Anecdotally Speaking

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087 – Corporate Storytelling—Culture change and change management with Tully Cashman

by Shawn Callahan & Mark Schenk
December 7th 2020
00:42:44
Description

Change in an organisation can be difficult. Listen to hear Tully Cashman divulge key story strategies he has implemented at Cargill, after working with Anecdote.

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welcome to anecdotally speaking a podcast to help you build your business story repertoire. Hi, everyone. I'm Shawn Callahan and everybody I'm Mark Schenk. And today we're continuing our podcast Siris on our corporate storytelling paper. And today, the topic of focus is culture change and change management, which is a great application of story. And our special guest today is Tully Cashman. So tell me, is an Australian based in Singapore and he leads the strategic transformation organizational development for a pack at cargo foods. So tell he's been there for about five years. And over that time, he's worked on transformation for pretty much every function and enterprise four cargo that has a footprint in Asia. And so when it comes to talking about the concept off using story in that culture change and change management application tell is an expert. And so we're really looking forward. Thio Thio having you on the

show, so welcome. Welcome. Yeah, Welcome, Tully. It's great to have you on one side about this conversation. Thank you. Good to be here, So hey, head. Sorry I got a guy for a Mac. Just, uh, got so excited. Hold us back. Eso totally had. I'm really interested. How did you get started in the chain side of it? Been going on for some time. But when did story become part of the equation? Yeah, actually, I think if I look back, it was pretty much around 2000 and eight. I know that any Dudley and he doubted I had just started Thio to get going and I was working for, ah, mining company BHP at the time. And I actually got recommended internally from from a colleague. And you know, Ionel business who was who was using you. And I was actually I've been sent to work on

a coal mine in country New South Wales, got kicked out of the office in in Sydney. And to go and get some really experience in a coal mine And I was needing to implement R S a p. It was a little bit of Ah, it was a bit of a challenge. So I needed quite a few different, you know, tools to be able Thio do that. And so I got recommended storytelling Thio to use and and to your your company actually Thio use on their mind. That's where it all at where it all began. It all began on a carmine in country new South files where it worked, actually, quite brilliantly. There's a big project, wasn't it? Remember, Totally. That was enormous. What BHP were doing back then, weren't they? They were essentially s a p out through the entire world, right? Pretty much a one. It was called once. The pieces were essentially trying Thio implement common process common technology, a new or design, you know, And a different a different way of actually looking at the business. Like looking at how you run a very process

centric business. Um, that is stable, stable, stable operations, you know, saves lives. So that's why I guess the storytelling part of that particular time was really important because it was a very big shift. Um, from how we used to operate much mawr, I guess, Autonomous. A lot of, you know, diverse processes and, you know, minds being very, you know, kind of located in remote locations. They tend thio. They tend to focus on what they want to focus. And so we were trying to bring in a very corporate, you know, company wide. One way of doing everything in the CEO at that time also had a very big vision for that. So that's why I think the storytelling part became really important to be able to explain to them for May, especially to explain in a coal mine. Um, you know why? Ah, corporate, You know ASAP process can help them thio be more stable to save lives. Thio improve profitability and you know, all those kind of things. So that's how it all started and why it was important

that Time e remember that one of the challenges in that was that the mine was going through enormous expansion. And so the mine management, they very much concerned about opening new faces, bending on your equipment, building new infrastructure and getting more people on board. And so they saw the the technology, the one step implementation as a sideshow. And don't bother me with that Tully Just make it happen on I remember when you came back from a meeting with the mine managers after you'd used the story about the 2 20 excavator. Do you remember that one? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yes. So way. It was a fair bit of a challenge. Thio were growing, doubling in size from about 20 million ton to about 40 million ton. It's about about five tons of dirt for every ton of coal. Eso. It's something like 200 million tons of dirt that they were trying Thio, you know, grow to in terms of a two year, so they were focused on getting a 200 million

tons of dirt out of the ground on. We will focus on saying okay if you go from there from where we are today, too. There you need the foundation for that growth. And if you don't, if you don't have that foundation, you'll implode under all the strain of that. So we we want to use stories. Thio provide example that is always actually a 996 excavator, which is a big, expensive piece of equipment. E think that something around $10 million and for every one hour of downtime they lose like 60,000 $60,000 and they had, like, multiple hours of downtime. I'm through an event where, in the maintenance side they had in the warehouse that there's a bit on the excavators, a big like kind of a shovel. Basically, that's digging in the dirt out and has, like, a little flap underneath it for which the, you know, the dirt drops out and that flap was broken and they didn't have spares in the warehouse. But it's supposed to be a critical part on They didn't have that listed. And so it took them two days

