True Story

Ty Montague: That's actually quite a comprehensive question although it seems very simple. Honestly, one of the reasons that I wrote the book is that story tends to be a fairly loaded word in business; it means different things to different people. Some people view story as something that is about entertainment; some people think about story as something that is childlike and not really worthy of discussion in business. My view is that there is nothing more serious to human beings than story – the stories of who we are and where we come from are in fact the most important things to us. The story of, for instance, the country that we come from, the UK... or the story of America, is something that all of us at some level experience on a daily basis; it's a narrative that we buy into and that we live and experience in a very personal and interactive way every day.

And the religious stories, the story in the Bible, the story in the Torah, the story in the Koran, these are stories that throughout human history more people have laid down their lives defending their versions of these stories than for any other reason in all of human history. So, far from being something that is light and fluffy, story is profoundly important to human beings and it is profoundly important that business people understand the power of story and begin to engage with it.

That was one of the reasons that I wrote the book. It was to really clarify my point of view on story and to make the case that it is a profoundly important thing for all businesses, and this includes businesses of any size, from startups to multinational corporations.

Rachel Salaman: I mentioned your key idea of "story doing." So what is this exactly and why is it better in your view than storytelling?

Ty Montague: I guess fundamentally this is an idea that emerged in my mind over time. I spent 20 years in the advertising business helping companies tell their stories, usually through the medium of paid advertising, through 30 and 60 second commercials, and about ten years ago I began to notice that there was a new kind of company in the world. It was a company that appeared to have a core narrative but was building a large business, in some cases massive business using almost no paid media at all to convey this narrative. And I remember thinking that Starbucks was an early example and it always made me scratch my head that Starbucks was such an incredibly successful business and yet they did almost no advertising at all.

And as I began to delve into the qualities of these companies, I began to first of all notice that there were more of them and I became curious about the attributes that separated them from storytelling businesses. So storytelling businesses convey their narrative – they settle on a narrative but they convey it through advertising generally, through communication. Story doing businesses have a narrative but they convey it through action, and in the networked world – in a world where everyone is connected to everyone else through the Internet – action turns out to be a much more efficient medium for communicating your narrative.

First of all, it's impossible to do a story that you don't believe in because you're actually acting on it and so authenticity is fundamental – you can't tell one story and do another. If you're doing your story it's because you actually live it authentically.

But in a storytelling company, story is the domain of the marketing department, so often you will find that the top management of the company – the management team – really doesn't understand the story of their own business. The marketing department is in charge of conveying the story of the products and services that the company makes, and because the marketing department is often only empowered to convey that story through advertising, you see that being the primary means of conveyance.

In story doing companies, the story is the domain of the whole management team, so this is everyone in the business including the CEO who buys into and conveys the story of the business through every action that they take. Apple is a great example of this; Steve Jobs is one of the rare CEOs who clearly understood the narrative of Apple and used the entire company to convey that narrative.

Rachel Salaman: Another term that runs throughout your book is "metastory." So, can you explain that and how it fits with story doing?

Ty Montague: Sure. Metastory is really just a term that I latched onto – I didn't coin it – I latched onto it because I was looking for a term to help make the distinction between a story that is conveyed through narrative and a story that is conveyed through action, and metastory is the story of your story – that's essentially the dictionary definition of metastory.

And metastory is the story that is conveyed through every action that you take and every human being. Every individual has a metastory and every company has a metastory. It is the story that people assemble in their own mind by observing every action that you take; it's literally the story of you and it's the story that a friend would tell someone if they were trying to tell the story of you, and it's the story that they have assembled in their own mind based on all of the actions that you've taken in your life.

And this is true of companies as well: companies that have a narrative that they're telling that differs from the story that they are doing often suffer. So, for instance, a great example of a company that had a story that they were telling that was completely different from the story that they were doing is BP.

The story that BP was telling was "We are beyond petroleum," and they wanted to convince the world that they were all about renewable energy and they were embracing a new energy future, that they were moving literally beyond petroleum, and meanwhile the story that they were actually doing was deep well drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and as we learned subsequently not enough attention was paid to what would happen if something went wrong, and ultimately BP paid the price for telling one story and doing another. People concluded that they were being untruthful in the story that they were telling and BP was punished I think for that in the court of public opinion. People really felt betrayed when BP had the problem that they had in the Gulf of Mexico.

Rachel Salaman: Picking up on your idea, you mentioned that everyone has a metastory and I thought it was interesting in the book, you say I can't advance my metastory with a product that has no discernible story itself. Could you just explain what you meant when you wrote that?

