10 Lessons from 100 Stories - Part 1

I firmly believe that good stories come to those who believe in the power of stories. Or else how could I ever tell this story of a 100 stories? For every storyteller the story of the first story is always a special one. Quite like having the first child, you are anxious and excited about it. You become responsible. You begin to look at the world differently. You want to be a better person and perform to your fullest potential. And like every parenting journey teaches parents something new about parenting that they hadn’t known of, so does every story teach a storyteller something new about her craft.

As a storyteller, and especially as one practiced in the process of inquiry and extraction, I knew I wanted to use my experience of story extraction and presentation sometime again. I knew ‘Corporate Golpo’ was waiting to happen, but I didn’t know that I wouldn’t have to go looking for it! I didn’t know that stories would come looking for me!

My first and mega story corporate project came from HCL Technologies. In an organization with a 100,000 employees, there is a never ending stream of stories. The project was to sift through this gargantuan source of stories and find the most defining stories that make HCL Technologies a powerhouse in the IT domain. While there was the Employee Marketing team working very hard to find me the right stories, my job was to extract the stories between the innumerable lines of coding, automation scripts, incredible applications and fantastical out-of-the-world innovations! Information Technology excites me; let’s say I like to know about the latest phones and gadgets. But I definitely don’t describe myself as a techno-geek! So was I ready to nose-dive into a world of people wherea byte really was about zeros and ones, and not what I was accustomed to, that is a ‘soundbyte’! Then I said to myself, why not? Telling 100 stories in a subject that is as alien to me as Greek won’t be easy! But it promises to be an adventure of a lifetime!

It was a study in human behavior, individual quirks, spotting that they wanted to say but couldn’t, and even that they want to say but have no one to say to! It was about giving shape to stories that they didn’t know they could say. It was about making them believe that they are heroes in their own stories.

To me it was a remarkable starting point because it gave me an enormous gateway into the world of organizational storytelling and how it can truly transform a corporate.

Here are the 10 lessons that I learnt after telling 100 stories:

A Study Into The Human Mind

Storytelling especially in this case is all about bringing out the mind and heart of every Ideapreneur. Really, these are 100 Ideapreneurs we are talking about. Each one has brought forth a remarkable idea that has helped HCL Technologies exemplify their customer promise, “Relationships Beyond The Contract.” What makes one employee different from another? What makes one story different from another? A closer look at it and you realize that this is a study in human behavior. People are different in terms of their motivation and drive. Like Pradeep Mathur* said, Oh! I am not an innovator! Ideas don’t come naturally to me!” And so one fine day, when an idea came crashing on his head, he realized that ideas also go looking for a host! Or like Suresh Nagrajan * said, “There were people before me who had done this task manually, but I wasn’t ready to waste my time! Why spend the whole day before a screen when you can monitor it effectively without being physically glued? There are so many things that I can read and learn instead! I had to win back my time and so I automated this. Now everyone on the team knows that Suresh will find a way to automate a task if he doesn’t think it is productive enough!” People make stories different, and here there were enough reasons for that!

In this exercise, not only did my subjects have to open up to a stranger who they have never seen (and perhaps never will), which is a HUGE challenge in itself; but they also opened up and shared their deepest thoughts about themselves. They shared the burden of expectation from their clients, the stress in their job, the insecurities of working in a large organization, the competition, their preference for recognition over reward…and a countless other things that rests in the storyteller’s bag!

Faceless Subjects

Oh yes! I didn’t meet any of the 100 people!

Newsgathering and journalism had taught me well. That is never to go into an interview unprepared! And so I put in place a somewhat rudimentary information gathering format that gave me the synopsis of each story. In all the 100 stories, I walked in knowing what to ask and where to find the finer nuances of the stories.

The real trouble however was that this was an exercise where I had access to my subjects through a telephone! The nature of the project was such that all stories had to be gathered remotely. With employees spread across the world there were time zone concerns, at some others there were urgent meetings, the supreme call of duty and in some cases even the great Indian traffic jam jeopardizing our interviews.

This exercise sharpened my listening skills. It is one thing to interview someone sitting right before you. For a live subject, there is always the benefit of connecting with the person, winning the person’s trust and then creating a space where he/she is willing to share openly. This exercise taught me the skill to extract and write convincing stories about people who I had never met in my life!

Not the most conducive way to gather stories, I’d say, but then this too was overcome!

Why My Story?

In all the 100 stories that I went seeking, more than 70% asked me this one question! At the beginning I started answering this in all earnestness, saying that I wasn’t the one selecting stories, and I was just the teller, the chronicler, the medium to take the story to the team. But then I stopped and changed my answer.

I didn’t answer the question. Instead I asked one in return, “Why Not?”

It’s both an exercise in modesty and as well a complete lack of faith in one’s own stories that makes people really wonder at the potential of their life having a story worth telling! In between all the humdrum buzz of technology, what remains at the end of the day is a truckload of data and facts. The story though lived is often overlooked. For example, how severe was the problem that the client was desperate for a solution? Or even more dramatic – how really unaware was the customer that he didn’t know that there was a smart solution waiting to be deployed! Wait a minute, let’s up the ante a bit – what about the time when the team met their targets in such short time that the client was struggling to set fresh targets. Oh yes, there is a story there! So really, why not?

Sometimes you do need an external, non-partisan eye (and ear in this case) to look into a story and bring out the marvel in it!

I Don’t Think There Is Anything Inspiring

If the first hurdle is to get people to accept that they have stories to share, the next bit is to convince them that their stories matter! Within an organization storytelling serves several purposes. As an Organizational tool, it empowers the organization to harness the internal stories of the workforce. It acts as a knowledge aggregator, a repository of stories and experiences that gives everyone a shared experience of how the organization works and is perceived. Storytelling in the organizational space helps in team building, recognizing and awarding talent besides being an excellent platform to get feedback how the company’s products and services are being received and perceived. From the Corporate Suite, to HR, design & development, sales and marketing, storytelling finds place in almost every floor, in every cubicle of the organization!

HCL’s objective behind gathering these stories was driven towards a simple objective – to have the 100,000 Ideapreneurs in HCL know these special 100 Ideapreneurs!

Humans are naturally tuned to understand stories. Stories let us connect the dots, look for meaning and derive lessons. Stories give us ideas, answers and solutions. Listening to stories help us imagine and create another’s world. Stories when told and shared effectively trigger emotions and therefore inspire reactions and behavior. Stories humanize organizations, brands and products. Stories give life-like qualities to inanimate entities, making them likeable and worth aspiring for. Stories are deeply related to emotions, and it is through emotions that we can affect change.

So yes, stories are inspiring. As long as it is the right story and it is told well!

That’s the top 5 lessons learnt from telling a 100 stories at HCL Technologies. Stay tuned for the next part of the series soon.

If this piques your interest in “Corporate Golpo” and you want to know how Your Story Bag can help you harness the power of stories, then write to [email protected]

This blog first appeared in the Your Story Bag Blog