What Would Austin Powers Do?

Imagine any situation. (For those who don't imagine one: a visit at the dentist). No matter what you imagined, chances are good that you can imagine how Jesus, James Bond, or Austin Powers would have behaved in this situation. Even though we do not know these people and we have never experienced them in exactly this situation, we have a good feeling for how the situation would have gone. What is the reason for that? The answer has a lot to do with emotions. We may no longer know a single line from the books/movies, but we still remember very well the character who was drawn with these stories. Jesus embodies charity, James Bond is full of elegance and machismo and Austin Powers stands for fun and embarrassment.

So good stories make you know how the main character would act in new situations. This quintessence can also be applied to companies. But what does this insight have to offer and why is it becoming more and more relevant, especially today? These are the questions I try to answer in this article.

Power to the People

As described in another article, digitalization is changing the requirements of customers and employees, among other things. As a result of these new circumstances, organisational structures are also gradually changing: they are becoming flatter, decisions are less often made from above and the individual employee receives more design possibilities.

With all these improvements, however, it is clear that we have not yet reached the end of this development. Many companies want the advantages of bottom-up intelligence, but do not dare to involve all employees in important decisions, or to allow real self-organization. The reasons are as unfortunate as they are understandable: Giving up power to the masses is a risk. What if the decisions of the majority are wrong? What if anarchy breaks out and everyone wants something contradictory? How can a company act as one targeted force when it consists of so many different individuals?

How can managers ensure that the company still functions without control from above (i.e. without traffic lights)?

In my opinion, the answer to these questions is that all decision-makers must share the same values and information.

How to share information is an exciting topic for many other posts. In the following I would therefore like to address the challenge of how to share values.

A company functions if its employees understand its character

Similar to James Bond and Austin Powers, it is essential that companies make their values not only readable (e.g. through marketing brochures) but also tangible. A particularly elegant possibility is to imitate the fictitious models and tell good stories.

The objective is to give all agents in the self-organized system a common understanding of values that corresponds to the company values. Employees who hear these stories and tell themselves these stories thus get an understanding of the character of the company. This knowledge of character then helps them to make decisions in critical situations in the same way as the "company" would have done. This instrument helps to base decisions on the same values and thus to make the vision more achievable.

To show how companies can put their corporate values into stories, I have researched two examples: JetBlue and the Vatican.

Let's start with the airline JetBlue, whose vision statement has the positive experience of customers when travelling as its declared goal.

"JetBlue exists to provide superior service in every aspect of our customer's air travel experience"

JetBlue Vision Statement

JetBlue pursues this mission with passion and to show all employees what this means, the company uses stories. The medium of choice is Twitter. Through a few tweets, the company tells what it means to them to give the customer an outstanding experience. Many misunderstand this communication strategy as advertising. Of course, it's great publicity when such stories are trending. However, the real added value is the tangible character which helps employees to carry out such actions themselves when the opportunity arises. Instead of providing a work manual in which all possibilities for customer satisfaction are formulated, JetBlue only offers stories. So every employee can ask her/himself: How would my colleagues from the stories told in the coffee corner have acted in this situation?

The Vatican's vision is also elaborated in the stories it tells (yes, the Vatican has a vision statement!). You can think what you want of the Vatican, but how many organisations do you know that have their own radio station? The stories told there provide a very tangible point of reference for the thousands of employees, who have a lot of personal responsibility and still have to represent common values. The stories in book form, which the Vatican also swears by, are perhaps one of the oldest implementations to enable a partially self-organized system, as Juval Noah Harari discusses in one of his books.

Now that the content of the stories is clearer, the question arises who should ideally tell the stories.

Rank doesn't always trump

Stories gain credibility and meaning when they are not dictated down from above. Once managers are aware of the spirit the stories have to convey, they are the ones who have to discover the stories in their team and transport them. For this purpose, it is important not only to have an open ear but also to understand the challenges that lay between the employees and success. Has this challenge been overcome with company values? If so, the story-telling can begin! It is important here that not only a "normal" success story is told, as many companies do. After all, no many can really identify with the great successes of a large company.

What really works are stories from colleagues who have mastered a big problem. It is therefore more effective to tell how a colleague from the customer service department of online shoe retailer Zappos was on the phone with a customer for more than 10 hours to chat with the customer after the order. Zappos' corporate value of offering customers the maximum service is thus impressively proven and all employees know how to act in case of doubt.

The End

In order to establish a functioning self-organisation, all employees must have internalised the spirit of the joint enterprise. Managers have an essential and increasingly important task here, as it is they who have to establish and nurture this spirit. So the next time you hear a good story about an employee, keep asking until you have all the information together. Maybe try to work out the story together and ask for permission to tell it at the next chat in the coffee corner or in the company blog. Often the answer will come that this would rather be done by oneself. But if the employee hesitates because he/she does not see the why, then show him/her this article!