If
You Don't Tell Your Story, Someone Else Will
I recall sitting in a Silicon Valley conference room a few years
ago with a CEO who had invented a technology that powers our most beloved
mobile devices. At the time his company’s stock was trading in the teens and
financial analysts as well as popular television pundits were urging him to
sell the company to a larger competitor. One company had offered to buy the
stock in the mid twenties. The CEO refused and bore the brunt of the criticism.
“They don’t understand our story,” the CEO told me. “And we
haven’t done a good job of telling it. We need to own our story because others
are getting it wrong.”
The outside “experts” sure did get it wrong. The company’s
technology is now embedded in many of the world’s most popular mobile devices.
Its stock soared to more than $100 a share recently before pulling back
slightly to about $90. My experience as the CEO’s executive communication coach
taught me a very valuable lesson:
If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.
In today’s noisy communication environment, people largely see
black and white. A headline on Twitter gets shared millions of times even
though the picture it paints might be grossly exaggerated or factually
incorrect.
For example, I recently returned from meetings with oil and gas
industry leaders in Houston. They argue that a “balanced portfolio,” including
renewables, will be required to meet the world’s energy needs. The scope of the
problem we face in bringing safe, reliable, and affordable energy to the world
is enormously complicated, far too complex to easily fit in 140 characters.
Although complexity gives critics an opportunity to craft a narrative that fits
their agenda, energy executives acknowledge that they should have done a much
better job of sharing their story.
In the last decade I’ve had hundreds of private meetings with
leaders in industries such as agribusiness, health care, energy, and
government. By the time I talk to these leaders about structuring their
messages, some of their critics have already taken to social media with a
narrative painting the company, organization or industry as the bad guy. Once a
company has been cast as a villain it is very, very difficult to change popular
opinion. It’s not impossible. A strong, truthful, and authentic story will
connect with the public, but it’s a long and painful road to correct myths,
distortions, and outright fabrications.
Companies, brands, and industries need to control their stories,
as do individual business professionals. I recently spent time with venture
capitalist and entrepreneur Tony Conrad. Conrad is the founder and CEO of About.me, a social media platform that gives users the
ability to create personalized profile pages. Conrad says he started About.me
to offer people a more elegant way of showing the world the story they want to
tell about themselves. Recently About.me launched “Backstory,” a tool that
allows users to share professional and educational history along with a feature
to turn it on and off when needed.
Conrad says that everyone needs to own their digital story. For
example, recruiters will form a profile about you from your random posts on
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To them, that’s your story; it’s who you are.
“I’m not the sum of my tweets,” says Conrad. “It’s a piece of who
I am, but it’s not the whole story. I’m also not solely defined by my
experience or accomplishments [on a traditional resume.] It’s a piece of my
story, but it doesn’t define me. It doesn’t tell you that I surf, I’m a father,
and I have all kinds of other interests.”
Some people avoid social media platforms because they don’t want a
public profile. “Who’s kidding who?” argues Conrad. “You’ve already got a
public profile. It’s called Google.”
Whether you’re an individual or the leader of a company, you must
tell a brand story that accurately paints your role in the world and you must
share that story frequently and consistently. We live in a fragmented world
where much of your story is in bits and pieces in the digital universe.
Carmine
Gallo is the communication coach for the
world’s most admired brands, a popular keynote speaker, and author of several
bestselling books including the Wall Street Journal hits The
Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, The Apple Experience, and his
latest Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets Of The World’s Top
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