to get a spare part and have to expedite it and all this kind of stuff. It costs them money. And they lost, you know, a few $100,000 in in in earnings. And so we use that story too, about to say they will in the one set process. You know what one critical aspect you have to do is identify all of your spare, You know, your critical parts, what the lead time off them off them is and then manage that in the system. And so if you had been doing that process, then you wouldn't have lost, you know, that money. So it was like an example where we're able to really take something that was really for them and, you know, turn it into an example. And when we were having a workshop with the they call that the asset president. You know, we told that story and he His name is Jack Fairy. He was like, That's exactly why we're doing one step, you know, so that for him, we've just been talking about all of the implementation activity. And, you know, what is data migration look like? And what's go live gonna look like? And how do we make

that seamless? And then we were told that particular story and that's when his eyes, when his eyes lead up and said, Okay, that's why we're doing it. Because you could actually say, Here's the money. Here's the time he would have saved and equated to what we were trying to implement. Yeah, that was an interesting one. We had lots of interesting runs on that on that mind. Now you've moved to a totally different industry, Tully and you know, your new company, which had been there for a while now. I mean, it's one of those enormous businesses that no one's ever heard off. Can you tell us a bit about you can tell us a little bit about cargo? What's cargo? What do they dio? Yeah, that's a That's a good complicated question Thio ask. It's actually extremely broad, but essentially food production on trading. So we have things like food ingredients are food, ingredients business. So if you look on the back of a you know kind of food or a bottle of food and you look at all the little ingredient list you see like multi Dextre and souq rice

and corn syrup and all these kind of things away the ingredients with weird names and that's probably come somewhere from from cargo. We have a poultry business that essentially, um, you know, provides a chicken to McDonalds and, uh, you know, KFC or that kind of stuff. We have an animal nutrition business that basically provides animal feed. So poultry feed, pig feed, you know, beef and cattle feed. We have an agricultural supply chain business that basically that was like grains trading. Uh, actually the only Australian wheat board here in in in Australia. So in Australia, it's quite a large, large grain training business, said they captured from the farmers. They store it and then they tried it on. Then there's other. There's other businesses as well as like a medals training business, so they basically do commodity trading for iron or, uh, and and still their own some software companies. There's a whole bunch of it's just a

pretty broad. They do financing. So they provide ah, you know, financing for, you know, for farmers, this kind of stuff. Lots of risk management. Yeah, these kind of things. So it's essentially food production, agriculture, and then the supply chain that would sit around that they also have, like, ocean ocean transportation. So I think something like 30 or 40 ships until, you know, shipping logistics, that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a pretty broad, pretty complicated. About 127 billion in revenue and 100. I think there's about 70 or 80,000 people in Asia alone, about 157,000 globally. So it's pretty big. Yeah, American American business, right? Yeah, that's right. American business from Minneapolis. So in the kind of in the U. S. Was first, you know, forming itself when they were building the rails across across the United States. Then William Cargill, he essentially put grain silos

at those ched growl points help with shipping of food across the company across the country. The 150 years later. Here we are. So got some, right? It's gonna start somewhere. That's right. I remember being in being in Minneapolis. Uh, well, Janu was January 2 years ago, and it was minus minus 10. Something on. And I think the ground versus company. Nice E. Remember asking people pretty much everyone I met? Why would anyone What would humans live here? It's actually interesting there. Like I I about two years ago. Pretty much two years ago. Now I did like a nine month international assignment in in Minneapolis, and it was over the winter, and it got to the minus 40 at that point in time And the yeah, the ice, the roads really ice up. And so when you drive around the corner, the car kind of slides around the corner

