Chief Change Officer
#63 The Raw Story Behind the Storyteller: Chris Hare Reveals Secrets of Crafting Stories That Move You — Part One
Wed, 06 Nov 2024
Part One. Today’s episode has a unique twist: I’m interviewing a storytelling expert to share his own story. My guest, Chris Hare, is a strategic narrative advisor and coach for companies like Amazon and Microsoft, guiding leaders and executives with his approach, Atomic Storytelling. His method breaks down complex stories into their core, resonant elements. In this three-part series, we’ll journey through Chris’s experiences in three stages. Today, in Part 1, we’ll explore his expertise in helping businesses craft compelling corporate stories and understand the connection between story and narrative. Tomorrow, in Part 2, we’ll look at storytelling for personal transformation as Chris shares some of the best and worst stories he’s heard and opens up about his own challenges. Then, in Part 3, he’ll introduce tools we can use to develop our own stories and narratives. And here’s a personal confession—I told him one of his exercises might just make me cry! I’ll also be sharing my own experience with another exercise, highlighting both its challenges and insights. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Stories Fuel the Narrative “In my mind, stories are time-bound: this happened, it started here, it ended there. But the narrative is ongoing—it’s an architecture shaping the direction of an individual or company.” Storytelling’s Overplayed? Think Again “For years, I wouldn’t even call myself a storyteller because it was so overplayed. Everyone is using frameworks like the hero’s journey as if they’re paint-by-numbers. But storytelling is far more complex.” The Narrative Flywheel: Stories That Drive Strategy “The stories are the fuel that flows into the flywheel. We synthesize them, find patterns, and decide where to play and how to win. Then, with experimentation and learning, we create more stories—and the flywheel keeps spinning." Human-Centered Design in Action: Logitech’s Transformation “Bracken Darrell took Logitech’s failing narrative and reframed it with a vision: human-centered design across every part of the company. This vision wasn’t pushed from the top but inspired teams, driving Logitech’s turnaround—from 30-day financial reporting to just two.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Chris Hare Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2 Millions+ Downloads 50+ Countries --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.20 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1% Podcast.Top 5 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>180,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who is Chris Hare and what is his expertise?
Chapter 2: What is Atomic Storytelling?
My guest, Chris Hare, is a strategic narrative advisor and coach for companies like Amazon and Microsoft, guiding leaders and executives with his approach called Atomic Storytelling. His method breaks down complex stories into their cool, resonant elements. In this three-part series, we'll journey through Chris' experiences in three stages.
Today, in part one, we'll explore his expertise in helping businesses compelling corporate stories and understand the connection between story and narrative. Tomorrow in part two, we'll look at storytelling for personal transformation as Chris shares some of the best and worst stories he's ever heard he will also open up about his own mental health challenge.
Then in part three, he'll introduce tools we can use to develop our own stories and narratives. And here's a personal confession. I told him one of his exercises might just make me cry. I'll also be sharing my own experience with another exercise, highlighting both his challenges and insights. So let's dive into the first chapter of Chris' story. Good morning to you, Chris.
Welcome to Chief Change Officer.
Good morning, Vince. Thanks for having me.
Chris is also a podcast host, so it's a pleasure to have him on my show today. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to return the favor and join his show one day. Now, Chris has a ton of experience in storytelling. And as many of my listeners know, I ask every guest to share their story.
So inviting a storyteller like Chris to dive into his personal journey and share his approach to storytelling feels like a perfect fit for this episode. Chris, let's kick things off with your story. Give us an overview and then we'll dig into different elements of your journey.
I actually love to start with the future that I'm working to create. So for me, I'm working to create a future where business leaders and just humans in general are celebrated and remembered, not just for what they've built, but for how they built it. who they took with them and also who they became in the process of getting there. So very much anchored in the future.
My background, I started a very meandering career and then went into advertising, then went to Amazon and Microsoft, started my company in 2016, focused on marketing. And ultimately, probably around 2019, 2020, started to shift into strategic narrative practice.
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Chapter 3: How do stories fuel narrative in businesses?
Chapter 4: What is the difference between stories and narratives?
Correct. I still work with corporations, but yes, I would say the seasons of it where I started with marketing, which is just oftentimes can be talking at people and then started to discover the power of narrative, which is more talking and co-creating with your audience. And then now I still do that some, but most of my focus now is on marketing.
Chapter 5: Why is storytelling considered overplayed?
leaders and the narrative that they need to create to bring their audience with them, but then also the internal narrative that's gotten them here and how that potentially needs to shift to get to them to the future.
We hear the term storytelling used so frequently. But before we dive into your approach, I notice that you also frequently use another term, narrative. Could you explain the difference between stories and narratives and why that distinction matters?
Yeah, so it's tricky, right? I had a meeting with the chief marketing officer of a big tech company once and I asked her, how do you define narrative? And within a matter of minutes, she defined it at least three different ways. So there is a bit of a language challenge in that everyone uses these terms interchangeably. And oftentimes they can be the same thing.
What I've found helpful is to tease them out into we all have stories that we tell ourselves and others constantly. And I view those as time bound. This happened, it started at this time, this thing happened and then it ended. And I view narrative as ongoing, but it's more of the narrative in my mind is more of an architecture that shapes a direction that an individual or a company is heading.
So the stories, in my mind, are really, as I conceive of it, are really the fuel for the narrative. And so we take those stories, we synthesize them, and then we create a narrative out of them, and then we follow that narrative, and it propels us whether we're talking about a business or an individual.
