Storytelling in Business Case Study: Making Your Mission and Values Stick
In a rapidly changing landscape where corporate buzzwords often lose their meaning, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: storytelling is indispensable in business. Especially today and into the future, alignment—between the mission, values, employees, and customers—is more important than ever. How do you truly make your mission and values stick? The answer lies in your Purpose Story.
The Importance of Alignment
Before diving into storytelling techniques, let's emphasize why alignment is vital for your business. Employees want to be engaged, and they seek a company culture aligned with their personal values. Customers are more loyal to brands that echo their beliefs and values. Although you can share your mission and values in various forms, such as website lists, marketing materials, and videos, true alignment occurs when people feel your values rather than just know them.
Storytelling: Going Beyond Knowing to Feeling
The key difference between someone knowing your values and feeling them lies in storytelling. Value-driven narratives, often called Purpose Stories, create emotional resonance that goes beyond surface-level engagement. A Purpose Story gives a real-world example of your company values in action, allowing both employees and customers to feel what those values mean, rather than just understand them intellectually.
A Real-world Example: Sodexo's "Love of Food"
To better illustrate the power of Purpose Stories, consider the case of Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company. The value Sodexo aimed to communicate was their "Love of Food." The company chose to showcase this through a heartfelt story about one of their chefs.
While traditional methods might stop at a narrator simply saying, "At Sodexo, we love food," the company went beyond this to show what their love for food felt like. They developed a video featuring a narrative from one of their chefs—starting with his passion for food, his journey, and how that aligns with Sodexo's mission.
This narrative structure allowed viewers to actually feel Sodexo's love of food, rather than just hear about it. The emotional impact of the storytelling significantly exceeded what could be achieved through conventional messaging alone.
Crafting Your Own Purpose Stories: Three Easy Steps
If you're wondering how you can implement this storytelling strategy into your own business, here's a simple three-step guide:
List Your Values and Pick One: Create a list of your company values, and choose the one that you want to focus on for your story.
Identify a Real Experience: Think of a moment when you or someone in the company genuinely felt that value in action—a moment that made you think, "Yes, this is what we stand for."
Share the Story: You don't need a Hollywood production. Simply share that memory or story—whether it's in a meeting, a casual conversation, or a social media post.
Closing Thoughts
Stories are not just for entertainment; they are strategic tools that can bring your company’s mission and values to life. It’s not about replacing traditional methods but about augmenting them with stories that resonate on an emotional level. If you try incorporating Purpose Stories into your corporate communication, we'd love to hear about your experience!
In the end, remember: people may forget what you said or did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Storytelling in business is how you make your mission and values truly stick.
