From Facebook’s storytelling…
Early 2014, I was amazed with new feature of FB: Never
before can I easily look back to history of my own. Want to see what happened
today last year, or 10 years before? Well, just go to http://facebook.com/todayinhistory
and choose the date you want. As soon as
you do, new feeds of that particular day will be displayed and will make you
feel nostalgic and complicated. Yes, it is a mixed feeling when you look back
at your difficult moments and compare them with your current happy moments, or
vice versa.
Same things happened with me when I looked at my friends’ “2013
video” at the end of 2013. As its name suggests, this video was basically a story
combined of most-like photos and status that I had posted throughout 2013, ingeniously
played in the theme of harmonious background song. Again, I felt nostalgic and
complicated. It happened with many of my friends and many people around the
world too. I bet if you experienced this, you would have felt the same. However,
whatever you feel, you could not deny that was is so tempting and appealing to watch
again and again the stories, except this time they were not only about
yourself, but also about your friends. I was so engaged with the stories, and
facebook is the charismatic teller who told stories of myself and my friends. At
that moment, I realized that I like hearing stories, my friends like hearing
stories and many people around the world like hearing stories. Maybe we all
like hearing stories.
So what should we do about it? As a manager of a firm, how
should you exploit this fact to better manage your human resources and engage
your customers? A lot of research has been done on storytelling in
organizations. For example, Barbara’s paper presented a chronological timeline
of development of storytelling and then discussed its applications in
management, communication and marketing. Two aforementioned facebook’s features
are just two examples of real-life storytelling in marketing that I will
discuss later. In this article, I would like to link storytelling to a broader area:
Storytelling for culture management. I will use the case of FPT – the biggest
software company in Vietnam – for analysis. In fact, I am not trying to make an
analysis. What I want to do is to tell a story about storytelling and culture
management, because I know that you like hearing stories.
To FPT’s
Let FPT speak first. This is a very funny and interesting
video about the current CEO – Mr. Bui Quang Ngoc – and the establishment of FPT.
If you are not a Vietnamese, you would probably need English sub to understand
and I hope to find time do make it. However, for now you can just have a glance
at the video and read my description.
Description: This
video begins with a tale about how Mr. Ngoc was born: When his mother was
pregnant, she dreamed receiving a white pearl from God – A motif mimicking
Vietnamese fairy tale. We know that it is not true, but it reminds us of
Vietnamese fairy stories and this makes the tale funny. The story continues
with Mr. Ngoc’s childhood and his friendship with a close friend Truong Gia
Binh who later became the founder and chairman of FPT Corporation. Having trust
from Mr. Binh, Mr. Ngoc, who in his 30s a lecturer, was invited to become the
CEO of FPT. The story then tells a little bit about Mr. Ngoc’s personality – presumably
representing FPT’s personality and ends with a conclusion: “Here comes the
ending of an extolment” – supposedly a joke to make viewers laugh.
How storytelling in FPT is different from Facebook
“If you are not paying, you are product”. Ever wonder why
Facebook works so hard for you to connect with your friends and family? The
answer may be as simple as it seems:
They gain money by advertising. In other words, they sell views (by
users) to advertisers. But looking in another way, they are selling you to the
advertisers. They know many things about you from your age, nationality,
gender.. to what you recently read, watched and liked. As such, you are their
product – a special kind of product that will continuously produce profit for a
very long time until you stop using their service.
One question arises: If you are their product, how could
they sell you better? Of course, they cannot make you better, but they can make
your digital self a better product with storytelling. People like hearing
story, why not telling peole story about you? Hence the introduction of
timeline and other additional features such as todayinhistory and yearinreview.
In FPT’s case, the purpose of their video is similar to that
of facebook, except one thing which I will discuss later. They are similar in
the sense that they all serve marketing purpose: While facebook’s timeline
advertises their products – the users, FPT’s video advertises the company
itself.
We should know that there are 3 common types of stories:
Biography, anecdotes and behind-the-scene stories. FPT’s video is a combination
of biography and anecdotes, although it is more of a biography. Introducing Mr.
Ngoc’s life to audience, it should be considered a biography. And because it
borrows a motif in Vietnamese fairy tale, it is partly an anecdote. The first and
foremost purpose of this video is to tell about the establishment of FPT. If
more and more people share the video, more and people know about FPT and its
establishment, and the marketing purpose is fulfilled.
But the goal of this video does not stop at marketing. We
may wonder if it contains some politics when it tells in detail about the
friendship between Mr. Ngoc and the chairman Truong Gia Binh. One may interpret
the unsaid message as follow: “They are childhood friends. Every people should
listen to and follow Mr. Ngoc since he has absolute trust and support from
Mr.Binh.”
And what could we see in the part about Mr. Ngoc’s
management style? He was described as a firm, ambitious and decisive man. Did
these characteristics represent FPT – a software giant in Vietnam, but still a
new gamer in global software market (and hence need to be firm, ambitious and
decisive)?
May opinion is that besides marketing purpose, this video is
also for management purpose, as analyzed above. The story was told to strengthen
the consensus to support Mr. Ngoc. It also delivered a message to FPTer: “FPT
is firm, ambitious and decisive. You do whatever you deem suitable with this
culture”. Even the ending of the video told us something about FPT’s culture. “Here
comes the ending of an extolment” – It was a hilarious self-deterioration which
contained a message that: “Our culture is so open that we can touch and make
fun of people at any level, even the CEO. There is not barrier.”