Ty Montague: Sure. We live in a world of abundance and obviously that's a great thing, but if you are a marketer of a product it means that you have to find a way to differentiate yourself. And so, put another way, in a world where there are 10,000 different little mechanisms that I can use to open a can, there are lots of different can openers in the world.

A can opener is a can opener is a can opener, until it's a can opener that was designed by Michael Graves and I know is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, so that's a can opener that comes with a narrative associated with it and because this can opener comes with a narrative, it's something that I can tell people about; it's why I bought this object as opposed to any other version of the 9,999 other ways that I might open a can. And that gives that can opener value; it means that that can opener is different from all the other can openers, even if they all open cans perfectly well.

So the narrative that an object comes with transcends the functionality and allows you to advance your own personal story through the narrative that comes with that object, and people now use all of the objects in their life as part of that narrative. The objects in our life become then the language that we use to convey our own personal narrative, and that is incredibly valuable to human beings and it is something we are willing to pay a premium for.

Rachel Salaman: So, in your view, do you think this idea could ever be taken too far? How much of a story does a product like an office chair or a ream of paper need? You mentioned a can opener, but does this apply to all products?

Ty Montague: Well, I believe it can apply to all products. It really comes down the manufacturer. My question back would be if your office chair or your ream of paper doesn't come with a story, how is it that you expect me to choose yours over someone else's? If you want to try to compete in a commoditized category, your margins are going to get driven to almost zero. Your only chance of creating some competitive advantage and creating the ability to build margin into your business and to charge more for your product is to have it come with a truly compelling narrative – a story that people want to tell all of their friends about your office chair or about this ream of paper.

This ream of paper came from trees that were grown in a sustainable way, and therefore I choose this ream of paper over all of the other reams of paper in the world because I am the kind of person who cares about the future of the environment and the future of my children and your children, and if you're that kind of person you should choose this ream of paper as well. That is a powerful competitive advantage if you're in the paper business.

Rachel Salaman: In your book you present four truths as the foundation of story doing, and these are the participants, the protagonist, the stage and the quest. So who needs to think about this framework? Is it every employee in the company or just the managers or even just the marketing department?

Ty Montague: The questions that I wanted to answer by writing the book are if you are an agent of change; if you fundamentally find yourself working in, as most people do today, working in a storytelling company that needs to begin to transform itself into more of a story doing company, what is the process that you need to use in order to do that? Who needs to be involved in that process? How long does that process take and how do you know when you're done?

In the book I go into those four truths and those are steps along the way. That's part of the process that you need to go to, to get to your metastory, but fundamentally no one outside of the agent of change, the person who is driving the process and the top management of the company need to buy into the four truths. Ultimately though, the metastory and understanding how to use the metastory, once you arrive at it, is something that needs to be broadly understood and adopted inside the company, and so getting people really comfortable with it and bought into it is an important part of the process, but the technical tools of the four truths are not something that need to be broadly disseminated or understood.

Rachel Salaman: Your book is aimed at people who are those agents of change as you mentioned, so let's talk a little bit about these four truths. Starting with the first one – the participants – what are the key things people need to know about that?

Ty Montague: In business today, it's quite common to hear terms like "consumer" or in some cases, "audience," and those place people in I would say a passive or receptive mode – and ultimately we chose the term "participants" because fundamentally we believe that the best story doing companies today actually create a narrative that people can get involved in personally – they have an overarching quest that they are inviting people to come along on and to participate in.

And so the participants in your narrative are much broader than just the people who might ultimately buy your products. Your employees, for instance, are key participants in the narrative of your story. Any companies that you partner with as a part of your supply chain or as a part of your business ecosystem are key participants in your narrative, and ultimately then the people who buy your product are also key participants because ultimately what you want them to be doing is evangelizing for you to all of their friends, and if you create a compelling enough narrative they will in fact do that, they will begin to take your narrative, internalize it and begin to then evangelize for you, and so that's why we chose that particular term.

Rachel Salaman: What about the protagonist, which is the second truth? Could you perhaps use an example to explain your ideas about that?

Ty Montague: The protagonist is obviously the star of the story, and that's how we ask people to think about it when they think about the narrative of their company. And any good narrative needs a few things and this is just universal to all storytelling – this isn't necessarily only true of business. A good narrative needs an appealing protagonist that has a quest that the participants can relate to; that the protagonist needs to have a need that the participants in the story can actually empathize with, and there also needs to be a clearly defined enemy: you need to understand what the protagonist is for, but you also need to understand who the protagonist is struggling against. And if you have those elements in a story, that becomes a very compelling formula for people; people really... if they encounter a company that clearly has a quest that is inspiring, it's a company that is trying to do something meaningful in the world, to make change on behalf of people or making the world better in some compelling way, and it's clear that that company is struggling against a clear set of either enemies or an enemy.

