Notes on the Strategic Stories fad: Disney and other storytellers
David M. Boje June 29, 1999; Revised October 7, 2002 3M, HP, IBM, Du Pont, Kimberly-Clark, Patagonia, Disney, Nike, Enron and other corporations are looking to storytelling to make their business plans and strategies more compelling.
Shaw. Brown and Bromiley (1998) draw a practical link between the basic principle of narrative flow, set the stage, introduce dramatic conflict and reach a resolution, and the process of strategy formation and elucidation. Barry and Elmes (1997) provide a more balanced relation, pointing out the mis-adventures of corporate storytelling, as well as the applications (press here for Barry & Elmes). The advice of both articles is being picked up as required reading by every strategy course syllabus I found on the net. The really great leaders embody their stories to energize corporate values with more staying power (Fleming, 2001; Neuhauser, 1993; Gardner, 1996; Hatersley, 1997; Tichey & Collins, 1997; Stewart, 1998).
The 3M company is currently using stories as part of its business planning to generate excitement and commitment. Their strategic stories set the stage, introduce dramatic conflict and outline the challenges the company is facing, and reach a resolution which outlines the organization’s approach to the future. (Shaw, Brown & Bromiley, 1998: 41-50)
Fleming (2001: 34-36) argues that stories are part of how leaders change organization in acts of sense-giving. Effective leaders understand and strategically use the storytelling processes of their organization (Boje, 1991, 1995). I think stories are not just sense-making or sense-giving, they are ontologizing forces. Doug in the Office Supply company, was able to perform stories in terse ways that gave new gloss to strategies forming in his company (Boje, 1991). Michael Eisner, strategically reframed old Walt Disney stories to give Disney new strategic direction (Boje, 1995). And Enron (Boje, 2002a, b) used storytelling in theatrical performance to sell its deregulated market strategies to business college professors and world governments. In the Bruno Latour sense, stories real-ize changes, they are ontologizing. This is something I am developing in the idea of "antenarrative" (Boje, 2001, 200a, b).
Stories can be the best way to package meaning and spur others on to achieve. At the most basic level, storytelling can help a manager gain and hold his audience's attention. But if the story is good enough, it can also lift individuals and organizatio ns to take the risks that keep life an adventure (Hatersley, 1997).
Antenarrative is defined as a bet that a pre-story can be told and theatrically performed that will enroll stakeholders in intertextual ways that transform the world of action into theatrics; at the same time the antenarratives never quite get there. The antenarrative theory was originally developed in Boje (2001)a Narrative Methods of Organizational and Communication Research. For on line, Introduction to Antenarrative, please read this first http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/what_is_antenarrative.htm
Corporate leaders are attending workshops to find out how to tell engaging strategic stories with the right mix of plot, climax, and character development (Kaye, 1996; Lieber, 1997; McKee, 1997). And they are becoming better at antenarrating.
Focus groups bullet points are passé as leaders seek "tales" of customer service that have emotional appeal. "Wise heads in the arcane world of customer research are onto something called storytelling" (Lieber, 1997). Harvard marketeer, Gerald Zaltman has the focus groups telling stories about metaphors to tea se out their most inner feelings. "As we kept probing into the emotions behind the choice of these photos, the women finally began admitting that hose made them feel sensual, sexy, and more attractive to men," says Glenda Green, a market researcher for Du Pont. "There's no way anyone would admit that in a focus group." Digital storytelling retreats are teaching corporate executives how to combine storytelling with the latest in digital technology to give their strategies customer appeal. You can gather lots of stories without paying those focus group costs.
IBM (1999) preps its executives on how to get just the right kinds of stories to tell and retell:
- Which stories do you like the best? The worst? Why?
- Would you consider these real stories? Or are they story fragments? Anecdotes? Why?
- Do any of these stories make you think of other stories you could contribute? Which ones? Why?
- Do any of these stories make you want to comment on them or start a discussion on a topic that they raise? Which ones? Why?
- How would you want these stories to be organized? Why?
- If you were looking for a particular one of these stories, how do you think would be the best way to find it?
