How Does Your Organization Tell its Story to Employees?

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Dahlberg on January 21, 2012 at 10:27pm

I would like to illustrate my reply through a short stroy about one man who changed an entie corporate story / culture  of a Fortune 500 company from the bottom up and then the top down.

Bill Dahlberg started as a meter reader for Georgia Power one of the largest power companies in the nation. He climbed his way to the position of President of the company through many years of hard work and additional night school all while raising a family. He was later promoted to Chairman of the Board of the parent company and was elected to  the BOD of several other major companies prior to moving on to retirement.

Prior to a business deal,  I never really knew much about his career however;  I would later learn more about him which would forever change how I looked at the impact one employe could have.  I would also get a lesson as to how that strory could affect the company's brand and  its emploees for many years to come.

While working as a strategic vendor role with Southern Company (the parent company to GA Power and its other energy companeis) , I was able to meet thousands of the employees who had worked under Mr. Dahlberg's direction and management. In my first few meetings I thought they all worked directly with him based on the conviction or their stories. Their up close almost personal experiences with Bill Dahlberg was repeated  time after time on into the thousands of employees . Not one person seemed remotely unhappy, much less disgruntled. In fact, each one had only possitive comments.

O.K I can almost hear some of the skeptical  thoughts out loud. Maybe you are thinking  it was because we shared the same uncommon last name and they were afraid to express anything negative. I have to admint we thought the same thing at first. That was until we desided we would not mention my last name any more around those who had not already heard it. We were amazed that the same type discussions continued one employee after another. They could not say enough good things about the company, the management and how Bill Dahlberg created that culture and passed the torch to the next generation of managers.

What I found was that not only did Bill go out of his way to remember every employee he met, he also could recall something about almost every one of them. Where they worked ten years before, the names of their kids, or something about their previous conversation seemed to be common things they would recite that he remembered about them many years later. But it didn't end there; he seemed to realize the important role that the employees could play in the company's brand  through strtegic storystelling based on true events. I do not know whether he had actually planned it or if it was simply part of his unique management DNA. 

Bill was known to dirve on to a stage full of employees riding a Harley and dressed in full biker's leather or dawn a gorilla suite and jump up and down on the board room conference table. All to get a point across in a way that shouted, "Relax!"

Here was a man who spent most of his life moving from the bottom of the ladder up  so that he could spent a few years passing on the hope from the top down. He was able to impact the entire company and that experience has lasted many years beyond his stay.

Southern Company and its many energy companies was later voted several times as one of the "best places to work."

What I learned from the experiences others had with this one man, is that the strategic part of the corporate storytelling starts with each individule employee understanding their role from the bottom up and the management team doing everything in their power to create that best enviroment from the top down.

Strategic storystlling starts with creating a top down managed enviroment which encourages sucess from the bottom up. This will create the stories which take root on their own and continue beyond the term of its existing managers because they are based on actual facts and not strories which were planned or manipulated.

Strategic stroytelling starts with management's ability to go beyond communication and get envolved  from the top to the bottom.

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Permalink Reply by Talent Management Editor on January 23, 2012 at 9:48am

Thanks, Jeff. I think that is a great example!

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