Transformational Storytelling
Scott Monty is a strategic communications and leadership coach and advisor, who helps the C-Suite embrace better communication with timeless and timely advice. A Fortune 10 leader whose background in classics positioned him to see through the shiny objects, Scott can drill down to understand the common human needs from throughout history that will still drive us all. He was ranked by The Economist as the number one, top of the list of 25 Social Business Leaders, and Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford Motor Company called him a visionary.
Scott spent six years as an Executive at Ford, where he helped turn the company around with an uncanny ability to merge technology with humanity. He served as a strategic adviser across a variety of business functions, leading the company’s global social media strategy. He also has another decade and a half of experience in communications and marketing agencies. Scott’s clients have included companies such as Walmart, IBM, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Google. He writes the Timeless and Timely newsletter, which I can’t rave about it enough. I can’t tell you how lucky you are to get to hear Scott’s insights.
Welcome, Scott. We both love storytelling, marketing, messaging and both of us have a passion for arts, although yours is at a whole other level. Your in-depth knowledge of it is quite fascinating to me. Let’s start wherever you would like to in your own story of origin. You have some insights that might be interesting. I know a lot of my friends say, “When I have a kid, it brings back a lot of my own childhood memories, or I’m reliving my own excitement at whatever holidays coming up.” You can go back to childhood or school, wherever you want.
There are many choices here. Let me start where it brings the most meaning. I went to school at Boston University. I grew up in New England. I gravitated to and stayed in Boston for twenty years after I graduated. While I was there, my intent was to go to medical school. I was pre-med. I didn’t want to major in Biology, Chemistry or the typical sciences because I figured, “I’ll be scienced out for the rest of my life if this is my career. Let me try something different.” I was at the College of Liberal Arts. It’s now the College of Arts and Sciences, but it was CLA. I said, “Let me try some classic liberal arts.”
I took a class in Greek Civilization. Maybe it was the professor or the material. I had three years of Latin in high school, so I understood the ancient world, but I was immediately hooked at that moment. This gets to the core of what you do here, and that is, “He was a storyteller. He brought the past to life.” To me, if you can take the past and make it relevant to what we’re experiencing, it’s the same. If you go to church and sit through a homily, nobody wants to hear the reading regurgitated. What you want to hear is what does it mean in respect of what I’m dealing with in my life now and the challenges that I have?
This professor was able to take that. I still remember the line he used because I had never heard a teacher use profanity before. We were talking about Oedipus and he said, “You have to understand that to the ancient Greeks, calling someone an Oedipus was the ultimate insult.” He paused and went, “Oedipus was a mother effer.” I went, “Now it’s relevant. I get it.” It was a smack in the face, but it suddenly hit me that there’s a whole world out there that happened before that can be brought to life in new and different ways. From there, I went on. I didn’t go to medical school. I went to business school focusing on the business side of medicine. I went into biotech, medical device consulting, and managed care. Ultimately, I ended up at an agency that did B2B marketing in healthcare and high-tech space.
That’s where I discovered social media back in the mid-2000s. I had to leave that agency because they couldn’t get it. They had a client who wanted a new way to tell their story. This is when podcasting had come out. My vision for them was to host a podcast, surround yourself with smart people, highlight your own type of thinking, and showcase it. They went, “We’re not sure. Have you got a case study on this?” I was like, “This was launched three weeks ago. Do you want to read a case study or do you want to be a case study?” She went, “We want to read a case study.”
Removing the flat spot from my forehead from beating it against the wall, I left there and went to an agency that did strategic consulting with large brands to help them understand social media strategy. I did that for about a year and all of a sudden, I got a call from Ford Motor Company from their head of communications saying, “We’re behind the eight balls. We know digital communications and social is important. We need someone to come in here and lead it.” I said, “Do I have to move to Detroit?” I was in Boston at the time and working virtually with the agency I was with. We were all around the country. He said, “Yes. This is a high-level leadership position. We need your presence in the building.” I went, “I’m not interested.”
