Putting stories to work

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —February 20, 2007
Filed in Strategy

Over the last few months we’ve talked about the importance of having a short phrase or mantra to help everyone in an organisation implement the company’s strategy (here and here). At Anecdote we’ve had a few catch phrases over our relatively short life and we’ve never been totally happy with any of them. Here’s the chronology:

  • complexity – narrative – knowledge
  • narrative – narrative – narrative
  • insight and empowerment
  • learning and change

After reading Made to Stick we realised the problem. Each attempt was abstract and passive and the phrases didn’t really give us any indication about how to act nor tell our clients what we were all about. So here is our new tag line: Putting stories to work

Let us know what you think. 

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

Comments

  1. I think it’s great! It makes it very clear what you are about.

  2. I like it! Why did you not go with “putting narrative to work?

  3. Hi Patrick, I think the word ‘narrative’ is quite foreign to many of our clients but everyone knows what a story is (or do they?).

  4. srini says:

    I too think its good… also makes one think a bit.
    – stories help us work better
    – so how do we get the stories to get us to work better
    – get the stories to work!
    – put the stories to work.
    but you could also have gone with
    ‘applying stories at work’ or ‘telling business stories’ (multiple meaning)

  5. srini says:

    i forgot to point out a typo: He’s the Chronology is o Here’s! 🙂

  6. I like your thinking Srini and thanks for pointing out the typo.

  7. Tony Quinlan says:

    Like it. Abstracts work to make people think, but concrete works when you want them to understand without too much headspace.
    And active verbs – you mean you actually DO things!

  8. Thanks Tony. DOing things is so much fun!

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