We’ve been trying to use stories at work to set the tone, to highlight the positive things that we achieve and to encourage cooperation and integration across the various teams. It’s early days yet and we’ve only tried it a few time but already we’ve found that using positive stories creates a much more upbeat atmosphere than by focusing on the things that go wrong.
I’ve been told though that all my stories are born from adversity and it seems to be true. You know the type, everything is going fine, something bad happens from which the hero eventually emerges triumphant. A sort of boy meets girl, boy loses girl and boy finds girl again. And of course they live happily ever after.
But don’t all stories go this way? Or is it just the type of story that resonates with me?
A fairy princess is having a lovely time in the woods with her seven small but hard working friends when a wicked witch tricks her into biting from a poisoned apple. She falls into a deep sleep until a handsome prince comes along and wakes her with a kiss.
A New York policeman flies to Los Angeles to make it up with his estranged wife by attending her Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza when the building is stormed by heavily armed and ruthless criminals. Despite the bumbling FBI, our hero manages to fight them all off with only the help of a local doughnut eating cop on the outside. The story ends with the boy getting the girl again.
A young noblemen falls hopelessly in love with a village girl but when she realises who he is the girl dies from a weak heart. While grieving for her in a clearing in the forest he is surrounded by the spirits of women jilted before their weddings who make him dance until he is exhausted with the intention of drowning him in a nearby lake. But the ghost of his lover rises from the grave and overcomes the Willis’ magic with her love and saves the day.
I could go on. I remember these stories from my childhood, from the cinema and from the theatre.
So my story about a late rush order for 30,000 stuffed envelopes where everyone broke their backs to help the customer out, or the one about the school where things had gone sour but we had pulled out all the stops to prepare for a royal visit, or the one where I was called on my way to work to say that there was a problem with the core network but that an engineer had spotted this from home and was on his way to fix it before any customers noticed all fit into this mould.
These are great stories and I enjoy telling them so tell me, is there any other type?
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 