The Airport Story Dispenser
I was walking through the Evans terminal of Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan airport (DTW), as I am want to do during college football season (Go Blue!). I been to DTW hundreds of times before, so I go about my set routine preparing for my flight without too much surprise.
This past Labor Day, I was strolling along with my wife in the Evans terminal after having made our way through Security, mindlessly headed toward our flight gate when I spot something new off to the side.
Being the inquisitive person that I am, I make a bee line toward this new contraption. Alas, this device placed inconspicuously in the terminal concourse is a short story dispenser.
The short story dispenser I encountered at the Evans Terminal at DTW airport
Many questions and comments popped into my head:
This is really different!
This dispenser seems to be much more beneficial to society than the lottery ticket and junk food machines that are also present in the airport!
Does anyone actually know this exists?
Does anyone actually ask the machine to dispense a story for them?
Are the stories any good?
Being the professional that I am, focused on leadership best practices and organizational change, my mind then wandered to what it would be like to have organizational story dispensers located throughout your enterprise, always available to share those key stories and themes that drive your company's ethos, ways of working, and customer value.
What stories would such a dispenser in your organization provide on-demand?
Would it serve one of the founding stories for your organization?
Would it share examples of key customer interactions and impacts?
Would it talk about a historic failure that the organization turned into an enduring lesson that has driven current and future organizational success?
Where would you want to place them throughout your offices?
How would you get these stories in front of any remote employees who don't work in one of your offices?
How do you keep the content fresh so that it continues to resonate with employees and so they continue to visit the story dispenser?
How would you adapt your stories for different groups within your organization?
Would you allow customers to use the story dispenser?
I could go on with additional questions (Who writes the stories? Do you allow people to suggest new stories?, etc.), but I am not sure how many organizations would place actual story dispensers throughout their organization.
What I would like to see is organizational leaders thinking of themselves as story dispensers. Story-telling is an important job of any leader. Stories are a powerful method for conveying purpose, inspiration, and wisdom. Humans have been using stories to convey guidance, societal norms, and best practices for millennia. The most effective leaders have collected a series of stories they can share to inspire action, express values, and encourage organizational collaboration.
I am not, of course, suggesting leaders literally position themselves in a physical location like the airport story dispenser. I am recommending that leaders use their various platforms (town halls, quarterly meetings, celebrations, site visits, other interactions) to dispense their stories, geared toward the mission they want people to aim for, the values they want people to internalize, and how they want people to interact with each other and with their customers. While leaders aren't available 24x7 like the story dispenser, they do need to be aware that anytime they are in front of people, they are being watched and listened to.
Be intentional of the stories you share, and make sure to repeat stories over and over again so that they become well-known folklore. Every person in your company should be able to re-tell and share your key stories, further reinforcing the spread and impact of your stories. Also realize that all the questions I posited above about a hypothetical story dispenser are ones that leaders should be thinking about in relation to their own story telling strategy. Those questions can help you create and refine your story telling strategy to achieve maximum impact.
Finally, let's circle back to the story dispenser at DTW. Did we actually get a story from the machine, and was the story any good?
The short story we received from the story dispenser at DTW airport
We did, in fact, receive a story. The story was entitled, "The Alchemy of Time and Presents Past" by Susan Lendroth. It took about 2-3 minutes to read the story. I found the story to be easy to read, yet it packed a powerful punch that spurred me to consider my relationships with my older family members. It certainly forced me to think in an unexpected way.
I've provided the link to the story, so you can come to your own conclusions about the quality of the story and how it does or doesn't move you.
Happy reading and happy storytelling!