Chief Change Officer - From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part One

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Chris Hare has helped big-name executives tell better stories. But today, the tables have turned—he’s the one sharing his story, and I get to ask the tough questions. In this three-part series, we break it down step by step: • Part 1: Corporate storytelling—how businesses craft messages that actually work (and when they don’t). • Part 2: The power of personal storytelling—Chris opens up about his own experiences and the most memorable stories he’s heard. • Part 3: Storytelling in action—Chris shares tools to help us develop our own narratives, and I put myself through the process (with a slight risk of emotional breakdown). If you’ve ever wondered how storytelling can shape careers, businesses, and even personal growth, you won’t want to miss this. 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 2.5% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI 3.5 Million+ Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. If you've been listening to my show, you know I bring guests from all corners of the world to share their stories. Through these stories, we dive into high-sight, insights, and foresight for you, the progressive-minded listeners who crave change. Whether you're navigating a career shift, a personal transformation like health challenges, or driving change in your organization or community, there's something here for you. 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 called Atomic Storytelling. His method breaks down complex stories into their cool, resonant elements. In this three-part series, 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 ever heard, he will also open up about his own mental health challenge. 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 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 this 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. 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. So essentially translating the business strategy of a company into a narrative that aligns everyone from the board to the buyer, who may want very different things around shared and differentiated future.

And then now I still do that work, but I'm also significantly focused on the leaders and the narratives that drive them and to help them create that future that I was talking about. So you started your storytelling journey by helping corporations shape and share the narratives. And now you've shifted the focus to individuals. Is that right? 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 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 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 can see, that 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 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 my 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. So people who had a product and they were from whatever brand and were reselling it on the platform. And if you were to look at their data, and if you were looking at the stories that were hidden in those data, the stories that they would tell each other in the hallway about XYZ seller did this thing and had the success, it all pointed to the idea that it was just resellers and that was the future.

So the stories were Vince has a product and has been selling this product successfully. Therefore, we need to keep doing this. That's the story example. The narrative is that belief of the future of Amazon Marketplace is resellers. Therefore, we must invest in those resellers. And then as a result of that narrative, the business then throws everything at that and pursues that. What then happened then where a story

actually shifted that narrative was Pete was invited to visit Brooklyn and met a number of multi-generational family-owned businesses. For example, an immigrant family potentially came over in the 30s or 40s. They may have started out repairing vacuum cleaners. Get to the third generation and now they're inventing new products and consumables for vacuum cleaner bags, for example, and they're the brand owner.

So all of a sudden he met brand owners and had conversations with them and just incredibly compelling stories that move you both emotionally, but also you're seeing the business potential of this. 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 Pete 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, talk about a tectonic shift. Now, I believe those brand owners, I believe, are, 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're 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 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 Martins where to play and how to win. Based on these stories that we have now synthesized, we're 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 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 Abar at London Business School talks about this for the individual is running experiments around different possible future selves when you're talking about your own narrative. But again, with companies, I think you can do the same thing. You're not going to put a bunch of different narratives out into the world and tell the world, hey shareholders, we're going to experiment with all these narratives.

You've got to come to the market with one narrative, but having the ability to experiment and learn with possible futures and then use that to adapt ongoing. Is the narrative essentially part of the branding or is it something bigger? part of the branding? Or is it something bigger? In other words, does the narrative serve as an umbrella under which the brand and all its messaging operates? Or are they distinct but closely related? How would you explain the relationship between narrative and brand in a business context? Yeah, so I think I was just thinking about this morning before our call is that a business is a collection or an ecosystem of narratives and not an infinite number, but seemingly infinite number of narratives that are just colliding against each other. I have a narrative internally about what you're saying right now. 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. So 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 gonna 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, in fact, but it should drive every single part of the company, customer experience, finance, operations, etc. A great example of this is when Bracken Darrow 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 forexed 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. to fairly low level accountants who took what was manifested within that culture about, or what was taught within the culture about human centered design, aligned to his narrative. And again, it's tricky, right?

Cause this wasn't, who knows how, I haven't seen how this was communicated within the company's narrative, but what was interesting is they then went and re-architected their entire process of closing and they took it from using human centered design and took it from 30 days to two days. So you imagine the impact that has on the business, but that shows the power of when the CEO has a narrative that they're then working with the business, not shoving it down and saying, you must do this thing. But having that narrative catch people's vision

and propel them forward. So far, we've covered a lot about narrative and storytelling in a business context. But as you mentioned earlier, narrative can also play a powerful role at an individual level, for leaders, for people in career transitions, or even entrepreneurs building a new venture. My next question naturally is, how do we apply narrative and story to individual situations. Could you walk us through some

examples to help illustrate this? I found it in the young people listening might need to go to Wikipedia and look up what a cassette is. But I find it helpful and more visceral to think about narrative and our personal narratives as a cassette tape, a tape that's playing in our head, right? And that we're constantly writing and rewriting that and adjusting that. This is the future I'm creating or this is what's happening in the present or this is what happened in the past. And we fuel that with stories.

So I'll give you a few different practical examples. So one, I have this one CEO that I work with, he's a serial CEO and board member, and Chicago MBA, you can go Chicago, I know you're a fan, the Chicago MBA, McKinsey consultant, when he came to me and said, it was, how do I, I have one narrative that I use with private equity, another that I use with venture capital, another that I use with board roles when I'm interviewing, and then I've got my hippie yoga community and my nonprofit work.

Just now, Chris shared with us his expertise in helping businesses craft compelling corporate stories compelling corporate stories and educate us to 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 ever heard. He will also open up about his own mental wellness challenge. Come back and join us tomorrow. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host.

Until next time, take care.