“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they call Gitchi Gummi.”

–     Opening line from the lyric to Gordon Lightfoots’s “Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald”

It means “Big Water.”  Gitchi Gummi is a native American expression meaning “big water.”  I didn’t learn that in school, I learned it because of the telling of the story.  A disc jockey on KRNA in Iowa City told me that.  Once.  In 1976.  The telling of the story made me want to know.

29 men died on the Edmund Fitzgerald in a November storm on Lake Superior.  I learned that because of the telling of the story.  The event itself, while legendary here in the Great Lakes Region, was inconsequential on the Iowa farm which was my original home.  Yet I know the story.

Because of the telling.

If you have kids, watch the difference in their engagement level when you use different voices for each character when reading a bedtime story to them.  If you have friends, watch the difference in their engagement level when you use different inflection to tell them a story about an experience or an event.

If you have customers, watch their engagement level to know whether your telling honors your story.

Yes, the story matters.  But everyone has a story.  That’s why the telling matters even more.  That’s why the telling makes a difference.

PS  In 2010, based on findings of an investigation, the cause of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald prompted Lightfoot to change one line in the lyric.  I didn’t know that, until I researched this post.  It might be part of the story, but it doesn’t lend itself well to the telling.  There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere, too…

“Storytelling is not what I do for a living — it is how I do all that I do while I am living.”

–     Donald Davis, American Storyteller

File this concept under “callings.”  Storytelling is how we’re called to pass along a legacy.  It’s how we’re called to convey our cultural underpinnings to those that come after us.  Storytelling makes living life an exercise in legacy — a connection between legends, lessons and life.

What are the most enduring stories of your life so far?

Mabye it’s about great-grandparents who came across on the boat, with only a few sheckles in their pocket, eyes clearly focused on the promise of the land of opportunity  — to excited to be scared, or too scared to allow themselves to fail.  Maybe it’s about a grandfather who didn’t come back across on the boat after World War II.  Maybe it begins with a mother who worked three jobs to earn a degree to provide better for a family she had while “too young.”   Or about a mother who opted not to have a career outside the home to provide for her family in a different way.

Maybe it’s about a coach who challenged you to do more than you thought you could, or a teacher who helped find a special gift that might not have emerged otherwise.  Heck, maybe it’s about a complete jerk who showed you how not to live — giving you clear direction on how to avoid their mistakes.

You get the idea, right?  If we just go through life, the stories go untold.  If we live life, the stories are born, take root and grow, carrying us forward and connecting those who come after us to the culture, the legacy, the lives that made theirs possible.

Tomorrow, the telling…

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”

–     Robert McAfee Brown, American theologian and activist (1920-2001)

Ideas are the currency of the difference makers.

Storytelling is their means of transacting — “the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.”

The world today tries to focus on the sound bite, at the expense of the concept — of the idea.  The world today tries to draw us to the sensational, at the expense of the important.  The world today wants us to believe that 144 characters is all we need in order to understand, and that a snippet on YouTube can stand in for storytelling.  The world today provides ample incentive to take short cuts, and the on-ramps to difference making are rarely built along short-cuts.

Storytelling makes a difference, because it gives ideas sunlight and water and oxygen.  It gives ideas fertilizer and good soil, so that roots can run deep and hold strong.  Storytelling sets an idea apart, because it allows the idea to become real.  Storytelling enables difference making because it engages the audience emotionally, and creates intimacy between the idea and the problem it might solve.

The anti-storytelling movement is built on blind internet auctions; on closed envelope bids.  The anti-storytelling movement is led by procurement departments who are paid to commoditize products, solutions and services that can not and should not be commoditized.  The goal of the anti-storytellers is to minimize ideas.  They trade in the currency of the fearful.  Avoiding blame is their means of transacting.

Ideas are the currency of the difference makers.  And storytelling is their means of transacting.

Find a platform from which to tell your story.  And, tell it like it makes a difference.  Because it does.

“Congratulations!  Today is your day.  You’re off to Great Places!  You’re off and away!  You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes.  You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

–     Dr. Seuss in “Oh, The Places You’ll Go

I think he’s on to something.  We can steer ourselves any direction we choose.

It’s just that if it’s not the direction we’re supposed to go, life has a way of nudging us back on course.  If we look around, we’ll see where we’re supposed to be.

The good news is, today is still our day.  We’re still off to great places.  We have brains in our head, and eyes in our face, let’s let them steer us to some sort of natural place.

“I laughed at the Lorax, “You poor stupid guy!  You never can tell what some people will buy.”  Business is business!  And business must grow regardless of crummies in tummies you know.”

–     Dr. Seuss, from “The Lorax”

Business is business, yes.  And some weekends, it just needs to rest.

If we never rest, we can create our own crummies in tummies.  They’re called ulcers.  They are to be avoided.

Make a difference by taking a break every now and then.

“You can’t imagine not knowing what you know.”

–     A popular statement in B-School articles and change-management books

And you know what else?  You really can’t imagine it.

The house I grew up in is gone, but I’ll never forget that the living room was 247 square feet — 13 one-foot ceiling tiles by 19 one-foot ceiling tiles.  It’s how Dad taught me multiplication.  I can’t imagine not knowing it.