- Do you think that some of these stories are appropriate for business, and others not -- or do you think they all are? What criteria would you use to decide if a particular story would be of use?
- If you had a story to add to this list, how would you want to do it? By filling out a form? By being interviewed? By having a story-collector sit in on a group in which you told stories? By having a member of the group collect stories? How else?
- If you had a story to add to this list, who would you want to read it? How much control would you want to have over who could read it?
The problem with the above agenda is that stories do not emerge fully-formed out of the heads of executives. Rather, storytelling is an emergent and collective process, where stories (antenarratives) are shared in fragments. It is the fragments that make the big changes.
Corporations are investing in storytelling research and how to become more effective storytellers. Former reengineering consultant Jim Champy is turned into a story consultant. He says to avoid the abstract concept, and home in on the practical advantages of knowing what makes people tick. "Managers get too caught up with explaining the brilliance of their own theories," says Jim Champy, the head of consulting at Perot Systems (Lieber, 1997). To the strategic planner, consultants are offering this advice.
Looking Beneath the Strategic Storytelling Fad
First, like in traditional storytelling, "the strategic planner needs to set the stage, to define the current situation in an insightful, coherent manner.
Next, the strategic planner must introduce the dramatic conflict "What challenges does the company face in this situation? What critical issues stand as obstacles to success?
"Finally, the story must reach resolution in a satisfying and convincing manner. The plan must tell us how the company can overcome obstacles and win. The conclusion requires a logical, concise argument that is specific to the situation and leads to th e desired outcomes." (Shaw, Brown, Bromiley 1998:49)
Strategic storytelling affects our understanding of the corporation and the marketplace. Strategic planners have discovered the power of storytelling. David Barry (1998) remarks "In organizations, this power is often used to seduce, to lull dreamy employees into thinking they're part of some great cause. I think of many global companies which spin a tale of the corporate family."
With every story constructed out of the story-work of a focus group or a CEO story writing workshop, there are a thousand other ways to tell the story. As Helpert (1998) puts it: "Privileging some narratives over others makes stories political and strategic." Therefore constructing alternative stories is a reasonable response to the strategic appropriation of stories. As Barry (1998) puts it "storytelling rights should be given to everyone in an organization, and not just the PR group or the top executives. Corporate stories, even strategic ones, present occasions for multiple interpretations and plurivocality.
Disney Storytelling Strategies, for example, constructs the happy story strategically over the competing voices of alternative stories to sustain a competitive advantage (Boje, 1995: 998). And we as researchers, text and article writers are comp licit in marketing the happy kingdom stories to our readers. The strategic stories are crafted in a sociopolitical and economic context. The Disney of Walt’s day has been tainted with portraits of Walt the alcoholic, the anti-unionist selling out labor hi s employees to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and maintaining an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the workplace. Disney since the mid-1980s has been dogged by allegations of being a sweatshop employer, with only money as the bottom line . With stories and counter stories, I can not sort out, in this brief space, fantasy, spin control, and material conditions. I can give you some idea of the strategic context in which Disney tells its strategic stories.
By presenting multiple interpretations, the strategic stories project addresses a general criticism in the field that industry members, practitioners and research do not appear connected with one another (Portillio, 1999).
I began collecting Disney stories in 1989 and kept collecting them till the article was published in 1995. My premise was that because there is so much opportunity for multiple interpretation, management spends many meeting hours judging stories and st orytellers and hosting focus groups to capture storied characters in its panoptic web of relationships and story performances. Disney executives, like other corporate spokespersons tell these stories to enact a strategic account of themselves to their pub lics. I compared how Walt Disney, Michael Eisner, Ron Miller and official Disney biographers told stories and how Disney employees storied the same events. Story work is what Disney, but what most contemporary organizations do, wandering the halls and off ices and now the focus groups chasing storylines. And telling organization stories is part of the "micropractices" of corporate power (Clegg: 1989: 191-240).
