Tell Compelling Stories

A few years ago, I had the good fortune to spend half a day with Peter Drucker at his home in Claremont, California. I went there to get his thoughts on strategies and tactics to promote entrepreneurship and to help entrepreneurs succeed in starting and building companies.

He was gracious, humorous and, as always, remarkably insightful. “Tell compelling stories,” he said. “Tell compelling stories.”

by Ray Smilor
President, Beyster Institute for Entrepreneurial Employee Ownership

http://www.entreworld.org/Content/TopAdvise.cfm?ColumnID=601

We need data. We require statistics. We have to do analysis. But stories have a unique power to inform, involve, and inspire. Stories hold up role models. They present companies that are worthy of emulation. In the process, they communicate what data, statistics and analysis cannot; they demonstrate the human dimension of the entrepreneurial process.

Only through compelling stories can we appreciate in an emotional, and not just intellectual, way the impact of innovation, the importance of personality, and the role of culture in the creation of organizations that change the way we live, work and play.

Stories tell us about what it takes to overcome adversity, to take risks, to come back from disaster or failure, to persist, and to create. The result is that compelling stories serve to show the possibilities of things, even in the most dire of circumstances. By revealing to us how others strive and succeed, they tell us that we can, too.

We need compelling stories.

In our annual conference in Chicago a few weeks ago, I heard a lot of compelling stories. In 1968, Lee Morgan took over the company his father had started in 1926, Antioch Company, reinvented the business and now has a $375 million dollar enterprise employing 1200 people. Sandra Green had worked for a company that had promised her 5 percent of the company’s stock, then reneged on their offer. She quit and started nLink in 1995, doing eGovernment federal contracting work, and has created a thriving business by treating her employees better than she was treated. Bruce Nims knocked around after college doing information technology consulting before starting Nims Associates in 1978, which now is a $48 million company with 420 employees. And Mike Volkema became CEO and then Chairman of Herman Miller in 1995 and has steered a company that started in 1926 to leadership in its industry with nearly $1.5 billion in revenue and more than 6,000 employees.

Each of these entrepreneurs tells a compelling story. While each is unique, they do have something important in common. Each believes in and implements employee ownership as the fundamental strategy for building entrepreneurial businesses and for making employees think and act like owners. They not only share stock through various vehicles ranging from stock options and grants, to phantom stock, profit sharing, and ESOPs, but they also fully engage employees in the decision-making processes of their firms.

In the midst of corporate scandals, mutual fund deceits, and questionable ethics practices of some companies, it was heartening, even inspiring, to hear their compelling stories.

There’s a lesson for all of us in Drucker’s sage advice: we should use stories more in our own communications, in our own companies, and in our own communities. They’re powerful mechanisms for teaching and learning.

Author’s Profile

Ray Smilor

As an author, public speaker, investor, consultant, and teacher, Dr. Ray Smilor is an internationally recognized expert in entrepreneurship. He is president of the Beyster Institute for Entrepreneurial Employee Ownership, which operates internationally as the Foundation for Enterprise Development. The Institute/Foundation is headquartered in La Jolla, California with offices in Washington, D.C., and Moscow, Russia. The Institute/Foundation is a leading education, training and consulting organization focusing on employee ownership and entrepreneurship.

Smilor was vice president of the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri from its startup in 1992 through 2000, helping to build one of the most prominent organizations promoting entrepreneurship in the United States.

He made the entrepreneurial leap to the Kauffman Center from The University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History. At the university, he became a tenured professor in the Graduate School of Business, developed one of the most prominent entrepreneurship curriculums in the country, and served for seven years as executive director of the university’s internationally recognized think-tank, the IC2 Institute.

Smilor has published extensively. His writings range from referred articles in academic journals to opinion pieces in popular magazines and trade publications. His work has been translated into a number of languages, including Japanese, French, Italian, and Korean. Among his fourteen books on entrepreneurship, economic development, and technology transfer and commercialization are The New Business Incubator; Managing Take-Off in Fast Growth Companies; and Customer Driven Marketing. His newest book is Daring Visionaries: How Entrepreneurs Build Companies, Inspire Allegiance and Create Wealth.

He has consulted with and made presentations to a range of companies, including IBM, 3M, Bell Helicopter, The Boston Financial Group, and Frito-Lay, as well as entrepreneurial associations such as the Entrepreneur of the Year Institute, Young Presidents’ Organization, and Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and government organizations such as the U.S. Department of Commerce, Small Business Administration, and Minority Business Development Agency.

He is a sought-after motivational speaker, has taught and lectured internationally, and has provided regular commentaries on the nationally syndicated radio show Entrepreneurs: Living the American Dream. He was selected as an Entrepreneur Of The Year in 1990 for his activities in support of entrepreneurship and inducted into the Entrepreneur Of The Year Institute.

Smilor has been married to his entrepreneurial partner in life, Judy, for 34 years, and together they have raised (and been raised by) their two sons, Matthew and Kevin.