Ten years of "storytelling, whys and change"

Two weeks ago, Astrolab officially turned ten years old.

On March 20, 2013, Oscar Ramirez , Gerardo Ca?amar García , and I went to the notary and registered Astrolab SC. I don't remember anything special about that day —sorry for the disappointment!— and this is because, in reality, Astrolab actually started at the end of 2011.

That year, Oscar and myself began meeting weekly to think about how to humanize organizations. Gerardo would join the team later.

When we said "humanize," we meant something similar to Adam Grant's search in making work not suck . In other words, we wanted to improve the experience of work. We didn't want to accept the idea that work had to be miserable.

Still, we didn't know where to start.

Foundation

Of all the possible paths we could take, we were intrigued by understanding why leaders didn't take the time and effort to be better communicators.

We believed that fixing this would have a double benefit, in line with forty years of research by Edward Deci on self-determination theory :

1. People would have more energy by understanding the purpose of their work,
2. Organizations would move faster, both in their organic growth and in their ability to innovate.

In reality, we couldn't find an argument against it, so we decided to start Astrolab with the goal of helping business leaders become better storytellers.

The clients started arriving soon, all in Monterrey (OXXO, Heineken, 7-Eleven Mexico, Owens Corning, Soriana, CEMEX, Whirlpool, MARS).

Later, we expanded to Mexico City and Guadalajara (Novartis, Citibanamex, Ferrero, C&A, Bayer, Walmart, Dow, Diageo), and then to Texas (Citi, Southwest Beverages).

Focus

At first, our focus was 100% on oral storytelling as a communication tool, and we tried to use it in all our interactions with the people around us. We took it so seriously that for a long time, our website said something like "the first Mexican consulting firm specialized in business storytelling".

Then we discovered that advertising ourselves this way was a mistake: we had fallen in love with a solution, not with solving a problem, a common error every serious founder tries to avoid.

So we decided to take a step back and ask some questions:

• What was the problem we had been trying to solve all these years?
• What did all our work have in common?

Gradually we found a pattern: all our work had the purpose of helping leaders become inspiring storytellers.

Today

We currently collaborate with companies from various industries, many of them public, such as CEMEX, Nemak, LAMOSA, Arca Continental, Unilever and some fast-growing startups such as BBVA's Openpay and Stori.

Our value proposition consists of only two services:

• Strategic Narratives
• INSPIRA , our bilingual storytelling learning experience

In these ten years, we have learned a lot.

One of the most relevant insights? Learning to navigate uncertainty, and at the same time, helping our clients to do the same.

We never imagined that the name Astrolab, inspired by a navigation tool invented in ancient times, would make so much sense in this decade of technology, growth, and change.

---

A few days ago, I was at an event at Wharton where John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods, spoke. There, Mackey encouraged us not to fall into cynicism:

Answer the call. You’re gonna be much happier. Follow your heart. It’s gonna lead to some adventures.

This is what we've been doing every year, and most days.

For Astrolab, that adventure continues to be a quest to improve the experience of work by helping leaders become better storytellers.

Thanks to everyone who has trusted us over these ten years: the internal team and the clients who helped us start, those who have been with us for years, and those who are yet to meet us.