Finding company stories worth telling

Businesses looking for stories examine their product range and their milestones and conclude they have nothing. The stories are elsewhere.

Where the stories actually are

The last row is a reliable source. A business explaining a decision to refuse work, to reject a cheaper material, or to keep something in-house is telling a story that says more than any claim about quality.

Ask the right people

Management describes what the business wants to be known for. That is positioning, not story.

The people who know the stories are the ones doing the work: the installer who has seen four hundred houses, the customer service person who hears the complaints, the technician who fixed something at two in the morning.

Ask them four questions: what surprised you recently, what do customers always get wrong, what was the hardest job this year, and what would you tell somebody starting here.

The three components

Every usable story has a person, a difficulty and a specific detail.

Without a person it is a process description. Without a difficulty it is an announcement. Without specific detail, so a number, a date, a name, a physical thing, it is not believed.

Collecting them systematically

Stories are noticed and forgotten. A simple mechanism captures them.

1. A shared place where anyone can note something interesting, in one line.
2. A monthly ten-minute review of what was noted.
3. Three or four a year developed into something publishable.
4. A record of what was used where, so material is not repeated.

Most businesses that complain of having nothing to say have not asked anyone in two years.

What to do with them

The same story serves several purposes: a press release for the regional paper, an article on your own site, a social post, a section in the customer newsletter, and material for the sales conversation.

Write it once properly, then adapt. That is the difference between a story programme and occasional effort.

The permission question

Stories involving customers require their agreement, in writing, covering where it will appear and for how long. Stories involving employees require the same, and a genuine ability to decline.

Anonymising is usually possible and costs little: the sector, the size and the situation without the name.