Storytelling : The Missing C in Corporate Communication

In a corporate setting we are obsessed with many C's of communication : Clear, Credible, Concise. But we often ignore the most important C, which is connection. Connection is the key to action.

Communication‚Üí Connection ‚Üí Action

Having worked in and with corporates for over long time now, I have learnt that most corporate leaders are able to build connection and catalyse an action if they learn how to tell a change story. Change Stories are the best connection catalysers.

They are also the most important types of stories to learn because change is everywhere

• Factories are becoming smart factories.
• Food's focus is shifting from taste to health.
• Radiologists are being replaced by robots.
• And pandemics like COVID- 19 are making us all virtual workers.

Things are shifting fast, including the very nature of how we experience change.

There are two key differences between change then and now.

1. Information is democratized because it is available to everyone via the internet. In the past, we typically respected leaders because of their experience, which gave them knowledge and information others didn't have. But now, knowledge is just a Google search away.
2. The speed of the change has also become rampant. We knew this was coming. But what we didn't expect was that rampant change would be the only constant. This rampant speed of change has put today's leaders in a difficult position, because every organisational change is accompanied by resistance from people whom you need the most to make the change happen -your employees.

Now, imagine having to motivate people to change in this setting, based on the same old tricks.

Although change stories can't change the speed of change and make knowledge available only to the teller, they do give the modern leader the highest chance of success in this ever-changing world where we need more than knowledge to be respected and heard.

Change stories help leaders reshape their employees' world views, makes them feel and understand you are trying to solve the problem for them versus just making a proposition that they must adopt the change because business profitability demands so.

As Indra Nooyi, ex-CEO of Pepsico says, "The hardest job of a leader is to look ahead and make the changes for the problem that people are not feeling yet."

A change story helps make that happen, because it's a communication that, when heard, makes the person WANT to move towards the change, instead of HAVING to.

The missing C of corporate communication is connection and change stories are your best way to build that connection.

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