The Power of Story Read online

  IS YOUR COMPANY EVEN TRYING TO TELL A STORY?

  We’ve examined the corporate story the worker hears. Let’s see what story the company is typically telling.

  First: They need you and you need them. (Ideally, they also want you and you also want them, but that may not be part of your company’s story.) The typical company, circa early twenty-first century, is saying that the fast-paced business world being what it is—what with globalization and outsourcing and downsizing and automation and synergies and streamlining and broadband and maybe Wall Street breathing down its neck, etc.—it must make increasing demands on your life. Keep swimming or die. Which means longer hours for you, ergo less time for your family and yourself. It means holding meetings during lunch or before or after the workday proper, which essentially kills your chance to exercise and stay in shape. (And let’s just order in any food that’s fast during meetings to maximize efficiency.) Oh, right: And while all this is going on, the company—continually stressing its imperative to move forward if it is to survive at all—also demands that you frequently change directions, reinvent the very way you operate, completely alter how you conduct business.

  Everyone who likes that story, raise your hand.

  Older workers, in particular—those who’ve “seen it all before”—are likely to undermine the story for such a company. So, too, anyone else who fears that he or she may be relatively easy to eliminate, or may have a diminished role in the transformed company. To these employees, the story their company is telling may be exciting in the abstract, or exciting to Wall Street, but it’s potentially humiliating for them. Among these workers, suspicion, cynicism, and distrust run rampant. While the defiant worker publicly may appear vested in the change process, privately he tells himself: New thinking be damned. He works subversively to undermine the new directive. He knows that, for the new initiatives to take, everyone must embrace them. Not him. He will go through the motions but he is not going to make any real course corrections.

  And so, like a dinosaur, he moves closer and closer to extinction.

  The employee loses and the company loses as well. Entire organizations have been undermined by storytelling that excludes a significant portion of their workforce. Failure to align the evolving corporate story with the aspirations of the individual employees, up and down the workforce—the very ones who have been enjoined to help write that new, improved story—has systemic implications. Athletes routinely give up on playing hard for coaches they deem excessively punitive or inconsistent; the bond of their mutually aligned stories—to win a championship—is undermined because the coach’s story does not seem to allow for the inevitable particularities of any individual athlete’s story. Mutiny is not just what happens when ship captains indefensibly change or robotically stick to the rules but also when kings, CEOs, and schoolteachers do it. Organizations have been undermined by refusing to alter their story when it clearly wasn’t working. In the mid-1980s, IBM, despite growing evidence to the contrary, thought major course corrections were unnecessary. For a time, they seemed to forget that customers were part of the story, too. When there is no story alignment among the company, its workers, and whatever other forces need to be considered for the company to be profitable, the company eventually fails; its story has failed. Revenues and market share had to dwindle sufficiently before IBM finally had the painful evidence that its story was an unrealistic one. Eventually it recovered, and recovered well, but only after a long overhaul.

  If alignment of stories, yours and your company’s, is to be achieved—and I believe it’s neither as lofty nor as complicated a task as it may sound—then it’s ideally generated both from top down (the company side) and bottom up (the worker’s side). But let’s not get carried away. For our purposes, we’ll presume zero input from the company* It is, after all, corporate culture.

  That means the burden to change stories is on you.

  PRESENTEEISM

  There is a story that business leaders have perpetuated for generations, a story still largely being told today, a story that is, frankly, insane. This story says that the worker’s physical body is not business-relevant.

  When it comes to physical health and well-being, our clients are for the most part broken. Top-level managers, mid-level, everyone. Regardless of what they may say, most companies don’t consider it significant that their workers are physical wrecks, or that this might impact their profitability. Amazingly, only one business school I know of—the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, which has done physical/health assessments of every one of its MBA candidates (blood work, lean body mass measurements, etc.) and designed research projects to evaluate the influence of physical condition on performance—is bothering to test this proposition.

  Yet if we go by the bottom line, then the biggest single crisis facing American business today is inarguably related to health care; more pointedly, it’s stress-related—or, as I prefer to call it, disengagement-related. According to a USA Today survey, one in six U.S. employees is so overworked that his or her annual vacation time doesn’t get used up despite the fact that Americans already get the most meager vacation time in the industrialized world—half as much as Sweden, and considerably less even than Japan and Korea. Thirty-four percent of workers reported that their jobs were so pressing they had zero downtime at work; 32% ate lunch while working; 32% never left the building once they arrived; 14% felt company management promoted only those who regularly worked late; 19% felt pressure to work when sick or injured; 17% said it was hard to leave work or take time off in an emergency; 8% thought they would be fired or demoted if they became seriously ill. In another survey, work-related stress is cited for inspiring these behaviors: yelling at co-workers (29%), sleep problems (34%), being driven to alcohol (11%), to smoke excessively (16%), and to eat chocolate (26%). Many workers said they were “a physical wreck”; 62% complained of work-related neck or back pain, 44% said they suffered from stressed-out eyes, 38% complained of hand pain. One study implicated stress in 60% to 90% of all work-related medical problems. Another said that 75% of employees believe on-the-job stress is greater now than a generation ago. Another established a link between stress and heart disease. Another concluded that “workplace health and productivity are inextricably linked.” Another found a relationship between physical inactivity and cognitive decline “across every group.” Obesity is everywhere, as is hypertension, diabetes, alcoholism, divorce. One senior manager confessed to me that he smoked pot in his office just to get through the day. In the last decade the number of workers who call in sick due to stress has tripled, accounting now for one-in-five last-minute no-shows. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employees who take time off from work because of stress, anxiety, or a related disorder are out an average of twenty business days. It is estimated that 20% to 40% of American workers quit their jobs because of stress.

