Story

Enterprise Elements | Identity

Story

The way we make sense of our enterprise and communicate to people what it does.

Description

An enterprise story is a narrative with our co-creators as protagonists, the enterprise as the setting, the ecosystem as context, and the co-creators' activities as actions. Stories help us make sense of complex ideas, concepts and situations and share that sense with other people. Stories about past or future events can illustrate shared values, assumptions and beliefs and what people can expect when interacting with an enterprise. People actively construct their own mental imagery and meaning when listening to stories. This causes the imagery and meanings to be more closely interwoven with people's internal narratives about the world.

Creating a story is a co-creative process, bringing together a group of stakeholders and helping them tell the story from their own perspectives. Such a story should not just describe what happened or will happen but also convey – as much as possible – why that matters and what it means to the protagonists in the story.

Story Map

Also known as Storyboard.

Examples

• An enterprise has its roots in manual manufacturing before moving on to be a leader in automated production systems.
• Another enterprise in the financial industry acquired a scaling startup to add digital customer interaction capabilities.
• Yet another enterprise in the food industry is all about sustainable and eco-friendly production and explains this to *customers on their packaging.

Use

• Illustrate identity and purpose.
• Verbalise your mission statement as a story.
• Show how identity, brand and experience determine activities and outcomes.
• Help people understand why we do what we do and how.
• Use positive, 'heroic' stories to invite others to become part of the enterprise.

Base element

• story is an activity

Related

• organisation authors story
• brand evokes story
• story contextualises purpose
• content conveys story

Suggested Labels

• promotional, transactional, transactional (tag)
• history, present, vision (tag)
• perception (metric)