It’s imprudent to write a completely new story for your organization without first discovering what your current story is.
“Wait,” you say. “My organization already has a story?”
Yes, O dear reader! Everyone in your organization, whether it’s two people or twenty thousand, is telling a story about it.
I’m not going to get into methodology. You could survey the members of your organization, you could bring them in and ask them, you could start a discussion thread. You might ask your clients or customers, or you might keep it within your business. But the questions you will need to answer are generally the same.
- What do people believe are the most important values of my organization? (Not just the words in our on-boarding materials, but the values they are expected to play out on a daily basis in every interaction.)
- What does my org value that distinguishes it from any similar organization? Why does it hold that value as important?
- Do my org’s people know why and how they are expected to embody those values? Can they tell the story of a hero or champion of my org’s values?
- Where do my org’s people expect the company to be in five or ten years? How does that image reflect the distinguishing values of my org?
- What role do they see themselves playing in the evolution of the org?
- Where do my people expect to be in five to ten years? What does that say about their individual values?
- What role do they see the org playing in their personal evolution?
At its core, these questions seek to get to the “why” of your organization and identify the story your people are telling themselves about it.
Once you have answered these questions, start to piece together the puzzle:
- Where do my people believe my organization is coming from? In other words, what is the relevant historical context?
- What values are calling my organization toward a different future? How are those values shaping the organization as it is today? (Remember values don’t always have positive effects–cost-efficiency may result in fear and territorialism, while innovativeness may result in inefficiency. What are the benefits and the costs, not just to the organization as a whole but to my people?)
- Who is the champion of these values, the example my people think of when they are trying to decide how to execute the values of the organization?
- What kind of future is this leading us into? Is the path leading upward, downward, or on the same level? What specifics can I glean about the future my people are working toward?
With these elements in place, you will have the most basic outline of your founding myth. The next step will be to reforge that myth into something better.