To give more substance to the conclusion that FPT used
storytelling for management purpose, I would like to introduce you to their
news website: http://chungta.com. In 2013 FPT
raised a campaign, asking current and former FPT’s staff to tell their own
stories. So besides news, know-how and entertainment, chungta.com today has
some content created by its staff, telling their own memorable stories with
FPT. All the stories together form what they called “FPT History book”. Below
is a story of a former assistant telling about her tough but exciting days
working under Mr. “Hairy Hung”, being shouted many times by him:
http://chungta.vn/tin-tuc/doi-song/2013/06/su-ky-fpt-anh-hung-rau-than-tuong-cua-toi/.
Again, I will find my time to translate this article to English, but for now,
let’s see what we could take from the story. One obvious lesson here is that:
Junior staff listens and adapts to FPT’s culture and their boss. You can argue,
but think twice, and learn from Mrs. Hanh (the assistant in the story) to know
how to argue with bosses in FPT.
A new task arise – Culture management
FPT has over 13.000 employees. It is not an easy task to
manage, encourage and motivate so many people to work whole-heartedly for the
company. So far I think they have done a very good job. Company’s website, FPT festivals
of all kinds, entertaining activities and so on all contribute to their
success. But as FPT is turning on a new chapter of its life – a chapter of GLOBALIZATION
– are these activities sufficient for the future?
My answer is NO. These aforementioned activities are for accessible
only to current Vietnamese employees. Where are the tools and channels to
manage newly recruited employees, especially if they are foreigner? Where are
the tools and channels to manage FPT culture in newly opened offices and
affiliates of FPT in other countries?
Recently we read from the news that FPT bought Slovakia’s
RWE IT. It was such great news to Vietnam, Vietnamese software industry and
FPT. Finally one Vietnamese company has ability to join “the ocean”, playing
and competing equally to all players in the world. But we all know that
difficulty is waiting ahead.
The first and foremost difficulty is to retain RWE IT’s
employee. What FPT bought is a kind of intelligence good, where most of
knowledge and intelligence reside on its employee. If they lose them, RWE IT is
nothing but a bunch of devices and equipments. So what are they going to do to
keep their RWE IT’s staff, especially when Vietnam is not yet a famous software
country so that RWE IT’s staff can be proud to work for?
The best thing an employee in RWE IT Slovakia knows about
FPT is likely to be: FPT is the largest software company in Vietnam. But what do
they know about Vietnam? Based on my experience when talking with international
friends, in most case, the only impression about Vietnam is that it is a
war-torn country which once defeated France and then US. It has nothing to do
to support Vietnam’s new image as a fast growing, high-tech country. It has
nothing to do to support Vietnamese software companies as potential outsourcing
vendors.
In this situation, any Vietnamese software company who wants
to pursuit “globalization” must build their images by themselves. It will be a
long time for them to build their image that can distinguish themselves from
other tens of thousands of competitors in India, China, Vietnam, etc. One
answer for the problem could be: To create a distinguishing culture and foster
it.
It reminds me about the blurb of the book “Storytelling: An
effective marketing concept” by Emma Dennisdotter and Emma Axenbrant: “By using storytelling, a company can be
unique, even though its products and services are not. The company uses a story
that is simple to remember, that enables an understanding of the company’s
values, and that can easily be passed on.” By using storytelling as a culture
management tool, organizations can build and cultivate their culture, not only
in their headquarter, but also in their oversea offices and affiliates.
What to do next
To achieve it, FPT would need to do different things from
the videos (about Mr. Ngoc) and “FPT History Book” that they have created. They
need to clearly define their culture (for this I think they have done a very
good job), but more importantly, they need to choose the right method and
channel to spread it to other oversea offices. I would like to recommend storytelling
as the tool that they should use, since FPT is applying it very well locally
and is receiving very encouraging result.
The question now comes to the content to be delivered and
the people who deliver it. They must create stories not only in Vietnamese, but
also in English to approach broader audience. They must choose stories that
truly reflect the vision of the company itself and avoid details that may lead
audience to question the politics in FPT. They must choose the right people to
deliver it – The people who can tell stories. FPT should send Vietnamese staff
to its oversea, recently acquired company, and they should choose people not
only based on their technical expertise, but also their communication skills
and knowledge about FPT’s culture. They should act not only as ordinary
employees, but also as ambassadors of FPT and Vietnam’s culture. This extraction from a Forbes’ article seems
to support my point, although in FPT’s case, RWE IT is not a competitor:
“Once you’ve acquired your
biggest competitor, and you need the 5,000 people that work there to stay, and
not quit, now you need a good story”
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/08/13/how-to-use-storytelling-as-a-leadership-tool/
I would like to end this article with an emphasis (again) on
the importance of stories’ content that FPT should think about. Try to have
stories that REFLECT THE VISION of the company and do not tell stories just for
fun. The following story - one of my favorite about HP’s “open door policy” -
is an example:
“ …The founder of the company [HP],
Bill Hewlett, found a locked door when he during a weekend went to pick up a
microscope in the company lab. He broke the lock and left a note for his
employees. It was found Monday morning and read: "Don't ever lock this
door again. Thanks, Bill.”
The story supports and communicates the company's desire for
an open-door policy, but it can also be seen as a signal to the employees that
weekend work is appreciated. It is an example of how the story is open to
interpretation, and of how you can use a story to tell say something without
stating it explicitly.
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