Story Driven: You don't need to compete when you know who you are

by Bernadette Jiwa

Ironically, the people who create fulfilling lives and careers—the ones we respect, admire and try to emulate—choose an alternative path to success. They have a powerful sense of identity. They don’t worry about differentiating themselves from the competition or obsess about telling the right story. They tell the real story instead. Successful organisations and the people who create, build and lead them don’t feel the need to compete, because they know who they are and they’re not afraid to show us.

Who are you? In a connected world of less-linear career paths and more opportunities to influence change, this is the big question of our time—the most important question anyone starting a career or a company, and building a life and a legacy, can ask. Our answers can help us to consistently act with integrity and to differentiate ourselves or our organisations by being more, not less, of who we are. But it’s a question we have stopped asking in the age of comparison. Sure, we may have done a bit of personality profiling here and there or had an offsite retreat to work on our branding and external messaging, but these attempts to label ourselves don’t often get to the heart of what makes us unique. In a digital world, as the village becomes global, it’s never been more important to have a powerful sense of identity and to avoid the temptation of just competing to win.

In a globalised world, without the grounding of the village, we don’t always have that sense of being visible, contributing members of tight-knit groups or local neighbourhoods. So, in a commercial environment, we have tried instead to understand our competitive advantage. We have become reactive to the competitive landscape, rather than responsive to the needs of our communities—those people we hope to serve. We are so focused on the competition, or even the threat of it, that we’ve forgotten to double down on what makes us and our work unique and valuable.

It’s hard to figure out how to be great at what you do, in the way only you can do it, by focussing on what everyone else is doing.

In stark contrast, the Tesla team is working towards its vision for the future.

Tesla’s people have always been united around a single mission: ‘to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport’. This mission was updated in 2016, changing ‘transport’ to ‘energy’.

Prior to the emissions scandal, the engineering team at Volkswagen lived in fear of being unable to meet tough innovation deadlines, while the people at Tesla were aspiring to become the company that would change the world. Ironically, in its attempt to catch up to Tesla, Volkswagen is undoubtedly helping them to realise their vision to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.

Whether it’s articulated or not, every business is driven by one of two philosophies. A company is either competition-driven or story-driven.

In contrast, the story-driven company is responsive to customers and prioritises having a clear sense of purpose and identity. It makes little reference to the competition and is intent on creating an impact.

Story-driven companies have a positive impact on their customers and society. They thrive by making the connection between their purpose and prosperity. Their goal is to make a difference.

That’s why leaders have to take responsibility when things go wrong, even if they were not directly involved in the wrongdoing: they helped to create a culture where people believed that the wrong thing was the right thing to do.

What’s the secret to building a great company? Great companies have something in common: they don’t try to matter by winning. They win by mattering.

Great companies rise to our expectations by being who they said they would be.

Contrast Volkswagen’s philosophy with Tesla’s. By building a story-driven company, Musk is playing what Carse describes as ‘an infinite game’. An infinite game is played ‘for the purpose of continuing the play’.

success is now—the alignment of thoughts, beliefs, intentions and actions. The journey is part of their success.

Move Intentionally and Build Things

When we constantly pursue and prioritise ‘more’ above ‘meaning’, we take wrong turns, box ourselves in, self-sabotage or make unhelpful plans.

Visionary entrepreneurs and successful companies consistently act in alignment with their values because they know who they are and who they want to become.

‘The critical question is not “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?”’ —Jim Collins, reflecting on what he learned from Peter Drucker,

While we’re busy with the tactical stuff, we often skip the important first step—of reflecting deeply about the reason our idea or project needs to exist and the change we’re trying to create. This first step is harder than it seems, because asking these deeper questions makes us feel vulnerable to failure. We’d rather press on unenlightened, doing fun, practical and easy things that help us to feel like we’re making progress. We prefer to fix mistakes as we go rather than to sit with the uncomfortable unknowns about our ambitions. Having ideas is fun. Understanding what makes them relevant today or significant tomorrow, and why you’re the person to move them forward, is work.

it’s vital to imagine how what you’re working on creates change and to articulate your reasons for wanting to do it. Why you? Why this? Why now? Why for them? Why there? Why that way and not this? What’s your story and how will you stay true to it?

Without a narrative compass, our creative endeavours, companies and cultures break down, and we become faint carbon copies of something that’s gone before. Our story illuminates the dark corners where only we can go. It’s our story that guides us.

Meaning Is a Competitive Advantage

Today we’re seeing a powerful shift towards the building of the Meaning Economy, where the brands and businesses that thrive are the ones that enable us to work with our hearts as well as our heads and hands.

As Professor Dan Ariely reminds us in his book Payoff, meaning’s ‘essential quality has to do with having a sense of purpose, value, and impact—of being involved in something bigger than the self’.