Disney is Baudrillard and Jameson’s postmodern organization, the master storyteller and the poster boy of hyperreality. But, Disney is still the modernist storytelling machine and beneath the theme park is the factory. Among the pirate, frontier, future, robot, and castle worlds is a concealed reality of rather bizarre labor practices. The employees to staff the rides and pop corn machines or stitch the clothes in Haiti or assemble the toys in China do not see Disney as the postmodern story machine. Disney boycotts by Baptist investors, those opposed to Disneyfication of American history, environmentalists who identified theme parks as inherent agents of ecological decline, and sweatshop activists had their impact. Even diehard fans admit that Eisner h as strayed from Walt's original corporate strategy and vision and in April, 1988, Disney stock took a dive.
What is the Disney Storytelling Strategy? "With over $24 billion in revenues in 1997, {Disney] runs near the front of the media acquisition race with other giants like Time Warner(the absolute largest media firm) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (http://raptor.slc.edu/~stephen/htmls/academic/global_disney.98.html. Disney is one of many multi-nationals who move their outsourced work from country to country. To keep consumers and U.S., European, and Japanese employees and investors happy, Disney needs a strategic story to tell. Disney is among the many storytelling organizations revising its strategic stories to fit the new global division of labor. It’s profit story is most impressive.
On a day many Disney investors would choose to forget, Disney plunged 10.41% to close down over 35% from recent highs. Disney helped lead the DOW sell off as the average DOW stock finished the day down only 6.37% compared to Disney's 10.41% plunge. http://falcon.laker.net/webpage/needwesaymore.htm or see htt p://falcon.laker.net/webpage/aaleading.htm
Known for its quality, The safety record at the parks has plummeted, according to documents the authors collected. A 1997 survey of park employees in Orlando showed that 85 percent disagreed with the statement, "My work location/ department does not co mpromise on quality" (http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/11-14-98/cultural_3.asp).
The battle lines were quickly drawn between the proposed Disney's America Theme Park and the historic preservation community. Facing each across the "field", the antagonists took aim and fired "verbal volley's" at each other. http://www.webcom.com/chotank/disneypaper.html and http://www.webcom.com/chotank/disney rom.html for more on this issue.
"When we are in Disney World... we are inside someone else's story; we cannot tell what is reality and what is not," said Coates in Jerry Mander's book, In the Absence of the Sacred. Coates argues that theme parks create a preprogrammed fantasy world t hat excludes nature's randomness and unpredictability. As such, these parks lead visitors to believe that an environment can be sustained within a vacuum controlled by technicians and engineers (Sterling, 1994: 32).
The Disney enterprise is a postmodern and modern organization, in need of a good strategic storytelling machine to construct its public image. The grand story is fragmenting into a multiplicity of local stores and the discursive struggle with activists of all persuasion may be here to stay.
Around the world, Disney characters continued to spread their magic, as demonstrated by the surge in Disney Consumer Products revenue to more than $2 billion for the first time. The growth was propelled by strong sales of The Lion King and Pocahontas merchandise as the division stretched out into new businesses and new markets. http://www.disney.com/investors/annual/yir.html
Disney, like other corporations is a storytelling organization of many struggling stories, each a different frame of reality, each chased by wandering and fragmenting audiences. In its plurivocality, each Disney story masks diversity and a multiplicity of voices. Workers in China, Indonesia, Burma, and Haiti are employed by subcontractors to make clothing and toys featuring familiar Disney characters.
The allegation is that Disney is not paying a living wage, averaging 10 to 25 cents an hour in Indonesia and China factories. Workers in Haiti get paid as little as 28 cents an hour.
On December 17, an NBC Dateline undercover investigation exposed Disney's use of substandard wages, abusive working conditions and child labor. The report discovered the average employees making Disney merchandise are teenage girls, usually around the age of 15. Some of these teenage workers live in dormitories with 16 workers sharing a single room. No protective gear is provided for those who encounter toxic fumes and air polluted with dirt and lint. Work shifts under these conditions can last from 10 to 16 hours. http://www.citinv.it/org/CNMS/archivio/lavoro/disney_fant.html
The Disney and Enron strategic storytelling practices have a global empire to account for. Each event is open to a multitude of interpretations. And the storytelling organizing machine is busily making sense of its own actions and figuring out how to live up to its own rhetoric.
