[Applause]
it doesn’t matter whether you work in a
multinational corporation a hyperlocal
nonprofit or a hardcore punk band your
workplace has a culture culture is what
says this is how we do things around
here
culture impacts how we collaborate how
we communicate and how and what we
celebrate culture impacts how we take
risks how often we take risks what kind
of risks we take and how big those risks
are and culture says whether it’s safe
to invest ourselves fully at work or
whether we should hold some of ourselves
back as I work with organizations over
the years I’ve seen an almost infinite
number of creative ways that
organizations can be dysfunctional
functional cultures though are a lot the
same it’s like the saying about families
all unhappy families are alike each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
so let’s talk about unhappy workplaces
in 2014
Gallup surveyed 80,000 American workers
about their engagement at work Gallup
defines engaged employees as those who
are involved in enthusiastic about and
committed to their work in workplace
what they found was that 51% of all
workers were not engaged at work and as
bad as that sounds those numbers don’t
include the 17 and a half percent who
were actively disengaged that’s
two-thirds of the American workforce
disengaged or worse now Gallup didn’t
ask specifically about culture but if
you’ve ever lived through a
dysfunctional workplace culture you were
probably also disengaged at work or
perhaps actively disengaged at work and
if culture tells us how we’re supposed
to behave in a certain environment that
leads us to another question where does
culture come from before we get to that
let’s tell your story once upon a time
before the turn of the century by which
I mean late 1999 I saw a job posting for
position
calm in town when I went in for the
interview they said they were going to
be the Yahoo of streaming media now back
before everybody wanted to be the uber
of something people actually still
wanted to be the Yahoo of something
so the Yahoo streaming media that
sounded pretty exciting what was more
exciting was they were gonna offer stock
options which meant that when we had our
IPO which was of course really just a
matter of time we would all be rich
never mind that the Yahoo streaming
media really didn’t have any revenue or
any way to generate any revenue that we
could see but this was the new economy
that was just how it worked there was
one small problem though online ad rates
were already starting to collapse the
bubble was starting to get thin and
since selling ads wasn’t working we
decided we would adjust our strategy
we’d become a destination site like
espn.com or cnn.com there was one small
problem with that though we didn’t make
any original content but we had a clever
solution for that we would find other
people’s video strip out the code from
their player embed the code in our
player sell ads on our player and then
keep all the money for ourselves pretty
brilliant one of my co-workers kind of
questioned the ethics of this and the
boss said what do you think WW stands
for it’s the wild wild west and that was
a really great story that we told
ourselves until the seasons desist
letters started coming in so after the
Yahoo streaming media didn’t work and
the destinations I didn’t work we
decided we’d become a Content indicator
and that didn’t work either when a
company starts down one path with one
business model and then they decide to
shift that business model is something
that might work better
that’s called a pivot it’s a small
podcasting company is a good example of
this it’s called audio and in 2006 they
developed a side project it’s a short
messaging service that short messaging
service became Twitter that’s a pivot
this wasn’t evident this was kind of
just going in circles and what comes
next after going in circles usually is
dizziness when I first started at the
dot-com I was filled with optimism hey
I’m working at a dot-com
I’m on the cutting edge of the Internet
this is great sure I question some of
the decisions but the leadership was
really confident so I trusted after all
they’d convinced all those venture
capitalists to give them all that money
so that was where we started but as we
lurched from one thing to the next that
optimism started to fade
we no longer hoped for an IPO we hoped
they could continue to make payroll and
the further the startup reality drifted
from the startup dream the further
detached I got for myself the days got
longer I got more tired gained weight
and even though I’ve never smoked I
started going out smoke breaks with the
smokers just to get away from my desk
I think gallon would call that
disengagement and some of my co-workers
started posting on a website they called
itself the dot-com Deadpool
they posted anonymous horror stories
about our life in a little silicon
sweatshop they were trashing the bosses
trashing each other basically publicly
rooting for the demise of the company I
think you would call that active
disengagement but at all that pivoting
there was still one thing that we hadn’t
tried something that had been
fundamental to the Internet
infrastructure since its inception no
that’s how bad it got and we couldn’t
even make money on that so when they
call it an all company meeting right
before Christmas we knew what was coming
and when they laid off two thirds of the
company and I found that I had survived
the cut
I wasn’t relieved I was disappointed
three weeks later though I got my
freedom
and by the end of the year the company
was dead and we all lived happily ever
after okay not really but as I try to
figure out who’s next for me I also
tried to figure out what went wrong yes