. But they're absolutely amazing at how quickly they get out and they'd align the roads and the freeways. You get up in the morning and drive to work at six AM and they've already gone out and and kind of cleared all the freeways and the local roads, and then between buildings, they have, uh I guess I guess what kind of like bridges that have closed in. So I don't have to go outside it all. So you get used to it. You just have 55 extra layers of clothes on. And it's really it's actually a nice city. So it is livable. They told me that minus 40 was that was a good winter. A good winter, right s. You're now sort of doing all these interesting transformations across a cargo. I mean, um, how is the story approach helped you in that process. I mean, where do you see it play out? You know the most effectively if you like. Yeah, for sure. So I think that for us or for me, because I've been doing the storytelling

process for about 10 or 12 years now I found lots and lots of different applications for it beyond just a communication mechanism. So definitely at its core, we use it to help set direction. You know, one really critical aspect of our of our culture drive is to move away from, like, tactical leadership to inspirational leadership. And so, in that culture push, we really used this as a tool to help on the inspirational leadership side. So helping leaders to be able to tell a I get you know, your clarity story pattern to about to set that direction of where we're going, why we're going there, where our people fit and why they matter and where we're coming from and too So we really use that in the past and something happened, you know, story pattern. There's a core part of our our communication narrative so that that definitely helps. But we've seen that is that's just the tip of the iceberg for us, you know, way

. Use that across some really pretty much every single, every single transformation that we do. What we've actually found over doing that over time is that the second And I think the more important or even, you know, more useful use of it is leadership alignment on. I call it leadership alignment by stealth, because I don't tell them that I'm going to be doing it this way. But what we found is that when we get people into a room and actually have to build that or co create that story together and they're actually having to argue for the story or I should say debate and dialogue through the through the story on, they have to tell you tell the story back that they're actually forming a better understanding of what they're doing for themselves, and it's a much less confrontational manner off, just trying to a typical what's what's you know. You came messages, all right, a message. House call format. Yeah, that's

certainly my experience, uh, as well. Whenever I do those strategy story type programs that that is, one of the bigger comes that there's something about the narrative structure that when you get people talking in that way, I suppose it's very specific and it's it's got a really clear cause and effect connection and the people in the room, as you say, they don't argue as much. They're sort of going, you know, the rial course. The thing that changed here for May was this and someone will go. Really, that wasn't the thing. I think what really changed was this thing over here, and, you know, they work it all out, and and then this biggest story starts to emerge out of the group. And as you say great for getting them online, that's for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, e think last year we had a really large safety transformation and we did that exact process where we we had, like the global team for our THS

function, come out to Asia and then the local Asia team on. They didn't really have a lot of connection with each other around understanding. You know how well and how much effort was going into safety in our region versus what they see globally. And so we had them come in and do that session together that we started out. We have saying, Let's just talk about let's identify all the stories in Asia off where we're already achieving what we want to set out to do in this transformation. And we found that was super helpful because then the global team hadn't heard all those stories. We be put them into the little groups with the local team, and they had to actually here and talk about that story. And it was a big I open A, you know, for the global team and then likewise the global team. They had to come up with what their stories were around, how we're already seeing transformation work for cargo as a whole and then the regional team was about to go. Okay, that's what they're doing in Latin America. That's what they're doing in, you know, me or that's what they're doing

in North America. We can learn from that. And so prior to that, there was a little bit of tension, you know, between them around thinking that Asia wasn't doing, you know what we should be doing in terms of pulling out, wait on safety when actually, we were one of the at the forefront off the transformation once they had heard those, you know, local local stories. So in that sense, it's not just about the leadership alignment. It's really about that taming element as well. I don't think I've ever told you this, Tully, but I saw a a terrific active leadership because I was involved in that group up in Singapore. E did that one session, but I saw a terrific active leadership on the day where you know, we had the whole day together, and in the morning everyone started to shuffle into the room and ah, lot of the folk from North America, essentially the you know, the headquarter guys had arrived early and they'd set themselves up around the boardroom table on. And there was a lot these and there was a lot these seats

around the outside, you know, outside of the table. And then the leader, a really tall American guy can't remember his name now. Yep. And he walks in and he just stops at the door, and he sort of goes, You know, guys, this is a really Asia Pacific focus meetings. So we should have our Asia Pacific colleagues at the boardroom table. My colleagues Can you shift to the eso? Interesting, you know? And of course, no one was worried that just got up and moved to the new tales. He's set himself in the outer ring as well. And, um, this fabulous conversation ensued. I thought, Yeah, exactly. There was quite good of him. Yeah, he was really good. And now he did okay. Now just sets the tone. Yeah, go ahead. Top. No, he was very good in terms that he would. He also really enjoyed a fair bit of preparation activity as well. So he because that's one of the other things that we use the storytelling for is we really like to use our connection stories