People will rally to that company's cause. That's how you begin to define the character of the protagonist – it's really defining that need clearly, really defining where it is that we want to go as a company and then making sure that people understand what we're for and what we're against, that becomes then a character that people want to rally around and support.

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Rachel Salaman: The third truth is the stage. So, how does that idea fit into what you've already told us?

Ty Montague: We call it "the truth about the stage" because this is really the platform that your story will play out on. This is the stage in the theater, and we use that term because in order to really understand where you need to go as a business to define your own metastory. You need to understand things about the environment in which your story is going to play out. You need to understand your competitive environment; you need to understand what's going on in technology and in culture; you need to understand what's going on with your participants, what's going on with the people who ultimately you want to have buy your product, what are the things that they are trying to accomplish in their lives. And so, by breaking the problem down into the four truths, we ask people to really take a comprehensive look at the entire environment, and ultimately the stage is about the external environment. Everything outside the company that is going to affect the trajectory of the narrative.

Rachel Salaman: Now you mentioned the quest earlier and this is the fourth truth, can you talk a bit more about that?

Ty Montague: I would say it's the most important truth. The quest is ultimately the engine of any company: the quest... great story doing companies have a quest that they're on that transcends commercial success.

I'll give you some examples. JetBlue is an airline in the States that was launched with a very simple quest: their quest was to bring humanity back to air travel and that is not something that they ever talked about externally but it is the overarching mission that the airline has been on since it was founded, and David Neelerman then used that to say OK, if our quest is to bring humanity back to air travel that has to infuse every aspect of the JetBlue experience, so instead of first class and economy we're going to have one class of service throughout the airplane. Instead of cloth seats in economy and leather seats in first class we're going to have leather seats throughout the airplane. We're going to put satellite television at every seat, which at the time that the airline launched – that's now fairly commonplace today but that was a massive innovation at the time that JetBlue adopted that technology. We're going to make unlimited amounts of free snacks available throughout the airplane.

So, everything about the experience in JetBlue is designed to deliver on that overarching quest, and in order to be a story doer you have to have a quest. It's the thing that most storytelling companies are missing. They have commercial targets but they don't have a target that transcends commercial success – something that really defines the positive change that they're trying to make in the world.

Rachel Salaman: How different would you say a quest was to a mission?

Ty Montague: The only distinction that I would make is that just because the word "mission" has been used so much it turns into a mission statement that gets carved into a piece of marble and stuck to a wall somewhere and ignored, and the most important thing is that the quest and the metastory in your company be used actively within the business as tools every day.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned action there, and a key part of your book is about building an action map based on the action quad. That's something that appears in your book, with four elements which are offer, identity, capabilities, and culture. So, how do people get from their four truths to a workable action map?

Ty Montague: There are sort of two key points in here. First of all, when I use the term "metastory" it's because as I said I believe that every company needs to have a narrative that they're enacting throughout the business. So, instead of thinking of a story that you tell through advertising, your metastory is a story that you enact throughout the business and that's why in the action quad, that's just another tool to force comprehensive thinking about the metastory.

When we say "offer," how is the metastory impacting the way that you design and build your products? How is your metastory being expressed through the services or the software and apps that you create or the physical environment of your stores if you are a retailer? How are you enacting your story in the physical things that you make or the experiences that people have with your business?

In "capabilities," how is your metastory being expressed in terms of the capabilities that you have as a business and if you need to express your metastory in a particular way and it turns out that you need access to capital or you need to make a partnership with another company or you need to restructure yourself or you need to look at your internal processes, are you in fact thinking that through and making sure that you are making your metastory true through the capabilities that you have?

And a close cousin to that is "culture." How is your metastory being expressed internally? Do your employees sort of roll their eyes and get back to their day job when you talk about the mission that you're on as a company, or do they actually feel that their rewards and incentives are aligned with the narrative that you are trying to express in the world? Are you rewarding people and incentivizing people to really express the narrative that you're trying to create in the world, and are you celebrating those actions when they occur in your culture? Are you making sure that your intention is aligned with your actions internally?

And "identity," which is the place where a story is most often expressed is sort of the last thing you should be thinking about, but it's still important. Is your corporate identity in line with your metastory? Are your communications in line? Is your PR team aligned with your metastory and are you using social media to express it?