there were technical failures and yes
there was some questionable financial
decision-making we burned through 30
million dollars in 18 months but what I
really wanted to understand was how and
why did this company go from a place I
was excited to go to a place I was
excited to be led yeah was it that the
novelty worn off no cuz the novelty
always wears off was it that we failed
no cuz I knew there were no guarantees
was it calm after all but it was how we
failed and it was how he responded to
failure and it was that when the novelty
was gone there was no substance there my
post-mortem diagnosis not for why we
failed but why we were actively rooting
for us to fail was a dysfunctional
culture but what I wanted to understand
was where the dysfunctional culture came
from now even though I’m guessing most
of you didn’t experience the dot-com
bust back in the turn of the century I’m
guessing some of you can relate maybe
some of you even had this story conjures
from your own miserable workplace
experiences after all that’s what
happens when you hear a story the
instinct to relate to characters in the
story starts at a very young age when he
was three
we took my son to see Finding Nemo in 3d
now he was not old enough yet at the
time to understand that if the title is
Finding Nemo they’re probably going to
find Nemo so even though he’s not a
clownfish and he’s never been separated
from his parents about halfway through
that movie he was terrified like
traumatized why well like all human
beings
he was mapping his own experience onto a
story that he was being told
he was having an emotional reaction to
it an intense emotional reaction to it
why well neuroscientist fi dick
identified something in our brains
called mirror neurons these neurons fire
the same way whether we are performing
an action or experiencing an emotion or
whether we observe someone else perform
the action or experiencing the emotion
if you’ve ever heard the phrase we’re
wired for story this is what they mean
in his book the storytelling animal
Jonathan God Saul describes a study by
team of neuron neuroscientists they used
the functional MRI machine to study
mirror neurons and they scan subjects
brains in three situations one while
they watched an actor drink from a cup
and then grimace in disgust
two while they tasted something
discussing themselves and three while
they listened to a scenario where they
were asked to imagine walking down the
street accidentally bumping into a drunk
who was throwing up and then catching
some of the vomit in their own mouths
I’m sorry but but you see what happened
I told the story about a study where
they told people a story about a
scenario that didn’t actually happen and
three degrees removed you had a reaction
and no surprise the punchline is that in
all three situations the same parts of
the brain lit up in the brain scans
I like how researcher Marco iacoboni
sums up the phenomenon he says that we
react to movies like my three-year-old
did because mirror neurons in our brain
recreate for us the distress that we see
on the screen we have empathy for the
fictional characters we know how they’re
feeling because we literally experience
the same feelings ourselves does it
matter that we know consciously that
Nemo is a cartoon fish no we still react
so when it’s real people and the story
is true it’s even easier for us to map
our experience onto theirs because we’re
wired for story in this way stories have
tremendous power they touch our emotions
they teach us lessons they change the
way that we see the world and they also
define culture in his book sapiens
history
you’ve all known Harari says that a
major key to human evolution is imagined
realities large numbers of strangers can
cooperate successfully by believing in
common myths common myths could be the
idea of a tribe a religion
company a country thinking the United
States
we’re defined by our common myths the
Boston Tea Party Paul Revere’s ride give
me your tired your poor your huddled
masses rosie the riveter those shared
stories and imagined realities help make
us who we are and her ari says behavior
patterns that emerge from those shared
stories or what we call cultures in
other words culture comes from stories
and that means to me that we have to
take stories and storytelling seriously
there’s two kinds of stories that we
tell in organizations the first is a
grand narrative story an organization’s
founding myths like creating the company
in the quranic hewlett-packard or
pouring rubber into a waffle iron to
make a running shoe like nike those are
grand narratives and a grand narrative
is essential to a company’s DNA it
includes the genetic code for the ideals
values and philosophy a good grand
narrative is memorable and it can be
downright inspiring but I think we over
value the grand narrative and I think we
undervalue the other kind of story that
we tell in organizations the daily
stories the grand narrative is the lure
that we put on the about page of the
website but the daily stories are the
ones that the people in the company tell
about what it’s actually like to work
there every day the founder stories are
nice but the daily stories tell us what
behavior gets rewarded in the
organization and what does not and that
tells us how we should behave the daily
stories tell us what is truly valued in
the organization despite what the
organization may say in values and then
we do the math we may not process all of
this consciously but the accumulation of
stories the messages and the lessons
that accrue becomes sort of a narrative
shorthand that tells us how we’re
supposed to be there that narrative
drives the culture in my first few
months at the dot-com when people asked