  Then there’s the vast numbers of workers who show up for work—are present rather than absent—but do so in a fog. In fact, “presenteeism”—impaired performance on the job because of a medical or psychological condition—appears to be a much costlier problem than its productivity-reducing counterpart, absenteeism, and potentially more lethal to the organization because it’s not as obvious.

  How much does all this cost?

  Dow Chemical, which employs 43,000 people, estimates its annual employee health-related costs at $635 million, more than half of which can be attributed to the indirect costs associated with presenteeism. The Harvard Business Review estimates that presenteeism can cut individual productivity by one-third or more; “many companies’ greatest health-related expense,” they say, “is the almost invisible decline in productivity resulting from employee health problems, including common ailments such as allergies and headaches.” Some employers have estimated that performance loss leads to costs three, five, or ten times more than the direct cost of health treatment. In 2000, the estimated cost to corporate America due to illness related to poor
nutrition and obesity was $47 billion. Kent Peterson, past president of the American College of Occupational Medicine, put the annual cost that American business pays because of poor health at $1 trillion, which includes the direct cost of medical benefits as well as ill health’s impact on productivity. Other studies have shown that stress adds to the cost of doing business not just because of absenteeism and halfhearted work but also because of increased workers compensation claims, litigation (the company ignores stress-related problems at its peril), grievances, higher turnover rate, on-the-job accidents, poor time management, resistance to change, errors in judgment and action, conflict and interpersonal problems, and an increase in customer complaints. (Stressed-out employees virtually guarantee a profitability crisis: According to a study by Reichheld and Sasser of over one hundred companies, a 5% reduction in customer defection translates into anywhere from 30% to 85% increase in profitability.)

  How’s that for a bottom line?

  Some companies, of course, understand perfectly the profound cost of health care and have dealt with it by…taking their businesses offshore, where their responsibility to contribute to employee well-being is far less than what it is in this country. Yet there’s no real running away from the problem, which is, at its core, cultural.

  For years, with relatively few exceptions across many industries, business considered the physical health and well-being of its employees a personal, private issue. At work, employees are generally reluctant to take care of themselves; to do so is largely counterculture. Even on-site wellness centers and corporate fitness initiatives often go massively underused because workers fear that to avail themselves of the facilities suggests a lack of commitment to the company; from the company side, the wellness center is, cynically, viewed not as an investment (in its people and thus in itself) but an expense. Even a write-off.

  And the individual can exercise after work, right? Well, not really. To do so suggests you’re a bad family man or woman. And if you take a break midmorning or midafternoon, when everyone’s circadian rhythms make them less productive anyway? Slacker. And if—heaven forbid—you leave early on Wednesdays to see your child’s soccer game? Irresponsible.

  Yet if extraordinary physical energy—which directly influences emotional, mental, and even spiritual energy—is the very thing needed for extraordinary productivity, then how can business ignore the demands that the human body makes every day? If you asked a hundred CEOs, “Are happier, healthier employees more productive employees?” I doubt you’d find one to disagree. “Absolutely,” they’d say. “A no-brainer.” Yet as Michael O’Donnell, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Health Promotion, says, “most companies spend more on carpet than they do on [employee health and well-being].”

  I’ve worked for years in a field where the participant’s physical well-being is never underemphasized: world-class athletics. When dealing with top athletes, it would be unthinkable, of course, to remove the body from the overall equation. Every athlete develops a reverence for his or her body because it is perceived to be indispensable to achieving success (telling a successful story). It would be absurd for me to say to one of my clients from the NBA or the PGA or the WTA, “Hey, ninety percent of success is mental anyway, so let’s skip the physical conditioning.” Or if we said to one of the FBI anti-terrorist teams or physicians or air-traffic controllers we’ve worked with, “It’s not important how much you sleep or what you eat or if you ever take recovery breaks. Just focus, assess, and react with maximum precision. And thanks for fighting the war on terror / saving lives / helping to land jets.”

