Power of Stories
Sapiens is a great book. My key takeaway from the book comes from understanding the differences between humans and chimpanzees. We share ~99% DNA with them. But our achievements are infinitely higher than theirs. There is a human civilization. There isn’t one of the chimps.?
There are chimp tribes though. The chimp tribes never grow beyond a few hundreds because with growing size, factionalism and dissent grows leading to fight for dominance, violence and eventual split. Humans on the other hand are capable of peaceful mass collaboration. That’s how we build roads, bridges, cars, spaceships and search engines.
We have a larger and more networked brain than chimps. We are capable of imagination well exceeding theirs. We can come up with stories. Chimps can’t. And stories, especially good ones, are super powerful.
For a long time, even after we had that big noggin, we didn’t have the time to imagine good stories. As hunter-gatherers we were too busy just trying to keep themselves alive. It was until we started farming that we got food security and time to whip up cool stories like: justice, government, religion, marriage, money etc. Our farming ancestors had to come up with these stories to ensure that peaceful collaboration could take hold and continue. We needed to invent money, so we could keep accounts of value created (required to ensure fair distribution and avoidance of disputes). We need a judicial system to settle disputes (interestingly, both religion and government came from that idea). We created the institution of marriage because …. actually I don’t understand why we did that exactly :-).?
Yes - Justice, Religion, Democracy, Marriage, Country, Money - are all stories. Our civilization is built on stories. It’s only as real as our collective hallucinations.
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If you’re with me so far, you must realize that whatever company you’re working for is also a story. Your founder, CEO and executives are telling you that story - probably often (if they are doing their jobs right). If you don’t believe that story, you’re in trouble because you’ll have a hard time repeating that with conviction to unsuspecting customers, partners, colleagues, employees, candidates but most importantly yourself.
You must ask these questions often, of yourself: What’s the story of my company? Do I believe in it? Do I like my part in the story?
And if you don't have good answers to those for too many weeks in a row; ask yourself, what story is keeping you there?
Very well articulated, Suresh. 'Sapiens' for sure is a very interesting and insightful read. Creating stories --> human civilizations! Loved his take on "gossiping" as well. Your litmus test is right on point - if one does not understand the "story," aka vision, of the company, then there is something not quite right - there is a break in the communication - whether at the source end or the receiving end. And at that point, instead of accepting that break in communication, one should take the initiative to ask about "the story".