when new leaders, you know, like like our come to region and he's a, you know, the global VP of environment, health and safety is a really big important role. And a lot of people in the region hadn't met him or really understood him. And so we had worked with him around, you know, how can he use some connection stories? And how can he set some leadership examples, uh, to be able to break that ice and to really helped that the local team feel much more comfortable, you know, especially in our in our culture, sometimes in Asia, they they tend to be the ones that would sit on the outside and not ask the people on the inside, too, to move. So he was really good about, you know, doing that. And that's why I said connection stories are a perfect example. He also did a connection story at the start of that meeting as well. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that's good. I remember. Remember Andrews connection story when he when he started in the regional

role as the regional head of health and safety? You remember that one? Yeah, definitely. Andrew is probably my favorite ever. I say always get. You know, I always get excited when you talk about that particular one. Andrew, Uh, essentially, you know, a long time Cargill employees something like 30 years on. He's based in Singapore, but originally from from from London, and he'd gone through many, you know, kind of very strategic girls ahead of our strategic sourcing and procurement. He he managed to plant, um, in Russia on he became our safety transformation, or hs leader for Asia Pacific. And so he originally had come from also from a commodity trading background. So he for him, he he had never necessarily seen, um, safety, you know, really, on the forefront of things every day in his in his in his trading role. But when he moved into this role, we really wanted to help him to

come and and be able Thio engage the entire Asia Pacific, you know, region around what we're doing and why we're doing it and why safety was so important. And we knew we could put some numbers in front of people you know around say potential, you know, fatalities or potential injuries, you know, serious injuries. That kind of thing, but that's just ALS the logistics and all the incredibly important logistics and all the metrics I But it's not particularly, you know what? We wanted to be set, set the tone. And so we sat down ive Andrew and really did like a lot of kind of, I guess I call it fun questioning with him to really understand. Why did he choose Because he was about Thio actually go into retirement. Why did he choose to not go into retirement and take on this take on this role? And so I know you know, Mark, you're a part of that, that conversation with him as well. And we we found out that actually, the reason he decided to take on this safety transformation was because

unfortunately, when he was a managing director in a plant in Russia, he did have a We did have a fatality where one of the workers was electrocuted. Uh, and he had to be able to go out Thio to that person's family about three or four hours into the really remote part of Russians, and we had a kind of talked about the fact that their son had being their son had been killed. That was a pretty emotional moment for him. And the family didn't want anything to do with with him or with the with the company because it was unavoidable. Possibly, um, you know, fatality. And so he really took that to heart on. Took that really very, very personally. And so when he had been given this opportunity, he wanted to be able to create a legacy for Asia. And, you know, for our businesses where that would never happen, that would never happen again. And that no

, no person's family would ever have to have somebody come out and tell them that their son, you know, their son was gone from what's in a totally avoidable, avoidable accident. And so he used that story instead of coming and saying, He's he is, you know, all the you know, the statistics or, you know, he is the burning platform for why we need Thio be better. He came and talked about you know, that particular connection story and said, and that's what we're doing. That's what we're trying to avoid. Uh, and it was about three or 4000 people that were on that on that session in a town hall as well as dialed in virtually all across Asia. And so I had people afterwards, you know, kind of telling me saying that, you know, that they actually were crying, you know, on the coal and that it was a It was a really powerful thing, Um, for them And it gets remembered still to this day, you know? And we always show the video of the town hall of off

him telling that story. So when we work, if other leaders and say, Here's what we mean by a connection story, here's what it means to be an authentic and inspirational leader. You know, Watch this or, you know, you know, the whole brain a brown vulnerability. Um, you know, push you say, if you if you want to understand what it means to be vulnerable, you know, authentic and inspirational way that has a purpose and can help you to establish, you know, kind of that engagement. Then here, watch this. So it really helps. So we So we use that as well. So you also use it in our skill building activities on. We use that story to help people toe to make the connection off. What does authentic and inspiration or leadership actually mean? Because that term gets used a lot, but you don't necessarily know what it looks like. And I said, Well, he is an example of what that looks like. Sorry, I go, I I also get a bit emotional every time I retail retail. That that experience? Yeah, it's amazing being the rumor would extracting that story