The Megatex plant in Port-au-Prince, Haiti produces clothing for Disney and other companies. In July, management suspended two workers who had spoken with a monitoring team visiting the factory. Following an outpouring of international pressure, those workers were reinstated. On August 10, Megatex workers initiated the official process to have their union certified. This constituted a huge risk for the union leadership, who then became subject to arbitrary firing. International pressure again appears t o have been crucial in heading off repression at the factory. http://www.summersault.com/~agj/clr/newsletter/news8.html#4
References of Strategic Storytelling
Barry, David (1998) Using Story as Strategy Interview with David Barry by Helen McKay - June issue of Australian Storytelling. http://www.home.aone.net.au/stories/ndxstori.htm
Barry, David & Michael Elmes (1997) "Strategy retold: Toward a narrative view of strategic discourse." Academy of Management Review, 22(2) 429-452. (press here) for on line copy. Also See more articles on stories by Barry
Boje, David M. (1991). Organizations as storytelling networks: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 106-126.
Boje, D. M. (1995) "Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as "Tamara-land." Academy of Management Journal. 38(4): 997-1035.
Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage.
Boje, D. M. (2002a). Critical Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and Metatheatre. Plenary presentation to 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July (London).
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON_critical_dramaturgical_analysis.htmBoje, D. M. (2002b) Enron Metatheatre: A Critical Dramaturgy Analysis of Enron’s Quasi-Objects. Paper presented at the Networks, Quasi-Objects, and Identity: Reintegrating Humans, Technology, and Nature session of Denver Academy of Management Meetings. Tuesday August 13, 2002.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/enron_theatre_LJM.htm
Fleming, David (2001). Narrative leadership: using the pwoer of stories. Strategy and Leadership. Vol 29 (4): 34-36.
Gardner, Howard (1996). Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership. Basic Books.
Halbert, Deborah J. (1998). Dissertation. Weaving Webs of Ownership: Intellectual Property in an Information Age. University of Hawaii. http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/~future/dissertation/ TOC.html
Hattersley, Michael (1997). "The Managerial Art of Telling a Story." Harvard Management Update, January.
IBM Research (1999). Annotated Corporate Storytelling Bibliography http://www.research.ibm.com/knowsoc/bibliography.html
Lieber, Ronald B. (with associate Joyce Davis) (1997). "Storytelling: A new way to get close to your customer." Fortune Text Edition. (February 3rd). http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1997/970203/c us.html
McKee, Robert (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. Regan Books.
Neuhauser, P. (1993). Corporate legends and lore: The power of storytelling as a management tool. Austin, TX: PCN Press, 1993.
Portillo, Margaret (1999). FIDER's Latest Research Directive: Strategic Stories. http://www.isdesignet.com/WhatsNew/FIDER/directive.html
Stephen (1998). - The Globalization of Disney: Spreading the Magic http://raptor.slc.edu/~stephen/htmls/academic/global_disney.98.html
Schweizer, Peter and Rochelle (1998). Disney: The Mouse betrayed. Regnery. ISBN 0-89526-387-4. Peter Schweizer (1998) says he interviewed hundreds of current and former Disney employees, law enforcement officials, and reviewed hundreds of documents (many of which are reprinted in t he book) to produce this work. Still much of it comes across as subjective.
Shaw, G; Brown, R and Bromiley, P (1998). "Strategic Stories: How 3M is Rewriting Business Planning." Harvard Business Review Vol 76 No 3 May/June 1998. http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products /hbr/mayjun98/98310.html
Sterling, John (1994). The World According to Disney: Trading in Fantasies. Earth Island Journal. Summer, Vol. 9 Issue 3, p. 32+ http://www.hootenanny.org/disney_rant/disney.html
Stewart, Thomas (1998). "The Cunning Plots of Leadership" Fortune magazine, September 7 The Leadership Forum Newsletter
(1998). "Preferred Futures." October 1(1). http://www.ops.qld.gov.au/leadership/network/newsletter.html and 1(2) http://www.ops.qld.gov.au/leadership/network/newsletter2.html
Tichey, Noel M. and Cohen, Eli (1997). The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level Harper Collins. See "who am I" stories in Chapter 4 and Chapter 9, "Writing Your Leadership Story."