Every company and business has great stories. We need to hear them, tell them and internalize them. The biggest challenges, however, are convincing others of the power of storytelling and the impact it can have in the business world. How can we do this?

Start a small booklet of good company/organization stories. Name the heroes and heroines. Ask others you trust to write up some stories for it. The stories should not be long, but all should include the beginning status quo, a character and/or characters, the crisis or challenge the climax and resolution, and how the original status quo was changed. Details are important, but should not be overwhelming.

With all of the easy-to-use desktop programs available today, you can put together a small booklet filled with these stories and give a copy to many of your peers. You will be surprised, once the word is out, how many other people will ask for a copy. It may be even time to start a small magazine or company newsletter that consists of stories.

Before a meeting starts (if you have any way of setting agenda items), ask if everyone would share a quick incident that they have recently encountered, what happened and if it changed their thinking and/or approach. Or ask what was the funniest happening last week. I know it may take some time to get this off the ground -- and, I don't suggest forcing everyone to take part in the beginning.

You will be amazed that if you can continue this quick story sharing introduction, those who haven't contributed before will start having a story to tell and everyone will look forward to this. I know a company that started adding a half an hour to the end of their weekly sales meetings for a story sharing session. This soon became the most popular part of the meeting and, as storytellers know, the most valuable part of the meeting.

Once the storytelling starts to take hold -- and it will if you are persistent and keep it going -- the next step would be to call a group of the most enthusiastic story lovers and tellers together to work on the "Grand Narrative" of your company and/or organization. This will define what your group is all about. What describes the mission and goals in a clear and understandable way? It is OK to redefine your "Grand Narrative" even if you are a large, small, or even a one-person company.

Now is the time to take your storytelling plan to upper management. Convincing reasons that you can propose for capturing and using stories are to accomplish any of the following:

• Share knowledge for succession planning.
• Promote team development to enhance productivity.
• Exemplify values to build community.
• Capture lessons learned to develop best practices.
• Prompt action to change the company or organization.
• Record the past to preserve corporate heritage.

Armed with these purposes and the stories that have already been shared and recorded, you will be able to convince the group that storytelling should be a daily occurrence.