讀一本書:True Story(節選3)

TRUE STORY: HOW TO COMBINE STORY AND ACTION TO
TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS by Ty Montague (ZT)


Fanatical loyalty and devotion like this can have obvious
quantitative business benefits, like greater pricing power, lower
salary requirements for staff retention, and higher employee morale.
There is a qualitative difference to storydoing companies as
well--harder to quantify, maybe, but just as meaningful for the
customers and employees who experience it: storydoing companies have
a feeling of authenticity and humanity about them that has been lost
in many traditional companies today. It makes them magnetic.

There are multiple benefits available to companies that take the
time to learn the principles of storydoing, and your company can be
one of them. Storydoing can be learned. And once learned, it can
be replicated and spread from one small division inside a company to
the rest of the enterprise. That's what this book is about.

If you are a person responsible for growing a business today,
whether it is a large multinational or a tiny card-table-and-
folding-chair start-up, this book is meant to help you take positive
action. Rather than be yet another voice cursing the darkness or
making breathless predictions about what's going to happen "next,"
this book was created to light a modest candle--to lay out in plain
terms a rational and repeatable process to uncover and understand
the authentic story of your business, and to create a series of
linked actions that tell your story far more effectively than any ad
campaign alone ever could. It is designed to be a practical guide
for transforming a "storytelling" company into a more modern
"storydoing" company.

In this book you will learn about a powerful business tool for
combining story and action to create growth called your
"metastory." Your metastory, once you know it, will act as a
headlamp, illuminating the growth pathway for your business. And it
will function as a yardstick, allowing you to assess current and
future business actions and prioritize them: what to start doing,
what to stop doing, and what to do more of. In a storydoing company,
your metastory and your growth strategy are actually one and the
same.


Metastory: A Definition

When most people think about a story, they think about a narrative
like "Jack and Jill went up the hill." Or maybe "At BP, we are
moving Beyond Petroleum." These are conventional stories that are
"told" or communicated through a narrative of some sort--a book or
a song or an advertisement. Most of us have been taught that there
are two basic kinds of story: fiction and nonfiction.

Metastory is actually a third kind of story. Metastory is a story
that is "told through action. It" is not a story that you "say,"
it's a story that you "do." Every individual has one. You have one.
And every company has one, too.

Your personal metastory is the story you create through every action
that you take, every purchase that you make, every choice that you
act on, every day, for your entire life: Your metastory is your
"story of you"--the story that emerges in the minds of others as
they see you and your choices. If your name is Sarah and you are
unfailingly honest, pay attention to fashion trends, eat only
vegetables, and tell a lot of funny jokes, your personal metastory
might be "Sarah, the honest and stylish vegetarian comedian." This
is the truth of you as experienced by others. Your metastory is not
communication or spin. It is the observed truth of you that emerges
from the sum total of all of your actions. It is the story of you
that a friend would tell if a complete stranger asked about you. It
is your "true story"--the story that people use to decide what they
think of you, whether they want to befriend you, emulate you, ignore
you, or scorn you.


Why Does Metastory Matter in Business?

All companies have a metastory, too. Your company's metastory is the
story that emerges in the minds of your customers and potential
customers, noncustomers, employees, shareholders, and the press as
they observe and experience every action your company takes. Every
interaction they have with your products or services--with your
customer service, with your investor relations, with your press
coverage, with your advertising--goes into the story in their minds.
Understanding your metastory is the first step to becoming a
storydoing company.

The reason this is so important is that ordinary people are already
innate storydoers themselves. They use the story of your brand or
business to tell part of their own personal metastory. Put another
way, people don't buy products; they take actions that help advance
their own personal metastory, and sometimes buying and using your
product is one of those actions. As we grow up, all of us learn to
manage our own metastory through our actions--the car we drive, the
clothes we wear, the laptop we use. All of these choices are
components that we know people around us will use to piece our
metastory together. So as consumers we are careful to purchase
products that say exactly the right thing about us. If I am thirsty,
I have a vast constellation of beverages to choose from. If I pick
Red Bull, it is because, in addition to quenching my thirst and
waking me up (the functional baseline), I want to signal my
allegiance to the Red Bull tribe. I might never BASE jump off a
Himalayan peak, but by drinking Red Bull I let the world know that I
might--and that I believe in and support people who definitely
"would."

And this is why for your company, a clearly defined metastory is one
of the most powerful tools to get your customers to understand what
your product means, and therefore why they should buy it. In that
sense, your metastory defines what you wish to "become." Once you
know it, you will be able to consciously use your metastory to guide
future business actions--what new products to launch, how those
products should look and feel and what to call them, whom to hire,
how to compensate and motivate employees, what acquisitions or
divestitures to make (or not make). Your metastory is an
incredibly powerful and useful business tool.

In this book, you will learn how a metastory, once discovered, can
be managed, changed, and evolved to make your business and brand
more meaningful and therefore more useful to the greatest number of
people for advancing their own metastories. You will learn through
tangible examples how businesses that understand their metastories
today are telling those stories by creating products and services
that market themselves with little or no paid media expenditure. And
most importantly, you will learn a rational and repeatable framework
and process for discovering your company's authentic metastory and
how to translate that story into action.