big project. It took us six months, but we
51:01
did this with every single employee can the time.
51:04
So Alaska Airlines is one of those airlines that stands out
51:07
to me as one that I fly, particularly in the Northwest.
51:12
I've flown to Alaska a few times.
51:15
One of the things that they do is they, if you live in Alaska
51:18
where they're from, they don't charge you baggage fees because
51:24
someplace like when you're flying into Nome, you have to
51:27
have large bags to be able to get, you know, you go to Home
51:30
Depot and you fly it in. It's, it's something that people
51:34
in the Lower 48 don't realize is that there's a necessity for
51:37
people in Alaska to have an airline like Alaska Airlines.
51:41
And I was wondering, like when you brought their name up, what
51:44
are the differentiators that they do differently from, you
51:48
know, like Southwest or this or that?
51:51
What stands apart? What's their mission statement?
51:54
Can you kind of go down their path, what you did for them and
51:57
how you kind of made their narrative?
52:01
Yeah. So, so first of all, I want to
52:02
clarify the scope. I worked with Horizon Airline,
52:05
which is the ones and they, they actually when you look at their
52:09
airplanes, you will barely see any difference.
52:11
They look the same, but it's like an, it's like AI mean.
52:15
It's the project's now 4 year old, but at the time it was a
52:17
separate entity and Horizon. And I do actually specializes
52:21
and focus on exactly what you describe Michael, like, you
52:25
know, being close to people, being more, more they're,
52:27
they're kind of, they're flying, you know, delivery truck
52:31
sometimes or, you know, they, they, they, they, they bring the
52:35
pickup and bring kids from school from really remote areas
52:38
for the, for the weekends and things like that.
52:40
And so one of the things that the CEO wanted to do is realign
52:45
where this part of the of the company was, was going with
52:50
their original mission and what was happening in their context.
52:53
And that's why we listen to every single employees.
52:56
We, we brought them in, in, in cohorts of 100 people at the
52:59
time. And I think there was, gosh, I
53:02
think I think the workforce was probably just for Horizon was
53:05
probably close to 3000 people at the time.
53:08
And so we did it over six months and we listened to every single,
53:11
every single person had a chance to tell a story around a
53:14
specific topic. And we listened to so many
53:16
stories that we could really sense and revive what the
53:20
narrative should be for that, for that part of the
53:24
organization. So I heard incredible stories
53:27
like, you know, you know, people going to funerals who just
53:33
needed silence and didn't, didn't want to have service in
53:36
the, in the flight. And the flight attendant just
53:39
noticing this and inquiring and just stopping their service just
53:43
because if there's a big, you know, sorry, you know, a large
53:48
family taking this airplane, that's just what, what they
53:50
needed. So going, going out of their
53:52
way, going outside of their usual process, choose this cater
53:56
to those people needs at the time.
53:59
So so we did this, we did this visually.
54:01
We did this over several days. And then and then we asked who
54:06
wanted to raise their hand to drive initiatives that would
54:10
that would really revive the soul of this company and what
54:14
what initiatives like what concrete initiative they were
54:17
interested in driving. So again, building a narrative
54:20
is an open door. It's an open invitation.
54:22
We were not there to tell them the story that we had nicely
54:27
crafted with a, with a marketing agency in closed doors and that
54:30
they should now follow. That's not our approach at all.
54:33
It was the opposite. We let them.
54:35
We let them tell us what was right for people out in the
54:39
field and how we should go about shaping the company then.
54:44
Like that? When you read.
54:45
Equal costs. When you approach it that way,
54:48
do you notice any pushback or do you get any sort of, I guess,
54:50
leadership involvement where all the employees seem to think one
54:55
way but a strong headed leader at the top is going and they try
54:59
and muddy it up a little bit cuz maybe there's a misalignment
55:02
between leadership and the staff.
55:05
Well, OK, so you can only do that if leadership is really on
55:08
board with the fact that you, you know, there are some risks.
55:11
There are people who are going to be excited about this idea
55:14
and people who are going to be scared because also change, you
55:18
know, is a scary thing. So when you say when we're going
55:22
to revive the narrative for this company, we're going to evolve
55:25
our culture, turning into maybe new habits, new processes, it
55:29
signals change. And some people say we don't
55:32
want that. You know, where we are is not
55:35
great, but that's good enough. It's fine.
55:38
Don't change. Don't change a thing, right.
55:40
So you get all sorts of reactions.
55:42
You know, again, the company is a group of humans.
55:45
And so you have to be fully on fully on board with the fact
55:48
that, yeah, they're going to rock the boat a little bit.
55:52
Yeah, you're going to get some push.