how things were going at work I gave
them the grand narrative total story
about a cool tech startup and be on the
cutting edge
I couldn’t see at the time how empty
that grand narrative was our origin
story wasn’t about solving some problem
that was vexing the people of the
internet like so many other companies of
that era our grand narrative was a story
about cashing in on the digital gold
rush
there was no deeper meaning but in the
beginning when it seemed like we might
cash in our common myth was our CEO was
a visionary because we believe that we
acted as if it were true
we took our task seriously we stayed
late without complaint even as it became
clear that it was not working we’re
shifting purpose every couple of weeks
the story we told ourselves was hey this
is still working this is just a new path
to greatness we were still buying a
narrative but by the end nobody in the
cube farm believed that story anymore
our story had shifted from our CEO as a
visionary to our CEO is just another guy
with a porn site and as the Daly story
grew more and more disconnected from the
grand narrative as the real who more
more disconnected from the ideal we grew
more and more disengaged day by day the
culture grew more and more corrosive and
what was sad was that every failure
could have been an opportunity to tell a
different story when it came time for
that first pivot they could have
gathered all together and said look
we’re gonna be honest with you things
didn’t work out quite like we thought
they would but we’re not gonna give up
we’re gonna take a step back we’re going
to evaluate where we are we’re gonna
figure out what we’ve learned figure out
our next steps but that meeting never
happened
our pivots weren’t informed by our
failures they were desperate attempts to
cash in on the hot catchphrase before
everybody else could catch on we didn’t
even get a meeting to tell us we were
pivoting which in and of itself told a
story decisions got made in the corner
offices they trickle down to the
cubicles the stories that action told us
was hey we got this you all down in the
sweatshop you grind away you really
don’t have much to add anyway and I
think the leaders really believed this
story but the rest of us did not now the
last few years
culture has become a hot topic the
business and so has storytelling and
that’s great but I think we’re missing a
connection between
culture and stories so an article
recently titled you can design a happier
office culture here’s how they suggested
yoga in the afternoon and beer at five
o’clock now doh c’mere on I like beer I
have no problem with yoga but that’s
just the modern-day version of the
foosball table we had back at the Yahoo
streaming media if your grand narrative
is misaligned with the daily stories no
amount of yoga or beer is going to save
your culture but if your grand narrative
is aligned with your daily stories you
probably don’t need yoga and beer let me
give you a quick example of narrative
alignment this is a letter from a woman
named Nicole she writes my family and I
were traveling from Buffalo to catch a
cruise out of Houston due to a snowstorm
our flight was canceled this is when I
met customer service agent Darlene
Taylor she found an alternative flight
to get us to Houston but we would miss
our boat we found another option but it
was about to board and all our bags were
on the other flight so Darlene put on
her coat went out the back door
into the snow and proceeded to look for
our bags she found them got them off the
plane and dragged him over to the other
plane I’m in total shock that a customer
service agent would do that especially
in that type of weather I actually had
to hold back the tears as I was thanking
her this is the most amazing service I
have ever received sure with a letter to
Southwest Airlines now usually you hear
a customer store service story like that
you think about it from the perspective
of the customer wow what amazing
customer service I want to be their
customer but let me reframe that for a
second think about this story from the
perspective of the employee the
Southwest have a specific policy about
this kind of situation
probably not but Darlene didn’t need a
policy because she had stories hundreds
of stories because the culture of
Southwest is awash in stories Southwest
shares half a dozen stories like this
each month in their magazine the CEO
recognizes amazing customer service
stories in their internal communications
each week they produce internal videos
to share stories of exceptional customer
service each story is personal
every story is different but they all
line with Southwest’s grand narrative
their vision is to become the worst
world’s most loved most flown and most
profitable airline their purpose is to
connect people to what’s important in
their lives through friendly reliable
and low-cost air travel
so all Darlene had to do was about the
situation she was in two stories that
she’d heard before about how people
serve the customer at Southwest and so
she put in our parka and went out in the
snow by themselves stories like this
might give you a warm fuzzy feeling but
as they add up they start to change the
shape of an organization they raise
expectations they redefine what’s
possible they give people permission to
be human at work to make their own mark
in the organization they empower people
to take the ideals of the grand
narrative and make them real as they
contribute to the story of the
organization whether by design or by
default stories shape the culture of our
organizations and whether by design or
by default each of us is a storyteller
it’s a responsibility we should each
take seriously thank you
[Applause] [Music]
it doesn’t matter whether you work in a
