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What are the stories that define your organization? They may be stories about the start-up days of the organization when people were working around the clock to get ready to open, or about the major milestones, like the weekend after you'd gotten that great review in the local paper and were swamped with reservations. Or perhaps the time when the power went out and you took the gelato outside and gave samples away to passing motorists before it all melted. Every organization generates stories, and these stories are powerful tools for integrating new employees into the organizational culture.

Bringing Stories to Life
All too often, however, these stories are shared informally but aren't integrated into staff training in a way that maximizes their impact. Rather than focus your training only on processes, procedures and rules, be sure to include the company lore that makes your organization different from all others. Oral history has been an effective teaching tool down the ages — many people learn best through stories — and it's a way to put your processes and procedures into a context that gives them additional credibility.

In the Beginning
I heard a powerful story on a recent business trip. While having cocktails with a client, I asked how he had gotten started in the restaurant business. He told me about helping out as a front-of-the-house manager in his father-in-law's restaurant in the evenings after coming home from his day job at a bank. About six years ago, he realized he loved the restaurant business, but he didn't love working with his father-in-law whose management style was very different from his own. When he went in to give his notice, his father-in-law offered to sell him the company, which he bought and has since built into a successful franchise operation with 24 locations.

But what really drew me in was when he started pointing out the other members of the head-office team — his brother, his former boss at the bank, the long-time head cook, a former fast-food executive — and told me that all of them worked for no pay the first year that he owned the company. There wasn't enough money to pay them, but they were so excited by his vision of where he wanted the company to go that they wanted to be part of it from the beginning. "Wow," I said. "That's a great story! It makes me want to work there. I hope you share it with new staff as part of the orientation." He gave me a funny look and said, "No. Actually, we don't, but I guess we should." What lessons might a new staff member glean from this story?
• The organization started out much smaller than it is now, and the current owner wasn't always the person in charge.
• Success was not guaranteed. In fact, in the beginning, there wasn't enough money to pay everyone.
• The people who are now in leadership positions earned those roles by their willingness to take a risk.
• The owner's passion was — and is — contagious.

What is the story behind the founding of your company? Founders of successful organizations don't usually take that success for granted, but people who join later on often think success came from the get-go. Stories about "the old days" don't have to be an exercise in nostalgia, but can present a remarkably different perspective.

Stories That Reinforce Your Organizational Culture
You probably also have some company "legends," apocryphal stories that illustrate key elements of your corporate culture. In organizations that put high value on customer service, these are often stories about staff members who went above and beyond the call of duty to take care of a customer and, in so doing, illustrated the level of service that the organization wants to be known for. Zingerman's customer service class for new hires includes what we have come to call "the cell phone story," and it epitomizes the way a story can be used to illustrate both your systems and your culture.

It was a busy lunchtime at the Deli and the line to order sandwiches stretched to the door. Eric, one of several order takers, had just handed in an order and paused to answer the ringing phone before going back out in front of the counter. "Good afternoon, thanks for calling Zingerman's Deli, may I put you on hold?" The answer was, "No! Please don't put me on hold, just look up!"
Confused, Eric looked up and there, near the end of the line, was a woman on her cell phone (this was back at a time when cell phones were a relative rarity). "Can you help me?" she said. "I'm on my way to the train station, and I'm afraid I won't be able to make it in time for my train."

Eric was a recent hire and had just completed our internal service class the day before. He remembered learning that his job was to give each customer an exceptional Zingerman's experience and that he was authorized to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Thinking quickly, Eric replied, "Meet me over by the olive oils." He met the woman in the dry good section (around the corner from the line of people waiting for sandwiches), took her order, put a rush on it and sent her out the door in time to make her train. Needless to say, she was ecstatic.

When Eric told Ari (Zingerman's CEO and the person who had taught Eric's service class) about the incident, Ari was thrilled. "That's great! You did a perfect job of modeling what I was teaching in the class." Now the story of Eric and the cell phone has been incorporated into our service class to illustrate these points:
• Don't ignore a ringing phone. On the other end of that phone is a customer, just like the customers who are standing in person in the store, who needs to be acknowledged.
• Don't put someone on hold without asking if it's okay and — very important — waiting for the answer. If they say "No!" then help them right away. Usually when someone says no to being put on hold, it's because they are really in a hurry, have just a quick question or were cut off the last time they were on hold.
• Sometimes giving great service means breaking the rules. Eric let this customer "jump the line" and then expedited her order, but he did it in a way ("meet me over by the olive oils") that didn't make it obvious to other customers.
• Even someone who is relatively new to the job has the authority and the responsibility to figure out how to meet a customer's needs.
• A customer who started out feeling anxious and stressed left Zingerman's feeling great. We hope she enjoyed her sandwich on the train, but we KNOW that she was blown away by the experience.

As you think about the stories that circulate around your organization, which story best illustrates the challenges you faced in getting the business off the ground or epitomizes the level of service you want your business to be known for? Talk to others and see what stories they remember/tell. Start including those stories in your new-hire orientation training and you'll have added a powerful tool to your training toolbox.

Maggie Bayless is the managing partner of ZingTrain, which is the consulting arm of Zingerman's, the specialty food retailer in Ann Arbor, Mich. If you have specific topics you would like to see addressed, please send your suggestions to Maggie at mbayless@zingermans.com.