55:53
You will go get some push back. So what, what you have to do
55:56
then is schedule some, you know, time outs with your leadership
56:03
team, say, OK, how are we doing on this process?
56:06
How do you feel like this is going?
56:07
Should we continue? Should we stop?
56:09
So continuously re re evaluate this, this exercise, because
56:15
you're dealing with human nature, right?
56:17
You're not dealing just with marketing stuff.
56:19
You're right on a piece of paper.
56:20
It's not a product. Again, it's a process.
56:22
We have to so, so for sure, leadership has to be completely
56:27
on board with what's going to what's going to happen.
56:30
It has to be driven by leadership.
56:33
Most people with when they hear me describe what I do, they go,
56:36
oh, it's a marketing thing. So the marketing department
56:39
should be in charge of this. And they say, no, not just
56:43
marketing, of course marketing should be part of it, but
56:47
everyone else, operations, finance, customer service,
56:51
product development, and most importantly, the CEO.
56:54
The CEO should be the person orchestrating this whole thing
56:58
and really facilitating and making it easy for people to
57:02
connect together and, you know, with compassion and, and really,
57:06
really get alignment on where this, where this company is
57:08
going. Marketing is not the sole
57:10
proprietor of the, of the, of the, of the entire narrative.
57:15
The way I define it, sure, marketing may be the sole owner
57:19
that has the key of the website where the about page with some,
57:23
some version of the story is depicted.
57:27
That's probably the case for most marketing department.
57:31
But how many companies? I go to so many companies where
57:35
I ask people, OK, so I have three simple questions for you.
57:39
What does this company do? Why?
57:42
Why is it that? What do your customers tell you
57:46
that it's it's important for them?
57:48
And why is this so important now in the current context?
57:53
And I get AI get 1000 answers and none of the answers have
57:56
anything to do with what's on the website.
57:58
Who cares about the website? They go well, marketing put
58:01
that, but that's not us. That's their branding.
58:04
That's the mission statement. That's not what we do here.
58:07
How many companies are falling to this trap, right?
58:11
So if you want to, if you want to avoid this trap, of course,
58:14
it's a leadership thing. This is my this is my line.
58:18
To sum it up, a story is thought as a act of literature, A
58:24
narrative. A strategic narrative is an act
58:26
of leadership. It's not an act of literature.
58:29
And many people will tell me I can't do your thing because I'm
58:32
not a good writer. I don't care if you're a good
58:34
writer. Are you a leader?
58:37
Yeah. Yeah.
58:38
OK, You can do it. I love that.
58:40
Well, and what a great way to put a button on this
58:42
conversation, too. I don't know if you can believe
58:44
it, but we're already on now. We're into this thing.
58:45
So. Oh, my gosh.
58:46
Yeah. So we will.
58:47
We'll start to wrap it up here. Do you want to give people you
58:52
know just a little bit of information where they can track
58:54
you down if they choose to engage with you online and where
58:56
they can find you? OK, so there are many ways to
59:00
track me down. I'll start with the most simple.
59:03
If you go to web browser and stop and type in
59:06
strategicnarrative.com, you land on my website, but you will find
59:10
me very active on LinkedIn. Connect with me.
59:13
I, I, I'm, I'm always there, you know, responding, commenting.
59:17
I'm also on YouTube. I post a new video, my daily
59:21
insight almost every business days.
59:24
And if if you're really excited about this topic, you know, I
59:27
published almost seven days a week on my e-mail list.
59:30
So these are full options and I'll add one thing that I, I, I
59:35
rarely say, but if you want me to, if you want to know more,
59:40
give me a call or send me an e-mail.
59:42
I'd love to come and speak, you know, at your company or speak
59:44
at your organization or your school or your community about
59:48
this topic. Yeah, I also just wanted to
59:51
mention, or I happen to know that you just released the free
59:54
ebook Strategic Narrative. There's also a fun little video
59:59
version of it where you actually read the book for people so you
1:00:01
can digest it however you like. A lot of the stuff that we
1:00:05
talked about in the show today, not to mention a million things
1:00:07
that we didn't get to, will be found in there, so go check that
1:00:09
out. That's just over at
1:00:10
medahelm.com. And yeah, that's great.
1:00:13
So thanks so much for doing this.
1:00:15
We really appreciate you. Yeah, thank you, guys.
1:00:17
Do what? Quick?
1:00:18
Do we have some kind of cool music to end this?
1:00:22
Well, I'm, we're happy to plug something in.
1:00:24
We have some kind of coolish music that we use most of the
1:00:26
time, but we're happy to plug something in, yeah.
1:00:29
That sounds great. Take care guys.
1:00:31
Perfect. Well, thank you so much and
1:00:32
thanks to everybody who tunes into the show this week and
1:00:34
every week. See you guys next time.