Remember when we used to just know that music had to come on vinyl records, um, er, I mean 8-track tapes (or was that cassettes?)…WAIT!  I remember!  It was CD’s!!  Remember when we knew that?

Remember when the doctor’s office actually “pulled a file” when they pulled your file?  We just knew it had to be on paper.  Remember when you had to hand crank a car to start it?  Me neither!  But, do you think those people who do would have ever imagined being able to walk to their office window, point a remote fob at the car 150 yards away and start the engine with the push of a button?

What is it that we just know is true today that might not be?  Is it possible that un-knowing might be a key step in going forward?

If so, how do we un-know what we’ve always known?

We challenge it.

What if it’s NOT true?  What if it DIDN’T HAVE TO BE true?

By then, we’re imagining what could be, instead of focusing on what is, or what must be.  That’ll make a difference.

“Most corporate strategic plans have little to do with strategy.  They are simply three or five-year rolling resource budgets….”

–     Richard Rumelt (Anderson School of Management, UCLA)

Back in 2007, Rumelt’s quote was highlighted in The McKinsey Quarterly.  His argument was that little that we want to call strategy provides any kind of road map for significantly improved performance.

It’s not about how many people you can keep on your team.  It’s about how clearly focused the team can stay on the outcome, and on the influences around them.

Strategy teams should be small, smart, focused, intense and able to engage in conflict.  Strategists should be able to comfortably move from “what if?” thinking to “how?” thinking and back.  They should have a clear idea of the future-best-state, all the while having at least one foot planted firmly on a piece of solid ground upon which the strategy ultimately will be built.

Planning’s gotten a bad name in some circles, and it might be because most companies are bad at planning.  Strategy’s become almost cliche in that world, and that’s risky.

Set a destination that is clearly rooted in metrics, but not a single metric.  (x% growth in revenue, EBITDA improvement, a better R & D ratio and ___ new patents is better than a simple EPS destination because you want to be able to discern WHY you’re winning or losing.)  Plot a course that allows for some missteps and detours.  Then, embark.  Learn along the way.  Do it better next month, next quarter, next year.  Strategy is about progress, not perfection.  Strategy is about performance.

“A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.”

–     Seth Godin, in the opening paragraph of his book, “Linchpin; Are You Indispensable?”

And that, friends, means that from time-to-time, we are all geniuses.

Maybe even Wile E. Coyote suuuuuuuuper geniuses.  Just depends how stuck we were before we got us unstuck…

Another of Seth’s concepts that I love (and, as admitted before, I have a huge business crush on Seth Godin…but I digress) is that if we are, indeed “stuck,” it might be more because we’re asking the wrong question than because we’re coming up with the wrong answer.

Ask “Why?”  Relentlessly.  In good times and bad.  In times neither good nor bad.  Ask “Why?”

In “Why?” questions, we more often find our inner genius.  Answers to “Why?” questions make a difference.

Now, where is that Roadrunner….?

“Change will only occur when the fear of change is overcome by the pain of remaining the same.”

     –     Dr. Tom Graf, PhD

Einstein is widely quoted as saying that one definition for insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  I’ve quoted him often in that context.

It might be kind of harsh, though.

Maybe it’s just fear of change.  Human nature is to dislike anything that feels different, that evokes a different biological and psychological outcome than we’ve come to expect based upon experience.

Experience.

Hmmmmmm, now there’s a word that most often gets used in a positive context, right?

“She’s a very experienced negotiator,” or “He’s a very experienced studio musician.”  I mean those are good things, right?  Right?  I mean, they are, aren’t they?

What if the context matters more?  What if our experience is masking our pain?

How valuable is experience when we’re seeking a different kind of transaction, or a different sound in the studio?

It’s valuable only if we keep it in context.

Maybe the deal isn’t insane, maybe it just needs to be structured differently.  Maybe the client isn’t insane, maybe we’ve just done a crappy job of helping them understand the change.  Maybe the department head isn’t insane, maybe we’ve just done a crappy job of helping them understand the market change, or the cultural change or the change in the stakes.

Maybe the change is incumbent upon us overcoming our experience, so that we can help those around us overcome theirs.

“People.  People who need people.  Are the luckiest people in the world.”

–     Lyric from “People,” the most famous song from the musical “Funny Girl”  

Four-and-a-half days in Austin, TX with my extraordinary wife was a good reminder that she is a people that I need.  It was good to get away.

Look, I don’t like the song, and, since it came out 49 years ago, I’ve made fun of it as much as anyone has.  And LOTS of people have made fun of it.  That said, it fits my message.  There are people of influence everywhere we look.

Who we hang around with.  Who we look up to.  Who we work for.  Who we work with.  Who we disagree with.  Who we sell to.  Who we buy from.  Who we love.

As I considered this post, I tried to think of people who DON’T need other people, and I came up empty.  The QB needs the linemen (and vice versa).  The golfer needs the caddie.  The chef needs the waitress.  The teacher needs the students and the people who print the books.  The surgeon needs the guy that made the scalpel and the anesthesiologist and the nurses and the lady who built the hospital and…

Maybe that means we’re all the luckiest people in the world.  Maybe that means we ought to appreciate the people around us more.  Maybe that’d make a difference.