You need to change your company story: time to slay the monster

I'm reading Christopher Booker's 'The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories'. He says there are, as you can tell from the title, just seven basic plots to all stories. While you look at his list of the seven plots, think of your 'company story' and which of these it fits most clearly into (What do you mean 'we haven't got one?' Every organization that wants to go somewhere, that wants its people to be engaged and motivated, has to have a story it tells about itself - who we are, where we are going, why we come into work each morning). Here are Booker's seven plots:

1. Overcoming the Monster

2. Rags to Riches

3. The Quest

4. Voyage and Return

5. Comedy

6. Tragedy

7. Rebirth

Now three things stike me about this:

1. Comedy and tragedy are genres not plots, so what's that all about? Christopher Booker's got a big brain, so what kind of classification system goes on in it? Weird. Sorry; I digress.

2. It's funny, isn't it, that you have a name like 'Booker' and you make a living writing books. If his name had been 'Thatcher' would he be up on a roof right now in some village in olde Englande plying his trade by thatching rooves? Is this some kind of cop out to get away from the agony of choice in choosing a career: "Oh, I'll let my name choose my path", like that book The Diceman, where that guy gives up on making his own decisions, as he a) finds it too hard and b) gets more of a thrill out of rolling dice every time he has to make a decision and letting the dice decide for him. OK, the third one is the serious one.

3. I'd suggest for most of us your company story has to change right now. It might have been 'Rags to Riches' or the pursuit of power (traders and investment bankers), it might have been 'The Quest' or the mission, like Harley-Davidson's "motorcycles by the people for the people". It might have been 'Rebirth' if you are going through a merger or acquisition. But, whatever your story was, you need to adjust it now. Not lose it completely, just adjust it. For all of us now, the primary story is 'Overcoming the Monster'.

Now, some would say 'the Monster' is the tough trading climate, the impending (or for some, the actual) recession. Yes, that's the story you need to unite people behind, because they are feeling unsettled and powerless in the face of it.

I'd say that's part of it. But, as we all know, the danger is that in fighting the monster, you become the monster too. How you behave and act as a leader in tough times dictates whether you will engage your people (and I am aware that part of what some of you have to do is let people go, so your 'remaining' people, perhaps) to fight the monster. Or, you can treat people as expendable, put on your hard face, slip into 'tough times demand tough leadership' cliche mode, and wield the axe where you can - Cutting what's easy to cut. Once you start doing that, for many on the outside, you'll be looking monsterish yourself.   

How to lead cost savings without joining the monster 

I had a boss who was told in the last recession to lose one of the ten people in our unit. She nominated herself. Her bosses refused. She was making a point. The point was "Don't be stupid in deciding how to save money." She got all ten of us to put our heads together over the course of a week, with the urgent task of coming up with annual cost savings that would be the equivalent of one of us leaving - specifically, the average wage of the ten of us. We did it. So, we made the equivalent of 10% savings on our salary budget for our unit in one week. And, found we were actually working much more efficiently and should have gone through that exercise anyway, without waiting for a recession to push us into it. The monster stayed outside the room. It's up to you whether you let it into your organization.