I’ll never forget his response. He didn’t say, “How dare you, sir? We are the Ford Motor Company. He said, “Are you sure?” which to me spoke of humility and willingness to let the other side explore their feelings. I said, “I’m pretty sure. The timing doesn’t feel right to me.” At the time, Alan Mulally had been the CEO of Ford for two years. He’d come from outside the auto industry and he transformed Ford or was about to transform Ford, which was on the ropes. The whole auto industry was in late 2007, early 2008. I followed Ford’s progress. They made some financial progress in that first quarter of 2008. The head of communications and I reconnected. He said, “We’ve talked to about 50 people. We still haven’t filled the role and your name keeps coming up. Why don’t you humor us? Come out here, spend 1.5 days with us, talk to 8 or 10 people to get a feel for what we’re all about, and then you can decide what’s right for you.” I did that.
John, I’ll never forget walking up the walkway to the glasshouse as it’s known Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, which is probably about an 8th of a mile long and twelve-stories high. It’s an impressive building. You’re walking into history. Henry Ford put the world on wheels and by the 1920s, half of all vehicles in the world were Ford Motor Company vehicles. This is a storied past. When I met with everybody that day, they were intelligent, talented, but most of all, they were passionate. I thought, “You can’t just invent passion out of nothing. There’s something special happening here.” Long story short, I signed up and by July of 2008, I was the head of Global Digital Communications and Social Media for Ford.
I love the choices there of humility versus hubris, and how one question can say so much about a culture and a person, “Are you sure?” versus, “How dare you?” The other part of that was clearly they’re selling you. When we’re younger, I know for myself in my early twenties, if somebody ever tried to recruit me, I was flattered. I never stood back and analyzed whether that was something I should do or not. As we get a little more seasoned in our career, we think, “That’s not right for me. I’m not willing to move for that.” The premise of, “Let’s not get you to commit on the phone, humor us,” which is another humble way to phrase that, “Spend some time with us.” It is all part of the journey, whether it’s the funnel we’re creating in digital marketing or a social media way to start to get people to engage with us, where in fact, in actual sales call where you’re getting someone to “take a test drive.”
This was the ultimate test drive, which is what they do when they sell the cars. What a great metaphor of coming out. If you can get somebody to test drive and sit in the car, that’s what the whole goal of marketing and advertising has always been. After that, it’s up to the salesperson and the person’s criteria. If we get you in the car from an advertising standpoint, from my ad sales background, we’re like, “Our job was done. That’s all we need to do.” He knew that if we can get you here, we’re not at the top yet. We don’t have a yes, but it’s a much easier to ask than come here and interview.
When you think about it, whether it’s a sales or a management process, there are several leaders who feel like they need to be in control. They need to control the situation. The bottom line is when you’re dealing with an employee or a prospective employee, a lead or a prospective customer, the decision lies with them. They are going to do whatever it is they’re going to do. All you can do is create a culture around them to make the decision easier. For example, when Bill Ford decided to bring Alan Mulally in as the CEO, Bill Ford was the great-grandson of Henry Ford. The family’s name is still on the logo. It’s a family-owned company. Bill was the President, CEO and Chairman of the Board. He said, “Alan, if you come in, I want you to be the CEO.” This will be the first time somebody from outside of the auto industry as a CEO. He said, “I’m even willing to give up my chairman seat on the board for you.”
You talk about humility. Knowing that you come from the family that invented the moving assembly line, and you’re telling the world and the guy that’s going to replace you, that you’re not the right guy for the job. That’s leader humility right there out of Bill Ford. Alan said, “I don’t want to do this without you. I need you by my side to be the visionary. While I do the heads down, hard work to start changing the company, you have to be my cheerleader. You need to keep me in line.” This relationship between the two that it wasn’t all one or all the other, they were willing to give up some control in pursuit of excellence and their ultimate goal. You don’t see that a lot. Many times, people want to control, micromanage, steer you in a certain direction, and force you into a box. That old chestnut is true. If you love something, set it free. If it loves you, it will come back.
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