This week I had the pleasure of working with a new distribution group. While their location and company name shouldn’t be disclosed due to confidentiality concerns, this much can be said:
This group has been on the front line of the financial meltdown.
Their company has suffered as much brand tarnish as any during this crisis.
They are a subsidiary of one of the 1100 pound gorillas indicted for being a linchpin of the meltdown.
The week before I arrived 750 coworkers were laid off.
My role was to deliver a talk entitled Memorability Through Adversity. In addition the group was to engage in a training segment entitled So You Think You Can Dance Wholesale.
During the preparation for the engagement it became apparent that the recently named leader of this team needed to craft the New Core Story. The Core Story represents the 30,000 foot story about ‘why the company’. It would become the repeatable message that the entire team could tell to clients, and prospects.
This became necessary because the old story was apparently dead. Torn to shreds by the financial meltdown – or was it?
In order to get to the new story I thought a look at the old story was in order. I asked the team to list, and whiteboard, all of the attributes of the ‘old company’ that made for such a compelling proposition for their clients.
For over thirty minutes we carefully chronicled the great attributes of the old story.
As the boss listed each one I probed about why the particular attribute was appealing, testing to make sure that the majority of the 35 participants were in agreement.
After we had filled five flip chart sheets with old story bullet points it was time to begin crafting the new story.
We first went through and discarded each attribute that was no longer ‘new story’ appropriate.
For example the old story carried a strong message about the financial strength of the parent company; a fact that was no longer true.
The exercise revealed that 70% of the old story bullets applied to the new story.
Further, there was group acknowledgment that they had been stuck in a serious rut. They were spending too much time focusing on the challenges created by the parent and not enough time telling their own story.
Over the course of 90 minutes the tempo in the room increased, the outlook brightened and I watched people get reinvigorated.
Management committed to getting the New Core Story out for all to use within a week.
Is your firm dealing with similar challenges? Try this exercise, or have me come in and facilitate it. Either way it will have tremendous results.
