GETTING TO KNOW YOU
Getting to Know Shawn Callahan
What inspired you to start your business ? What are your goals and values ? In the 1990s I worked for IBM doing corporate anthropology projects helping companies change their culture . This involved collecting stories from employees and then helping them see the patterns of behaviour . We then helped them design initiatives to reinforce the good and disrupt the bad . We worked on the basis that if you want to change a culture you need to change the stories being told .
Working with corporations back then I noticed that the humanity was being leached from the workplace through ham-fisted initiates such as right-sizing , hot-desking , and short sighted cost savings like removing biscuits from the tea-room ( yeh , I ’ m still annoyed about that ). I wanted to help return humanity to business and storytelling seemed like a good way to do it .
We are a small business based in Melbourne that has a global reach with licensees in 20 countries . We license our training programs to other small business ( and corporations ) around the world . When we started Anecdote , my business partner Mark Schenk and I picked three values to guide our actions : do good things , look after each other , have a go . They help us make decisions every day .
What was the driving force behind your decision to specialise in this area of business ? We were never driven by market opportunity because when we started everyone thought we were nuts . ‘ Huh , storytelling ?’ they ’ d say . But that was 12 years ago and now the pendulum has swung the other way and companies around the world contact us wanting to either bring their strategy to life , or improve their leaders ’ ability to inspire action or even to embed their values .
What really drives us is creating quality programs that really make a difference to people ’ s working lives . We love making beautiful products .
Small business can punch above its weight because companies are looking for the very best . They are no longer just locked into the big providers . I ’ ll never forget the day when Shell Chemical from the Netherlands contacted us to help them develop their strategy story . They wanted to work with a small company at the opposite end of the world .
What types of customers do you help ? What experience do you have helping small business customers ? We help global corporations mainly . For example InterContinental Hotels Group ( IHG ) engaged us to help their salespeople across Asia and North Africa tell the stories that helped articulate their brand . We worked with Mars , Danone , SAP and many more to helps their leaders improve their oral storytelling . Our global network of story specialists enables us to do global projects .
Do you service other sectors as well ?
The companies that tend to engage us have at least 500 employees and have a track record of investing in their people . We work across industries but there seems to be a concentration of work from Banking & Finance , Insurance , Pharmaceutical , Manufacturing and Mining .
What are the main reasons that someone would choose you to help grow / develop / improve their business ? We are often chosen because the traditional methods have failed and at the same time they have realised that the most trusted source of information is the first line manager . We are engaged to build the quality of their communication skills .
What process , services and support do your clients receive ? We offer four programs . We help companies tell the story of their strategy so leaders can share the strategy without PowerPoint decks or documents . We call this program Making Strategy Stick . We offer two training programs , both 6 months in duration , one called Storytelling for Leaders and the other is Storytelling for Sales .
What challenges did you face in setting up your business ? Probably our biggest challenge was working out the best business model for the type of work we wanted to do . Oral storytelling for business leaders is a niche market so we struggled at first because the demand for what we wanted to do wasn ’ t big enough for us
48 ModernBusiness July 2016