multinational corporation a hyperlocal
nonprofit or a hardcore punk band your
workplace has a culture culture is what
says this is how we do things around
here
culture impacts how we collaborate how
we communicate and how and what we
celebrate culture impacts how we take
risks how often we take risks what kind
of risks we take and how big those risks
are and culture says whether it’s safe
to invest ourselves fully at work or
whether we should hold some of ourselves
back as I work with organizations over
the years I’ve seen an almost infinite
number of creative ways that
organizations can be dysfunctional
functional cultures though are a lot the
same it’s like the saying about families
all unhappy families are alike each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
so let’s talk about unhappy workplaces
in 2014
Gallup surveyed 80,000 American workers
about their engagement at work Gallup
defines engaged employees as those who
are involved in enthusiastic about and
committed to their work in workplace
what they found was that 51% of all
workers were not engaged at work and as
bad as that sounds those numbers don’t
include the 17 and a half percent who
were actively disengaged that’s
two-thirds of the American workforce
disengaged or worse now Gallup didn’t
ask specifically about culture but if
you’ve ever lived through a
dysfunctional workplace culture you were
probably also disengaged at work or
perhaps actively disengaged at work and
if culture tells us how we’re supposed
to behave in a certain environment that
leads us to another question where does
culture come from before we get to that
let’s tell your story once upon a time
before the turn of the century by which
I mean late 1999 I saw a job posting for
position
calm in town when I went in for the
interview they said they were going to
be the Yahoo of streaming media now back
before everybody wanted to be the uber
of something people actually still
wanted to be the Yahoo of something
so the Yahoo streaming media that
sounded pretty exciting what was more
exciting was they were gonna offer stock
options which meant that when we had our
IPO which was of course really just a
matter of time we would all be rich
never mind that the Yahoo streaming
media really didn’t have any revenue or
any way to generate any revenue that we
could see but this was the new economy
that was just how it worked there was
one small problem though online ad rates
were already starting to collapse the
bubble was starting to get thin and
since selling ads wasn’t working we
decided we would adjust our strategy
we’d become a destination site like
espn.com or cnn.com there was one small
problem with that though we didn’t make
any original content but we had a clever
solution for that we would find other
people’s video strip out the code from
their player embed the code in our
player sell ads on our player and then
keep all the money for ourselves pretty
brilliant one of my co-workers kind of
questioned the ethics of this and the
boss said what do you think WW stands
for it’s the wild wild west and that was
a really great story that we told
ourselves until the seasons desist
letters started coming in so after the
Yahoo streaming media didn’t work and
the destinations I didn’t work we
decided we’d become a Content indicator
and that didn’t work either when a
company starts down one path with one
business model and then they decide to
shift that business model is something
that might work better
that’s called a pivot it’s a small
podcasting company is a good example of
this it’s called audio and in 2006 they
developed a side project it’s a short
messaging service that short messaging
service became Twitter that’s a pivot
this wasn’t evident this was kind of
just going in circles and what comes
next after going in circles usually is
dizziness when I first started at the
dot-com I was filled with optimism hey
I’m working at a dot-com
I’m on the cutting edge of the Internet
this is great sure I question some of
the decisions but the leadership was
really confident so I trusted after all
they’d convinced all those venture
capitalists to give them all that money
so that was where we started but as we
lurched from one thing to the next that
optimism started to fade
we no longer hoped for an IPO we hoped
they could continue to make payroll and
the further the startup reality drifted
from the startup dream the further
detached I got for myself the days got
longer I got more tired gained weight
and even though I’ve never smoked I
started going out smoke breaks with the
smokers just to get away from my desk
I think gallon would call that
disengagement and some of my co-workers
started posting on a website they called
itself the dot-com Deadpool
they posted anonymous horror stories
about our life in a little silicon
sweatshop they were trashing the bosses
trashing each other basically publicly
rooting for the demise of the company I
think you would call that active
disengagement but at all that pivoting
there was still one thing that we hadn’t
tried something that had been
fundamental to the Internet
infrastructure since its inception no
that’s how bad it got and we couldn’t
even make money on that so when they
call it an all company meeting right
before Christmas we knew what was coming
and when they laid off two thirds of the
company and I found that I had survived
the cut
I wasn’t relieved I was disappointed
three weeks later though I got my
freedom
and by the end of the year the company
was dead and we all lived happily ever
after okay not really but as I try to
figure out who’s next for me I also
tried to figure out what went wrong yes
there were technical failures and yes
there was some questionable financial
