Finding Your Own Mythology
So what’s your story? What makes your company’s founding and growth special? What stories define who you are and how you got here?
To help illustrate this point to groups I speak to, I often use my own family as an analogy. I have a 13-year-old son. This teenager can give you a pretty good synopsis of how my wife and I met, what happened on the first date, what happened in the first year, and the trials and tribulations leading up to the point of his eventual birth. He’s got that story down to a short and sweet, humorous three- to four-minute tale. Like his dad, he likes to tell stories, and he’s pretty good at it.
What fascinates me about the story, however, is that it bears little resemblance to what happened. And that’s okay. For him, it is a unifying element. For him, it is a story with a message. He wasn’t even born yet, and still he feels as if he were part of the team.
All growth companies have a foundation story. I’m not al-together sure I know why, but they do—all of them. It doesn’t matter if you leave out the part about the original partner absconding with the seed capital or that you started off in insurance and ended up in ball bearings. Those need not be part of the lore, legend, and mythology surrounding your business. If you don’t have a good foundation story, I’m going to suggest you form one. Maybe it gives us the same kind of grounding our national mythology gives us. It’s hard to say exactly. But I am sure that every successful growth company has a well-crafted mythology surrounding its foundation and growth.
I’m sure there are a few skeptics who look at all of this as new age mumbo-jumbo and think it’s really just about the products and the service. A good story can’t define a company or a brand. However, how many of these have you heard to the point where they are permanently stuck in your head?
