Do you have a boring workplace

You could be spending your entire life in a boring workplace. No wonder you hate going to office. Here is a way to find out if your office is a soul-crushingly boring place to be.

Boring Workplace

Do you look forward to being back at work on a Monday morning? Do you look forward to being in a place surrounded by inspiring colleagues? Let me put it simply. Is your workplace as boring and devoid of personality as is possible? I can tell you a simple way to find out.When you joined the organization, was your first day at work a "story-worthy" experience? Did the organization make you feel that you are joining a team of storytellers who inspire each other?

Or did you find yourself being told about a million rules and a shown a million organization charts that you could not care less about? When the day was over did you wonder if you had made the right decision or did you walk out of the office delighted that you chose the right place to be.Organizations that are boring have no stories. Do you know why? Anything normal is NOT a story. <read this>

Nothing exciting happens in a boring organization. Everyone does what they are supposed to. No one challenges anyone. People work like automatons. If robots came and replace their colleagues, no one would no the difference and no one would complain.All the colleagues look like each others clones. They laugh at the same jokes (and maybe for the same duration too). They have all studied in the same colleges. On weekends they all socialize with each other at the same club where they are all members. Chances are that they play the same game. You can guess which one. The CEO wants the organization to be innovative. It is a business need.

Every Innovation Needs A Story

Innovation

Prof Bill Fischer is the Professor of Innovation at IMD Lausanne. He says Every Innovation Needs A Story stories drive innovation.

"At its heart, innovation is a profoundly social phenomenon. More often than not, it is the story that makes the innovation, rather then the other way around. Want to be successful at innovation? You need to convince others to buy into your idea. If you are an aspiring innovator, or a project leader, you need to be able to tell your story in a manner that captures the imagination of investors or business unit leaders. If you are an investor, or business unit leader, you need to know what to listen for in an innovation narrative."

Organizations need to be fertile grounds of innovation. To do that the fences need to allow many kinds of individuals into the workspace. Those individuals must feel psychologically safe to be able to retain their individuality. It must have the environment where traditions can be questioned. That is when stories are born. Innovations thrive in organizations when storytellers and story listeners hang around. The cafeteria is not just a place to eat lunch. It is a place for ideas to collide and for mavericks to be celebrated.

Thomas Edison - the storyteller

We all know Thomas Edison as the inventor of the lightbulb. When someone spoke to him about the affordability of the light-bulb, Edison told the sceptic something only a storyteller can do. His response was

"We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” - Thomas Edison

Innovation

So is storytelling all about making grand statements? Absolutely not. Story is a truth told in an interesting manner. Edison focused his energy on making a bulb that was efficient, affordable and a source of consumer-delight. His style of working was what most creative set-ups look for - an open-office layout for to build speed. His team was always encouraged to deliver "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so.” Innovation happens when people produce a body of work.

Edison produced1,093 patents. Mozart wrote 600 pieces. Beethoven wrote 37 plays.

Satyajit Ray published 7 volumes of short stories. Each volume had a dozen short stories.He created three popular characters and wrote many novels and stories around them ie Feluda, Professor Shonku and Tarini Khuro. He created fonts, composed music for his films, wrote the lyrics, illustrated his stories and of course directed films. A great idea by itself cannot be called innovation. It needs to be executed well. And a story must capture the attention of the audience. While many analysts have talked about the growth of Amazon, Google, Facebook & Apple, it takes a Scott Galloway to make a story out of powerpoint slides.

The stories are all backed by deep research. Yet, what makes it stand apart is the way he delivers the story. He often starts by saying, "I have 900 seconds and 90 slides ... so fasten your seat-belts. According to him, the core competence of Amazon is storytelling. While they offer value, convenience, selection and speed, it is the storytelling skills of Bezos that gives them an advantage.

The final word

As the organizations are going to start moving towards designing experiences, they will need more storytellers and designers. You may design the best product, if the narrative is not appealing, it will never pull the consumer to adopt it. The graveyard of failed products will tell you the story of many CEOs who tried to sell features, price etc and forgot to tell the story. The boring workplaces encourage boring leaders who believe that work is a chore to be performed. People have to earn a living and so they must work.

The storytellers believe that work and the workplace must be a place of joy. Creative spots need to nurture the maverick. The soil and seeds that produce a cactus plant does not produce a delicate orchid. To drive innovations, first ensure that enough stories are generated in the normal course of work. Make sure all the stories are not about the same few people. It is easy to be boring. It is very hard to be a workplace that generates stories every day.

===Written for my column in Business Line newspaper dated October 11, 2018 <read previous columns>

Read this: Anything normal is not a story 

Read: The Five Principles of Designing Experiences

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