decision-making we burned through 30
million dollars in 18 months but what I
really wanted to understand was how and
why did this company go from a place I
was excited to go to a place I was
excited to be led yeah was it that the
novelty worn off no cuz the novelty
always wears off was it that we failed
no cuz I knew there were no guarantees
was it calm after all but it was how we
failed and it was how he responded to
failure and it was that when the novelty
was gone there was no substance there my
post-mortem diagnosis not for why we
failed but why we were actively rooting
for us to fail was a dysfunctional
culture but what I wanted to understand
was where the dysfunctional culture came
from now even though I’m guessing most
of you didn’t experience the dot-com
bust back in the turn of the century I’m
guessing some of you can relate maybe
some of you even had this story conjures
from your own miserable workplace
experiences after all that’s what
happens when you hear a story the
instinct to relate to characters in the
story starts at a very young age when he
was three
we took my son to see Finding Nemo in 3d
now he was not old enough yet at the
time to understand that if the title is
Finding Nemo they’re probably going to
find Nemo so even though he’s not a
clownfish and he’s never been separated
from his parents about halfway through
that movie he was terrified like
traumatized why well like all human
beings
he was mapping his own experience onto a
story that he was being told
he was having an emotional reaction to
it an intense emotional reaction to it
why well neuroscientist fi dick
identified something in our brains
called mirror neurons these neurons fire
the same way whether we are performing
an action or experiencing an emotion or
whether we observe someone else perform
the action or experiencing the emotion
if you’ve ever heard the phrase we’re
wired for story this is what they mean
in his book the storytelling animal
Jonathan God Saul describes a study by
team of neuron neuroscientists they used
the functional MRI machine to study
mirror neurons and they scan subjects
brains in three situations one while
they watched an actor drink from a cup
and then grimace in disgust
two while they tasted something
discussing themselves and three while
they listened to a scenario where they
were asked to imagine walking down the
street accidentally bumping into a drunk
who was throwing up and then catching
some of the vomit in their own mouths
I’m sorry but but you see what happened
I told the story about a study where
they told people a story about a
scenario that didn’t actually happen and
three degrees removed you had a reaction
and no surprise the punchline is that in
all three situations the same parts of
the brain lit up in the brain scans
I like how researcher Marco iacoboni
sums up the phenomenon he says that we
react to movies like my three-year-old
did because mirror neurons in our brain
recreate for us the distress that we see
on the screen we have empathy for the
fictional characters we know how they’re
feeling because we literally experience
the same feelings ourselves does it
matter that we know consciously that
Nemo is a cartoon fish no we still react
so when it’s real people and the story
is true it’s even easier for us to map
our experience onto theirs because we’re
wired for story in this way stories have
tremendous power they touch our emotions
they teach us lessons they change the
way that we see the world and they also
define culture in his book sapiens
history
you’ve all known Harari says that a
major key to human evolution is imagined
realities large numbers of strangers can
cooperate successfully by believing in
common myths common myths could be the
idea of a tribe a religion
company a country thinking the United
States
we’re defined by our common myths the
Boston Tea Party Paul Revere’s ride give
me your tired your poor your huddled
masses rosie the riveter those shared
stories and imagined realities help make
us who we are and her ari says behavior
patterns that emerge from those shared
stories or what we call cultures in
other words culture comes from stories
and that means to me that we have to
take stories and storytelling seriously
there’s two kinds of stories that we
tell in organizations the first is a
grand narrative story an organization’s
founding myths like creating the company
in the quranic hewlett-packard or
pouring rubber into a waffle iron to
make a running shoe like nike those are
grand narratives and a grand narrative
is essential to a company’s DNA it
includes the genetic code for the ideals
values and philosophy a good grand
narrative is memorable and it can be
downright inspiring but I think we over
value the grand narrative and I think we
undervalue the other kind of story that
we tell in organizations the daily
stories the grand narrative is the lure
that we put on the about page of the
website but the daily stories are the
ones that the people in the company tell
about what it’s actually like to work
there every day the founder stories are
nice but the daily stories tell us what
behavior gets rewarded in the
organization and what does not and that
tells us how we should behave the daily
stories tell us what is truly valued in
the organization despite what the
organization may say in values and then
we do the math we may not process all of
this consciously but the accumulation of
stories the messages and the lessons
that accrue becomes sort of a narrative
shorthand that tells us how we’re
supposed to be there that narrative
drives the culture in my first few
months at the dot-com when people asked
how things were going at work I gave
them the grand narrative total story