In mass media, we hear the term storytelling used almost everywhere, maybe even overused. It seems like everyone is calling themselves a storyteller these days. But when you mention narrative, it seems like you are getting at something different. Could you use an analogy to help illustrate the difference or even the link between a narrative and a story?
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I would say to your point about the mass media, I absolutely agree. So for years, I wouldn't even... I call myself a storyteller just because it was so overplayed. And I think on the one hand, it's positive because it's sparked lots of conversations about it.
But I think what's also happened is it's very reductionistic where people say, okay, here's one framework, like the hero's journey. And it's a paint by numbers. We take these elements and we shove them into this framework and it's going to work for us. And I think it can be a lot more complex than that.
So one of my favorite examples, one of my clients, so he was a VP of Amazon Marketplace, took them from about eight employees to 4,000 and probably about 150 billion. And what was interesting is his name was Pete. At a certain point in time, their belief, I would say their narrative within the company was that the entire future of their business was resellers.
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Chapter 6: How can personal stories reshape business narratives?
They didn't have a way to measure that or look for that in their data, or if it was there, it was hidden.
And so they took those outside stories, what I would call them as atomic stories, these small moments of energy and matter so that peat collided with these people, heard their experiences, and as a result, brought those stories into the ecosystem and rewrote the narrative and said, actually, we believe the future might include these brand owners And when that happened, about a tectonic shift.
Now, I believe those brand owners, I believe they're an extraordinary part, tens of billions of dollars, if not more, of Amazon Marketplace's sales. And so in that case, the third generation owner that he met, they told him a story. So that's the story. And then it shifted the narrative, which is this is the future of Amazon Marketplace. So that's how I view the interplay of them.
So as I understand it, narrative and story really reinforce each other. If I'm hearing you correctly, you are saying that a narrative isn't static. It can evolve over time. For example, in a business context, you might start with one narrative that helps attract customers or business partners.
Those people in turn generate their own stories, which marketing and communications teams can collect to learn more about the customers and their experiences. These stories then help to reshape or even reposition the narrative, potentially attracting a new segment of the market. Would you say that's a fair summary of how narrative and story interact?
If we had our cameras on right now, you'd see a huge smile on my face. Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. So I find it helpful to think about it as a narrative flywheel. That's probably my Amazon background. But exactly. So the stories are the fuel that flows into the flywheel.
And then within that, the stories come in and then we synthesize those stories and look at the patterns within them, look at the different directions they could take us. And then we make choices about those Roger Martin's where to play and how to win. Based on the stories that we have now synthesized, we are going to make decisions about where to play and how to win.
And then lastly, then we have experimentation or learnings from those that then create more stories. And then we continue to bring in stories from the ecosystem and around it goes. But you're exactly right. And I think the other piece that you said that is really powerful is
is if you're amazon or any other large company and you're to come out with like a narrative you need to have one narrative but you also spoke to the flip side which is you said it needs to be flexible and there needs to be room for experimentation and so i think there is dr herminio bar at london business school talks about this for the individual
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Chapter 7: What are atomic stories and how do they impact narratives?
Or if you're my manager, you have a narrative about me and what I'm doing with my time and what my future is. We have all of these narratives that can collide with one another. In an ideal world, there's one narrative within a company. One of the challenges is the way that the word narrative is used. Oftentimes within companies, the chief marketing officer will say that they own the narrative.
I had a conversation with someone from a company, a well-known company, that was struggling a lot. And this person's manager was the CMO, and the manager said, I own the narrative. I want you to work with me on the narrative. And the CEO came to this person and said, I own the narrative. I want you to work with me on the narrative.
So you can see right there, at a meta level, the challenges they're having with their own narrative about narrative. But... What I found most helpful is, within a business, as a good friend of mine says, there's only one strategy, right? There's not the business strategy and then the marketing strategy and the customer experience strategy. There's one strategy.
Ultimately, that narrative needs to be owned by the CEO. And the way that I view it is really, or define it, is... The strategic narrative or the narrative of the company is a translation of the business strategy and clearly communicating that in a way that aligns board to the front lines around the same future and then extending it further.
I mean, you're obviously not going to communicate your business strategy to your customer, but you're going to communicate what's the differentiated future that only our company can create with our customers. In an ideal world, there should be one narrative and it should be the strategic narrative is the brand narrative, etc.
But one of the challenges you run into is the brand narrative is often viewed as what's this creative manifesto that we're going to put out into the world. When you have one narrative that's directly hooked into the business strategy, absolutely, it should be part and parcel of the brand, how the brand communicates, but it should
If you want to use the word infect, but it should drive every single part of the company, customer experience, finance, operations, et cetera. A great example of this is when Bracken Darrell was the CEO of Logitech.
Prior to that, he was the president at Braun, and he gave this speech about this future, this audacious future where every single part of a company would be led by human-centered design. And then he went looking for a company, failing so badly that the only way out was that narrative. And so that was Logitech. They were bleeding money, laying people off. I believe he 4X'd them in five years.
What was fascinating is they won 250 design awards. He won the Edison Award that Gates and Jobs won. But all of that's big and exciting. But you go down to the small level, when they would close their books at the end of a quarter, it would take, I believe, 30 days for them to get any insights from that. So you imagine a company of that size with a blindfold on essentially for that 30 days.
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