from Andrew and at the end of proceed said, Oh yeah, her story telling you know, very good about and at the end of you Okay, you can t teaching old dogs new tricks. That's right. Hey, that's what a came after and said You can't because he's He's a very charismatic later and he was a really good speaker, and, you know, he's obviously very successful. He's working multiple really senior roles. And so he really felt that, you know, he's already got that nailed because it took me about three or four months of of trying to convince him Thio do it. And so when I finally had worn him down and and he did, then he was like, Oh wow, yeah, you said you can teach an old dog new tricks. What was his reluctance? Tell you 3 to 4 months, You know, I think that he just e think he felt that hey understood communication. He'd done transformation before. I think for him communication was

just going and talking to people one on one. Hey was a very relationship driven person. Eso and and the environment that, you know we're working is very relationship driven. So I think that for him he felt that that's how you communicate. You just go. And you you get get engaged, all your peers and all you're ever seen their executive leaders, you know, you have a chat, you talk through it and then your line on something in the in that meeting room. So I think he his reluctance was Well, that's how it's always worked for May you know, why wouldn't work this time. And he and he has been very successful in big transformation on. So it wasn't also it wasn't also like people were not getting it. It's just that we wanted Thio take the opportunity to really reset the narrative about not why not. Let's all go out and beat people up about the numbers. Let's go and set a an inspirational vision that's so powerful, and that resonates so much

that then that creates the hook, especially in safety. Where it's, you know, it's a couple of seconds in your brain, Um, where you react and you're and you're kind of response that that really will save lives or not. So we thought that this had to be a so much more powerful narrative to have that that brain hook for people. Yeah, I think he's resistance was just It was just that, Yeah, he was a dog at that time. He thought he was the old dog was the old dog. He was pretty awesome. Hey, was very awesome. I would love to see that video one day. Yeah, I'm still trying to dig it out. The, uh, one of the things that sometimes pop up in our conversations between Mark and I is the City Corp story. That was the city cop building story in New York. You know, the building that was perhaps potentially could have fell down and and I remember on that

podcaster Marc giving it a very low score. I was very disappointed, but I had a big smile on my face when I heard through the grapevine that it's a story that you guys use and tell in car Goal is is it still Is it still being told? Or did it have a sort of a shelf life? Well, it had a shelf life. It worked really well for a very specific point of time for our our i t group to use on now we're trying to do some, you know, some team building and to be able to really understand how all the parts that they do fit together, Thio form the foundation s. So it worked really well for that. That particular point in time? Yeah. And for our listeners, if you want to go back to the story, yeah, just search on the on the podcast page for Citi Corp and you'll you'll find this story, but it's a very engineering sort of story, but I think that's that might have been the appeal. Was it exactly, because there were very engineering orientated types. It was in our kind of delivery I t teams and our infrastructure team and that kind of

stuff so they could they could resonate quite strongly. Yeah, excellent excellent. The what are the what are the some of the ways in which thes story, which people find a little bit surprising there? Is there things that you know for you, it seems like it's it's a little bit outside the, you know, the typical way I know the alignment side is one area that not many people see. But is there any other areas that sort of spring to mind for you in terms of how your story? Yeah, for sure. So we also use it a zey as a training thing. It was naturally so in all of our change leadership activity. So we have so much transformation and we have one core part of what we do. Um is having a kind of a curriculum to help people build that change leadership muscle. And so the storytelling for leaders courses is a key part of that, that that curriculum in doing the skill building side as we go through transformation

. But we also use it in that skill building. We use a combination of skill building and then as a way of cascading down, um, the narratives throughout the organization. That's been a a really good example, is well, where we get our our senior leaders into a room and they co create the initial story, and you get that that leadership alignment. But then we then cascaded down to the next level. So then als their direct reports. They have to get into a room a swell, and they get they get the story from the leaders. But then they get to then put their words into it. They get to mind their example stories to be able to support it. They have to tell it to each other a swell. And so they do a basically a half day of some skill building and then a half day off building their version of the story. It still steps into the overall narrative, but it drops down and allows them to put their words around it. And then their direct reports also have to then go through the session

and they get the story and they get to put their words, you know around it, practice it, um, together as well. And so we use it quite extensively as a combination of that skill building alignment, narrow few generation and then engaging multiple levels of the organization into that story. And so even though each level the story gets modified a little bit, there's always a core part of the narrative that allows people to put their words around it. Because what we found is that we could sit in a dark room and come up with the most beautiful story, you know, ever. But when it gets thio, actually, at the you know, the first level you know, line manager, they're going to tell it how they want to tell it. So you might as well give them the construct and the pattern that allow them to have their own fingerprints. You know, on the stories that we found that worked really well. And we've we've deployed that Teoh multiple times over. Probably

