My friend and brother-in-law, Paul Alofs’ new book, Passion Capital has been very successful in it’s first couple of weeks. And now there’s an excerpt in Fast Company magazine. http://www.fastcompany.com/1837853/8-rules-for-creating-a-passionate-work-culture

I for one really enjoyed the book, and I’m not just saying that because we’re family! And I think the folks at Fast Company have done a great job in highlighting these “8 Rules”. What struck me though was how absolutely vital ‘story’ is to make the point. So for example, in Paul’s book, he quite early tells stories about Alice Cooper, Ken Thompson and Albert Einstein. And of course, Fast Company’s version picks up on this. In order to talk about how to succeed in business, we need to tell stories, and to understand how business works, we need to hear stories.

And then, how often do we sit in presentations and look at numbers?! A key to successful communication about your business or your department, is to tell the story the numbers to which the numbers are pointing. For example, at the conference in Cincinnati that has figured prominently in Leadership Notes, a young man got up to talk about the group he works with in Cincinnati. It’s a hip-hop group that works with young people from various neighbourhoods. Now, he could have given us numbers, he could have said “we have helped x number of young people find community and themselves and x percent are now working in ‘straight’ jobs. And the largely white group in the conference room would have been impressed, and even thought that some good is happening here. Rather the young man brought a poster up to the front of the room, and pointed at people’s photographs on the poster. He grave a brief bio of where they had come from, and what they were doing now, because they had encountered this hip hop group. Story. And then he pointed at the photograph of a young man and said, ‘three years ago, when he was 12, this guy was living under a bridge. He joined us, and became a DJ. He’s really good. But what he really wants to do is be a doctor. So there’s another guy, from a few years ago, who was with our group, and he’s now in Med School. And he’s a really good DJ. So we put the two of them together. And the guy in med school is mentoring this 15 year old, encouraging him to do the work necessary to get into med school.’ And then he sat down.

You could feel the passion in the room.

So, if I may Paul, I’d like to add a 9th rule, or maybe it’s Rule 2(a) under Communication; find, listen for and tell the stories of passion in your workplace. Like collaboration leads to more collaboration, innovation leads to more innovation, passion leads to more passion.

And may we all find some more passion in the work we do to make a difference in and for our communities.