  It makes no sense, right? Then does it really make sense to expect people in other fields to perform at their best if the body is largely ignored, even abused?

  The cost of this “story” I’ve just outlined is profound and widespread and shouldered by both the company and its individuals; for the individual, the cost is often tragic. The problem is not simply going to go away. Organizations thrive when their people are energized, engaged, nimble, and responsive, yet few organizations, sad to say, can possibly thrive when the energy reserves of their workforce become chronically depleted. When workers are focused on basic physical survival, then excellence, innovation, speed, and productivity become secondary concerns.

  Since I’ve been kicking the corporate world in the teeth for several pages now, it’s time to turn our attention to ourselves. If you’re one of those workers with just enough energy to claw to survive, perhaps it’s time to look at the story you’ve created and the direction it’s taking you in the only life you have.

  OLD STORIES

  With relatively few variations, people tell stories about basically five major subjects.

  Work

  Family

  Health

  Happiness

  Friendships*

  By asking yourself basic questions about how you feel about what you do and how you conduct yourself—and by trying honestly to answer them, of course—you begin to identify the dynamics of your story.

  Your Story Around Work

  Work is not a choice for most of us, yet while we may have little to say about having to work we often have lots to say about its meaning. And because more than half our waking life is consumed by work, how we frame this story is critical to our chance for overall fulfillment and happiness.

  How do you characterize your relationship to work? Is it a burden or a joy? Clock-in/clock-out, deep fulfillment, or addiction? What compels you to get up every day and go to work? The money? Is the driving force increased prestige, power, social status? A sense of intrinsic fulfillment? The contribution you’re making? Is it an end in itself or a means to something else? Do you feel forced to work or called to work? Are you completely engaged at work? How much of your talent and skill are fully ignited? What’s the dominant tone—inspired? challenged? disappointed? trapped? overwhelmed? Does the story you currently tell about work take you where you want to go in life? If your story about work isn’t working, what story do you tell yourself to justify it, especially given the tens of thousands of hours it consumes?

  Suppose you didn’t need the money: Would you continue to go to work every day? In the space below (or on a pad or one of the blank pages at the back of this book), write down five things about your job that, if money were no issue, you would like to continue (the camaraderie, specific responsibilities/tasks, your relationship to a colleague or mentor, having a corner office, etc.):

  Your Story Around Family

  What’s your story about your family life? In the grand scheme, how important is family to you? To hear my clients tell it and to read their responses on our questionnaires, family is, far and away, the most oft-cited number one element in the average person’s life. It’s why I work so hard…Nothing is more important to me…Everything I do, I do for them. Most readers will recognize these sentiments, I suspect.

  So…is your current story about family working? Is the relationship with your husband, wife, or significant other where you want it to be? Is it even close to where you want it to be? Or is there an unbridgeable gap between the level of intimacy, connection, and intensity you feel with him or her and the level you’d like to experience?

  Is your story with your children working? How about your parents? Your siblings? Other family members?

  If you continue on your same path, what is the relationship you’re likely to have, years from now, with each of your family members? If your story isn’t working with one or more key individuals, then what’s the story you tell yourself to allow this pattern to persist? To what extent do you blame your job for keeping you from fully engaging with your family? (Really? Your job is the reason you’re disengaged from the most important thing in your life, the people who matter most to you? How does that happen?) According to your current story, is it even possible to be fully engaged at work and also with your family?

  Your Story Around Health

  What’s your story about your health? What kind of job
have you done taking care of yourself? What value do you place on your health, and why? If you continue on your same path, then what will be the likely health consequences? If you’re not fully engaged with your health, then what’s the story you tell yourself and others—particularly your spouse, your kids, your doctor, your colleagues, and anyone who might look up to you—that allows you to persist in this way? If suddenly you awoke to the reality that your health was gone, what would be the consequences for you and all those you care about? How would you feel if the end of your story was dominated by one fact—that you had needlessly died young?

  Do you consider your health just one of several important stories about yourself but hardly toward the top? Does it crack the top three? How about the top five? If you have been overweight, or consistently putting on weight the last several years; if you smoke; if you eat poorly; if you rest infrequently and never deeply; if you rarely, if ever, exercise; if you regularly take loads of medication or other types of drugs; if you have a family medical condition whose occurrence or severity might reasonably be diminished, perhaps even avoided altogether, by taking better care of yourself…what is the story you tell yourself that explains how you deal, or don’t deal, with these issues? Is it a story with any rhyme or reason? Do you believe that spending time exercising or otherwise taking care of yourself, particularly during the workday, sets a negative example for others (it’s selfish, lazy, unprofessional, shows misaligned priorities)? Do you hope your children will emulate the story you’re telling about health?

  Given your physical being and the way you present yourself, do you think the story you’re telling is the same one that others are hearing? Could it be vastly different, when seen through their eyes?