, you know, five or 600 people in one, you know, kind of cascading hit all across Asia. The one we did for finance. We was across probably for about 10 different countries on. We did it in about, you know, three different languages. So we really able to kind of harmonized that that common story across the entire region multiple cultures, multiple multiple regions. Eso that. I mean, that's one that people took people by surprise and just how we we utilized it for, like, three or four different things. Um, in that that kind of transformation change. I tell you that point you make about don't don't sweat the details of the words and and try to create the perfect story on such an important thing. I'm going through one. At the moment. It's big pharmaceutical business, and and the senior leaders want those words to be perfect. I have to keep reminding them. This is an aural story. People actually tell it how they bloody well want

exactly. Don't sweat it that way as well. Better they own it. They you know, they you know, it really just digs into their, you know, into the culture. As you say, Yeah, I'm e just I was listening to something this morning. Somebody was arguing for the use of the word nascent. It was the perfect is the perfect word. It's like, yes, but it's not a word that people will say when they're talking, you know, it's not like the actual word, and so they're not going to say it, So you might as well find the word that just listen. Let them figure out. What? How would they say if they were at a barbecue? Yeah, exactly. And we have a lot of really amazing, you know, corporate affairs and communications specialists in our company that do really, you know, fantastic brand work and a really good ah, good at that. And that's when the things that we've worked quite a lot with them around of in this particular context, you want to be able to set set kind of a framework and have a pattern

on as long as there's a core, the core message is correct. Then don't worry too much about getting the you know that the words exactly right or the, you know, on the on the piece of paper that was written on that the You know the word is two millimeters from the left hand side of the off off the column that meets the brand role, because when it gets down to a manufacturing plant in Thailand or you know, a chicken plant in in China or, you know they're not going to be to worry about that, that is going to give it their best go and they enjoy it that way as well, because actually, for them it's a very new experience. You know, being able to get you know it makes comes fun and engaging. They learn a new skill on. Then they also find, especially in Asian, you know, culture. It contend to be a very storytelling orientated culture. Anyway, they don't realize they're actually already telling stories. And so when they get this little pattern

and they understand how that pattern can be associated toe an actual point, they get really super excited. You know about that because it actually just taking what they were already good at and gives them some structure, uh, thio, help them. So, yeah, we've done quite a few few sessions as well, where we use it for one on one coaching to be used for individual development planning, where there's new leaders who have maybe had to have bean previously in a small business in a local country who have been suddenly promoted, and now they have to manage across multiple countries and multiple businesses, they have to engage all different types of stakeholders. Executives from across you know, multiple parts of the company and they need this now is a skill and and they also they start to engage. We use it with customers as well. They use it so many, many different ways that we've we've we've used it, which I always festive, most exciting for me. I always find that when I originally came across that I thought

it was just a ah way of communicating. But actually you could remold it and use it for so many different change and and culture type activities. As I said, from creating a narrative too leadership alignment by stealth through skill building in change, leadership, culture, change, toe individual development, planning activities, you know, helping new leaders to create connection with their people. You know, we've used a lot in team effectiveness as well. My favorite one is that Steve is the Steve Jobs won the rock top, the Rock Tumbler one. We always use that in transformation about how you know the rocks. Maybe dirty and unpolished. They go into the tumble and they bashed around and they make lots of noise and there's grease and there's dust on like, kind of stuff. But at the other end comes to Polish stone. And that's how Steve jobs you know talks about your design and transformation, and so we always to use that at the start of any transformation and say it's going to be a rock tumbler. But that's okay

