Your Company Story Is About You, Not For You
If your company story only works when you’re the one telling it, it’s not doing its job. A good story still makes sense in someone else’s words.
My business partner asked me to tell her the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We were in the middle of working, and our workdays revolve heavily around story, so this wasn’t an entirely unusual question. (Okay, it was a little unusual.)
I said, “I don’t know. Little girl in a red cloak goes to bring her grandmother cookies? Something, something, a wolf eats the grandmother.”
“No, seriously,” she said. “Tell me the story.”
So I did my best to remember: “The little girl runs into a lumberjack – or a huntsman, or whatever you want to call him – on the way to her grandmother’s, I think. There’s a long journey, and when she finally gets there, her ‘grandmother’ is actually a wolf wearing her grandmother’s clothes. Somehow, the little girl doesn’t notice. Maybe she doesn’t see her grandmother that often?
“‘What big eyes you have!’” I said, in a very high-pitched voice. “‘All the better to see you with, my dear,” I added, dropping my voice low.
“And so on for ears, teeth, etc. Then the huntsman shows up, cleaves the wolf in half with an axe, and Grandma emerges unharmed from his belly.”
Merry then recounts Little Red Riding Hood to me in incredible detail. She talks about the little girl’s mother baking and packing the cookies. She describes the interaction between the little girl and the huntsman. She leaves out any use of “et cetera.” I’m pretty sure she even mentioned Red Riding Hood’s white stockings, her shiny black shoes, the delicate lace of her dress.
Then she looks at me and says, “Did you notice that, although we told the story slightly differently, we told the same story? I think that’s what a good company story is: when it can be internalized and repeated. When everyone lands in the same place and hits all the same major points, even if they tell it a little differently.”
That was just about the most brilliant thing I’d ever heard about company stories, so naturally, I stole it for this.
Make the Story Repeatable
When your organization’s story works, no one needs to remember the stockings. Unless you’re in the hosiery business, in which case, yes. You should probably remember the stockings.
But for everyone else: it’s not the white stockings, the shiny shoes, or the lace that matter. It’s the arc. A girl and her red hood, a journey, a wolf, a reveal, a rescue. Those are the beats people remember. Those are the ones that stick.
Most people aren’t going to memorize your mission statement verbatim or recall how many bullet points are on slide 6 of the brand deck. That’s why it’s important for them to internalize the shape of your story – what you do, why it matters, and who it’s for. If they know that, they can forget a line, swap a word, or lose a detail and still land in the right place. They can speak in their own voice without dropping the narrative thread.
Quick Check: Can the Team Tell It Without You?
Show Who Else Is Involved
This old fairytale isn’t just about Red. It’s also about her grandmother, the huntsman, and the wolf (who somehow perfectly impersonated an old lady just by wearing her bonnet). The story only works if you include the cast, and the same goes for your company.
Though company is the titular character, it doesn’t get far without the people who build it, fund it, challenge it, buy from it, and keep it going when things get hard. That includes the leadership team, the employees, the customers, the investors, the partners, and sometimes even the skeptics who didn’t believe you could do it.
Without them, the story starts to lose its shape. The stakes disappear, the tension flattens, and it starts to sound like the company accomplished everything on its own without any help from anyone. That boring, self-congratulatory tale gets old fast. No one believes it, anyway, because everyone knows companies don’t operate in a vacuum. A good story reflects that. It shows how you move with, through, and for other people.
Quick Check: Is Anyone Else Doing Anything?
Build Around Their Action, Not Yours
Red is the main character, the frame, the impetus, the reason the story exists. But she isn’t the hero. That title belongs to the huntsman.
Narrative branding works the same way. The story may center on your company, but the point is what someone else does with it. That might be the customer. It might be the employee, the partner, the funder, the community member. Whoever they are, they’re the ones whose action makes the story worth telling. Their decision is the climax. Their outcome is the resolution.
Your company might be the one delivering the cookies to Grandma – solving the problem, filling the need, closing the loop. But narratively, you’re the vehicle. The person the story is for is the one driving. You’re Red, guiding the Huntsman along his path, creating the circumstances that make the hero’s choice possible.
Does that mean you’re not important in your own story? Absolutely not. After all, it’s called Little Red Riding Hood for a reason.
Quick Check: Does the Ending Belong to You?
Strategic Takeaway
An effective company story has many variations, but they all center on what stakeholders accomplish with you. The phrasing can change. The core outcome shouldn’t.
Applied Insight
Map your company’s key story beats. Then ask someone else to do the same. What overlaps? What’s missing? What does that tell you?
