How many of us have worked at a company with miserable benefits and crazy hours, but we still loved coming to work every day? Corporate culture isn’t just about perks and policies—it’s about the stories that get told at happy hour after work or lingering after a long Zoom call with team members around the world. These stories, whether they’re about a recent company win or how a team overcame a significant challenge, shape the way employees think, feel, and act. They’re the threads that weave together your company’s identity and values.

But are you actively crafting the stories that define your culture, or are you letting them evolve on their own? The stories you choose to tell can reinforce positive behaviors, celebrate your company’s values, build a stronger, more cohesive culture, and get anchored in the quirky people and heroic moments that people want to keep retelling.

Have You Ever Dealt With This? If your company’s culture is drifting or isn’t aligned with your strategic goals, it might be time to take control of the narrative.

Pro Tip: Here’s how to use storytelling to build a stronger corporate culture:

  1. Identify Key Values: Start by identifying the core values that you want to reinforce within your organization. These could be innovation, collaboration, customer focus, or any other principle that’s central to your company’s identity, like the people behind the innovations and breakthroughs you work on every day.
  2. Create Stories Around These Values: Actively seek out and share stories that exemplify these values. For example, if collaboration is key, tell the story of a recent project where cross-departmental teamwork led to a major success.
  3. Involve Employees in Storytelling: Encourage employees at all levels to share their own stories that reflect the company’s values. This not only helps reinforce those values but also gives employees a sense of ownership over the culture. I LOVE creating a campaign to “Catch People In the Act” of living the core vales and especially when that core value includes innovating, to highlight their efforts and even the failures and resilience in the face of challenges. Getting others to tell your stories and theirs is the key to spreading a story around the organization.
  4. Celebrate and Share Successes: Make it a habit to regularly celebrate and share stories of success within the company. This could be done through internal newsletters, meetings, or even informal gatherings. The more these stories are told, the more they’ll become a part of your company’s cultural fabric.

By consciously crafting and sharing stories that align with your values, you can build a stronger, more unified corporate culture that drives success.