In a world where it’s easy to be cheaper and faster than the competition, we now recognise the limitations of attention and the power of affinity.

Far from just being a way to differentiate us, our stories can help us to decide, plan, lead, sell, inspire, influence, persuade, rally, create value, build trust, foster connection and succeed by building better, more purposeful organisations and lives. Our stories can shape who we are.

McAdams proposes that a person’s identity is formed by integrating life experiences into an internalised, evolving story that provides him or her with a sense of purpose. We make sense of who we are by piecing together stories from our reconstructed past, perceived present and imagined future.

The story-driven company thrives because its people have a collective narrative identity that gives them a sense of purpose and creates a cohesive culture.

We humans are wired for connection and contribution. We thrive when we get the opportunity to do both. This is why there is an element of fundamental good in every business backstory.

Our personal values act as a compass, helping us to behave in ways that are congruent with who we believe we are and who we aspire to be. Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to make decisions that don’t reinforce the story about who you believe yourself to be.

no business ever died from a shortage of attention. Companies and ideas fail because of a lack of resonance with the people they seek to serve.

There’s an elephant in the marketing room and I’d like us to call it out. Here goes: by setting out to find and tell the right story, we lose sight of the real story—the truth about who we are.

Today we spend a lot of our time telling people why they should trust us.

The new tools and tactics are easy to learn and automate; what’s harder, scarcer and more useful is setting the intention that guides the work you do, the service you deliver, the attitude you adopt and the meaning you hope to create.

In a world of abundance, value is increasingly created by experiences and interactions that are not easily replicated. The old tactics of convincing our way to the sale with billboards and banner ads are not working so well anymore. Today we differentiate by doing. The more deliberate we can be about acting in alignment with our intentions, the more we stand out.

Imagine your business purpose and vision as a mountain peak. Your strategy is the route map—the path you choose that’s going to get you up that mountain. Tactics are the steps you take on the journey to advance your way along that chosen path towards the summit, thus realising your vision. PURPOSE AND VISION—Where you’re going and why. STRATEGY—How you’re going to get there. TACTICS—What you do along the way.

By failing to also see our narrative as part of our strategy, we’re missing the opportunity to get clear on our purpose, differentiate ourselves from the competition and create affinity with the right customers. Differentiation begins by showing, not just telling, and every action should serve the purpose of advancing us towards our goal. We make better decisions when we understand why we’re making them.

Many Chinese companies competed on price, but Alibaba chose instead to differentiate by offering responsive service.

The easiest part of telling your story is implementing the tactics—things like articulating your product’s features and benefits on a sales page or deciding what colour the logo should be. The hardest part is not only working out the mission, vision and values that are the foundation of your business, but also intentionally living them so you can achieve your goals. You have to begin by getting clear about why your business exists. The very act of questioning your purpose forces you to dig deeper. It invites you to clarify why you wanted to make that particular promise to those particular people in the first place and to create an action plan to deliver on it. As marketers, we believe that it’s our products and words that create value. But it’s the intention that informs the development of those products and the crafting of those words that delights people and thus differentiates us. Clarity of intention is where your story starts.

customers support businesses who show what they’re made of as well as selling what they make.

the story-driven framework © 2017 Bernadette Jiwa 1. BACKSTORY: Your journey to now. 2. VALUES: Your guiding beliefs. 3. PURPOSE: Your reason to exist. 4. VISION: Your aspiration for the future. 5. STRATEGY: The alignment of opportunities, plans and behaviour: how you will deliver on your purpose and work towards your aspiration, while staying true to your values.

Leaders of story-driven companies consistently prioritise the things that will help them achieve their goals while staying true to their values.

People are more motivated, more engaged, happier and more productive when they feel like their work is meaningful.

As we work to get our ideas out into the world and try to find and engage the people those ideas will resonate with, it’s easy to fall into the trap of skimming the surface of our story for the facts we believe will give us some tangible advantage. But if we want to give ourselves the best chance of spreading our ideas and creating an impact, we have to get better at telling our real story and living our purpose.

They don’t just give back. They give by the very virtue of their existence.

Being story-driven is less about following brand guidelines and more about choosing to act in ways that are consistent with core values.

Your metric for success is a choice. How you apologise is a choice. The expression you wear as you greet the customer is a choice. Where you source your ingredients is a choice. What you include in or omit from your terms and conditions is a choice.

Consistently being true to yourself and true to your word is one of the secrets to living a good life. It’s also the secret to crafting, telling and living an authentic story that resonates.

Marketing should magnify the truth, not manipulate a message. Our job isn’t to get everyone to believe us. It’s to give the right people something to believe in.