Much has been written--much too much, perhaps--about the power of the story in business. In a nutshell, the story (ouch!) goes that by converting your pitch, your unique selling proposition, your heritage into a narrative form, the greater chance it will resonate with, remain with and influence your intended audience.
I have no argument with that.
However (here's the tricky part), what's even more powerful than you telling a story is doing something that will give people a story to tell...preferably about you.
Here's the impetus:
On Friday, Just For Laughs took a table at a hoitsy-toitsy fundraising dinner for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The night was elegant, filled with the powerful and wealthy, ranging from captains of industry to high-ranking politicos.
As it wound down, the dinner was capped off with a digestif of fine port...a tray of which was accidentally crashed and spilled all over myself and my friend/partner/pseudo brother Gilbert Rozon.
Almost instantaneously, four horrified members of the white-gloved, black-jacketed staff rushed over to our table, apologized, and offered to send a dry-cleaner to our homes the next day to pick up our soiled suits and shirts and ties. Now, in most cases, there are two ways to handle this:
1) You swear and curse and act belligerently
2) You grin and near it and accept, silently simmering.
Here's what we actually did:
1) Gilbert immediately demanded $5 in cash. When the befuddled staff member said she didn't have $5, he said that $2 would do.
2) I was a little less subtle. I got up, looked at the stains, then slammed my chair up and down continuously like a child, all the time whining: "I was so good all night! I didn't spill anything! And now this!"
The staff, and the surrounding tables, looked at us in a combination of bewilderment and terror.
Then, we gave it up. We hugged the staff, laughed, said that "shit happens," and told them not to worry about it. We gracefully declined their dry-cleaning offer, and said it was no big deal; Gilbert was off on a road trip and I had two other suits to bring to the cleaners the next day, so one more wouldn't kill me.
And then we said with a smile: "You guys are lucky you spilled on the Just For Laughs table. Had you spilled on some of the really important people, maybe things would've been different!"
So here's the learning:
By acting up and acting out, if nothing else, we at least stayed "on brand" (and followed Pow's lesson of two weeks ago).
But more importantly, we didn't just merely convert a negative into a positive, we converted a negative into a POSITIVE ABOUT US that people will talk positively, and often, about.
I GUARANTEE that the next day, our story was told, again and again and again. We were the crazies that demanded cash and tossed about furniture...before showing our true "mensch" colors.
So as you go about your day-to-day, think about it--where's the ever-lasting legacy built?
In you telling stories?
Or in having stories told about you?