And so it's really just a tool to force comprehensive thinking about making sure that your metastory is being used actively in every area of your business, not just in the communications quadrant of your business. And so what you want to do, as you go through that process? And we generally do this through workshops: we will take the metastory out to the various groups inside the company who are in charge of expressing the metastory and we'll workshop the metastory with them and say, so if our quest is to bring humanity back to air travel, or in Target's case, I would say their quest is to democratize style, they are trying to make good design available to the masses, would be the Target quest.

If that is our quest, what are the actions that we are going to take that make that story true in the world, because if Target did nothing more than just do advertising that says hey, we're bringing great style to the world but didn't change anything about the way the stores were designed or the products that they offered in the stores were designed there would be a massive disconnect and people wouldn't fundamentally believe it. And so one of the iconic actions that Target took early on to make that story true was to begin to offer a line of products that were designed by a famous designer called Michael Graves, and the Target Michael Graves partnership was the first iconic action that really made the Target quest of democratizing style real in the world, and so the question is what are the iconic actions that you are going to take and it shouldn't be very many: one, two, three at most. What are the iconic actions that you are going to take that are going to make your narrative real to people in the world?

Rachel Salaman: One of the most illuminating stories in the book is about Kellogg's, the breakfast cereal maker, and it shows how off story products can actually damage a company's performance. Could you briefly explain how that worked for Kellogg's?

Ty Montague: Yes, I think one of the most challenging things about running a big company that has a long history is staying on course. Many companies start with a very compelling metastory at their core and then grow over time, and as subsequent management changes take place, as the founders pass on or hand the business off to the next generation or generations of management, it's quite easy to lose sight of the original metastory.

Kellogg's is a great example of that. Kellogg's really began as a health and wellness spa in Battle Creek, Michigan, and the cornflakes business was a side business that resulted from their goal; their quest of providing not only a healthy lifestyle but a healthy diet as a part of a holistic healthy lifestyle including exercise and all kinds of exotic health treatments.

The cornflakes business grew very rapidly to dominate the business of the spa itself but as long as the Kelloggs brothers themselves were still alive, the Kellogg's company stayed true to its metastory of health and wellness, and so they didn't add a lot of sugar to their cereals; they were also constantly advocating cereal as part of an overall healthy lifestyle, but as subsequent management changes took place, the goal of the company became over time to sell the maximum amount of cereal and not to worry about ultimately what the founding principles of the company were, and the company discovered that they could sell more cereal to more people if they added unhealthy ingredients, and so over time the product strategy shifted away from the metastory and they began to create not only cereals that were less than healthy, but they also began to target children.

So they would up by accident changing the way culture thought about cereal and cereal became, instead of a holistic part of a healthy adult diet, cereal became children's food that was sugary and that began to ultimately damage their business. They got to a point where adults – grownups – began to reject the idea of eating cereal and it was only through really taking a hard look at that and reorienting the business in the late '80s and early '90s that they returned to their original metastory of health eating, and that began to then regrow the cereal business to adults.

And it's a great example of the power that a metastory has to define the course of a business, and it also is a great example of rediscovering, as many companies can, a metastory. A metastory really when you have one doesn't go away; it often will sort of hibernate at the core of a business and it can be unearthed and re-energized so long as you're willing to pay attention to it.

Rachel Salaman: Well, we've covered a lot of ground in this conversation. So, what small steps could someone take tomorrow if they wanted to start moving from storytelling to story doing?

Ty Montague: I would encourage people to go and have a look at a website that we've created called storydoing.com, which is a public project that we have started to really measure the benefits of being a story doing company. And at that website we articulate the six questions that you need to ask yourself to determine where you are on the path to becoming a story doer.

So first question is, do you have a story? Second question is, does that story define an ambition beyond commercial aspiration? In other words, do you have a quest? Three: is that story understood and cared about the entire company? Fourth question is, is the story being used to drive action throughout the company? Fifth is have you defined a few iconic transformative actions to focus on, to express that story, and then the last question is, are people outside the company engaging with them, participating in that story?

And if you ask yourself those six questions about your business I think you will find that your business falls somewhere along that trajectory. If you can answer all six of those positively you are already a world-class story doing company and you don't need to worry about it, but most companies will find that they are not able to answer all of those questions positively, and so I would encourage people to ask themselves those six questions and figure out where they fit along that continuum and then begin to engage with the changes they need to make as a business in order to become better at answering that question positively.

Rachel Salaman: Ty Montague, thanks very much for joining us.

Ty Montague: Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Ty's book again is "True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business." The website he mentioned is storydoing.com and you can find out more about Ty and his work at tymontague.com and co:collective.com I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.