about a cool tech startup and be on the
cutting edge
I couldn’t see at the time how empty
that grand narrative was our origin
story wasn’t about solving some problem
that was vexing the people of the
internet like so many other companies of
that era our grand narrative was a story
about cashing in on the digital gold
rush
there was no deeper meaning but in the
beginning when it seemed like we might
cash in our common myth was our CEO was
a visionary because we believe that we
acted as if it were true
we took our task seriously we stayed
late without complaint even as it became
clear that it was not working we’re
shifting purpose every couple of weeks
the story we told ourselves was hey this
is still working this is just a new path
to greatness we were still buying a
narrative but by the end nobody in the
cube farm believed that story anymore
our story had shifted from our CEO as a
visionary to our CEO is just another guy
with a porn site and as the Daly story
grew more and more disconnected from the
grand narrative as the real who more
more disconnected from the ideal we grew
more and more disengaged day by day the
culture grew more and more corrosive and
what was sad was that every failure
could have been an opportunity to tell a
different story when it came time for
that first pivot they could have
gathered all together and said look
we’re gonna be honest with you things
didn’t work out quite like we thought
they would but we’re not gonna give up
we’re gonna take a step back we’re going
to evaluate where we are we’re gonna
figure out what we’ve learned figure out
our next steps but that meeting never
happened
our pivots weren’t informed by our
failures they were desperate attempts to
cash in on the hot catchphrase before
everybody else could catch on we didn’t
even get a meeting to tell us we were
pivoting which in and of itself told a
story decisions got made in the corner
offices they trickle down to the
cubicles the stories that action told us
was hey we got this you all down in the
sweatshop you grind away you really
don’t have much to add anyway and I
think the leaders really believed this
story but the rest of us did not now the
last few years
culture has become a hot topic the
business and so has storytelling and
that’s great but I think we’re missing a
connection between
culture and stories so an article
recently titled you can design a happier
office culture here’s how they suggested
yoga in the afternoon and beer at five
o’clock now doh c’mere on I like beer I
have no problem with yoga but that’s
just the modern-day version of the
foosball table we had back at the Yahoo
streaming media if your grand narrative
is misaligned with the daily stories no
amount of yoga or beer is going to save
your culture but if your grand narrative
is aligned with your daily stories you
probably don’t need yoga and beer let me
give you a quick example of narrative
alignment this is a letter from a woman
named Nicole she writes my family and I
were traveling from Buffalo to catch a
cruise out of Houston due to a snowstorm
our flight was canceled this is when I
met customer service agent Darlene
Taylor she found an alternative flight
to get us to Houston but we would miss
our boat we found another option but it
was about to board and all our bags were
on the other flight so Darlene put on
her coat went out the back door
into the snow and proceeded to look for
our bags she found them got them off the
plane and dragged him over to the other
plane I’m in total shock that a customer
service agent would do that especially
in that type of weather I actually had
to hold back the tears as I was thanking
her this is the most amazing service I
have ever received sure with a letter to
Southwest Airlines now usually you hear
a customer store service story like that
you think about it from the perspective
of the customer wow what amazing
customer service I want to be their
customer but let me reframe that for a
second think about this story from the
perspective of the employee the
Southwest have a specific policy about
this kind of situation
probably not but Darlene didn’t need a
policy because she had stories hundreds
of stories because the culture of
Southwest is awash in stories Southwest
shares half a dozen stories like this
each month in their magazine the CEO
recognizes amazing customer service
stories in their internal communications
each week they produce internal videos
to share stories of exceptional customer
service each story is personal
every story is different but they all
line with Southwest’s grand narrative
their vision is to become the worst
world’s most loved most flown and most
profitable airline their purpose is to
connect people to what’s important in
their lives through friendly reliable
and low-cost air travel
so all Darlene had to do was about the
situation she was in two stories that
she’d heard before about how people
serve the customer at Southwest and so
she put in our parka and went out in the
snow by themselves stories like this
might give you a warm fuzzy feeling but
as they add up they start to change the
shape of an organization they raise
expectations they redefine what’s
possible they give people permission to
be human at work to make their own mark
in the organization they empower people
to take the ideals of the grand
narrative and make them real as they
contribute to the story of the
organization whether by design or by
default stories shape the culture of our
organizations and whether by design or
by default each of us is a storyteller
it’s a responsibility we should each
take seriously thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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