because they are the other side, you know. He's going to come something that's, you know, quite amazing. So let's talk about on the other side. What do you think that would be? And they kind of imagine they imagine the the the I guess the future or the vision of what comes out the other side of the rock tumbler. And that becomes a part of the clarity story pattern in terms of the you know, the why, you know, in order to. So we we combine the stories as well. So we use things like that. Steve Jobs, Rock, Tumbler story to help them thio, you know, kind of visualized. And so I can imagine those police diamonds or the police rocks. Now let's go to the story the clarity, story pattern and talk about the in order to So what would that look like? So we connect all the stories together or connected different different aspects of it together as well. Yeah, I love it. it's I mean, Mark and I and and the guys here at the Anecdote team have been talking about this idea of, you know, story powered organizations than that

it's mawr than than the storytelling. You know that it's the story listening. There's this story triggering. There's there's a whole suite of different things you can do and and that's really what that corporate storytelling papers all about. It's trying to introduce people to the fact that hey, guys, you're missing out on so much if you're just teaching people how to tell stories, right? Yeah, exactly. So you connections. That's exactly eso I'm you know, they set of conversations that we're having is just trying to get people to think more broadly about narrative and how it really works in companies you know, in all different sizes and shapes. So that za a terrific example. It's a good reminder of the rock tumblers story. I have to use that more often. Yeah, I've used that one so many times. Or the damn it. Damn it, Sam. It one which is, you know, the employees and the Heathrow Airport. And he goes often, you know, explores all for himself on the technology and comes up really great automation

. So we were going through. A huge amount of transformation is well in now finance area where, you know, trying to transition to a digital finance. But they're also trying to transition their mindset. Thio don't expect the company to come and train you in power bi and tableau and all these kind of things. You know, every day you can go to YouTube or you could go to all these places and learn it for yourself and actually drive your own, um, development and drive your own expertise and be as good at it. And so that was, you know, quite difficult in an organization that was used. Thio. Let's get into a training room and we'll get trained on power. Bi I and you will be a community of practice and they'll be all super users that will help you. And so we used that that Damn it, Sam. It story a za wire saying who? How can we be summit, you know, can you How can you be summit? You know, there's an example. And so we use that when we're rolling out out, you know, kind of course, air and degreed and all these digital learning to say

, you know, be Samit, Right? So it was quite that was quite a fun story. We've used as well, that was everyone. We've used the footstool one a swell the I love that one as well. The soccer one about the English, you know, soccer coach, going to Brazil and spending all that time and finding out about, you know, foot salon, bringing that best practice back. And I think he's team under 14 team, maybe from memory, then bait, like a national level team. And so we used that one as well that we have this thing called bringing the outside in. And so we talked about how do you bring the outside in but Robert and say, Let's bring the outside. And we use that footstool story about going and finding best practices from elsewhere and then bringing them into our company and, you know, getting even better. So we use that one a lot of Well, sorry. I get a bit excited when I start remembering all the stories that we've your podcast. Yeah. So these are all these are all from the podcast listeners. So you just search through those titles

that Tully's years and you'll you'll find those stories in, uh, in, Uh, I think we've done over 80 stories now, haven't we Mark something like that? Yeah. There's a lot in there now. Yeah. Every meeting I going, I scroll through E can. Which one could I possibly used in this particular scenario? Then there's also time. So you maybe you send us an email going. I need I haven't got the right story for this. And, uh, and I'm thinking one. Yeah, that's the premium service. The premium service. Best customers. Yeah, well, I remember asking about that one for design thinking. Yeah. So we probably should, uh, wrap things up. This is being fabulous. Talking to you about how How you doing this story? Working cargo, Tully eyes. There. Any last questions or thoughts that you wanna add? Mark, I know you. Every time I try to wrap things up, marks looking at me like wrap it up, I've got another question asked

. We're not done yet. Now. I'm good, but I really wanna thank tally for being on the show. And just for, you know, the opportunity to work together over an extended period because it, uh it's been fantastic. I feel that it's really made a difference so well done to you for taking on and good luck for the next 13 days of quarantine. I'll do a lot of story mining and quarantine, but they might not be. They might not be great stories. Eyes that bionic Netflix. That's right. Yeah, assuming big Netflix binge. So if my manager here's this here's this podcast and I'm not watching Netflix River. I'm doing all my work. Absolutely, absolutely Well, look, thanks everyone for for listening to another episode off, anecdotally speaking. And yeah, please tune in next week for another episode of how to put your stories toe work. Bye. For now, anecdotally

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087 – Corporate Storytelling—Culture change and change management with Tully Cashman
087 – Corporate Storytelling—Culture change and change management with Tully Cashman
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