Bake-in vs. Buy-in: Thinking Like an Improviser for More Successful Storytelling

What made me a successful storyteller in tech with products and brands?

Brand story? No.

Tech? Ha! It's never about tech

Humor? Partly.

Think Like an Improviser and Bake-In at the Beginning

The best way to get 'buy in?' BAKE IT IN AT THE BEGINNING by working collaboratively. Think like an improviser.

Storytelling like an improviser involves several things:

1) Stewardship and Advocacy, not Total Ownership. Recognizing that the story is owned not by one person. There are brand stewards, leaders, and customers who shape that story and make it theirs. A great story 'travels' and adapts. Yes and...! Yes, there are times when brands need more stewardship 'voice.' Control? No.

2) Baking-in vs. Buy-in. Understanding that when people feed into the story it becomes theirs and people share 3-5X MORE when it's THEIRS and they feel ownership. They become more emotionally vested in the success of that story, project, X. That means not taking a complete story, throwing it over the wall and asking people to 'adopt it' whole. Seed parts of the story and ask people to add on to the narrative. You will be surprised. It can be challenging in 'command and control brands' where letting go is hard. Remember: user-generated content gets shared far more than brand-generated content. There is a reason for that.

3) Great stories, like the products they represent, must cross the 'chasm.' Knowing and allowing the story to "MOVE" and morph and change. Stories evolve. It's about putting out part of a story and letting others add on and shape it. Tightly held stories never cross the story chasm. Hey Geoffrey Moore - adore your book - read it in b-school over and over - and I think stories are the same way.

Perils of Top-Down 'Command and Control' Storytelling

Top-down storytelling is hard and almost always fails somewhere. I led tech story, product and marketing comms teams. I trained execs on media, pitching, telling stories, all of it, for 2 decades while doing comedy at night.

One company I was at acquired another company. The cultures were NOT a match, just the tech was. I worked with the teams being acquired on comms.

They asked me what I thought. I said, it didn't matter. "What do YOU all think?"

They said, "Our start-up story which was all about upending the status-quo has been usurped by the status quo." They were right. The acquiring company TRIED to assimilate the company - like the borg.

It did not work; because it killed the story and culture that made the company what it was. I told execs, "you need to hear what they have to say and great stories that work are not colonization efforts. They are co-created and you need to listen. Take their feedback into account."

They did not. Story mandates top-down in big companies often fail for this reason. The origin story matters. The acquired company origin story matters. How will you build a bridge for employees and customers between the two so it evolves and makes sense?

Storytelling Culture: Other Resources

Want to be a better storyteller? Work collaboratively on stories with others.

1) Reach out. Organizational story capacity is built through collaboration.

2) Check out my book. The first 1/2 is all about content and stories and the latter 1/2 is using improv and comedy techniques to innovate almost anything.

3) Other articles are at keepingithuman(dot)com's blog and here's a piece from 2016 on Storytelling Culture