Alison Esse and Martin Clarkson

The Storytellers company claims to have created a unique, innovative approach to successful strategic execution in big business. It believes that all businesses are on a journey and, to achieve lasting results, people must be rationally and emotionally connected to that journey, becoming involved and empowered at every level.

Storytelling is a powerful way to do this, says the company. It’s not just a question of setting out a vision and expecting people to get on with it. You need to create a simple and engaging story, brought to life through the stories and experiences of your workforce.

Coming from backgrounds in PR and marketing, Martin Clarkson and Alison Esse helped set up The Storytellers four years ago. Alison says: "The company was formed in direct response to a problem we found to be common among business leaders - how to get your workforce to understand, embrace and actively work to bring about change."

Currys Supply Chain worked in partnership with The Storytellers to help communicate a major change in its operation. The programme won three prizes at last year’s CiB Communications Strategy Awards – including the Gold Award and the Storytelling category.

So what’s The Storytellers’ approach? "In a nutshell, we connect people to their organization’s strategic journey using storytelling as a tool to help its cascade down to all levels, so that everyone becomes personally involved," says Alison.

But don’t all good communicators already tell stories, using examples and experiences to bring messages to life? "They do up to a point," says Alison. "But what makes Storytellers different is that our team provides a structured, visual framework, physical tools and a practical methodology to create a compelling story that can be localised and kept refreshed and alive throughout the journey.

"The key to our approach is to equip the leaders and their managers to take the story to their teams and make it relevant to them, inspiring them to turn strategy into action."

• CiB members can read more about Storytellers in the February edition of "communicators", CiB's member magazine. A PDF is available in the member-only section. Storytellers will also be speaking at the CiB conference in May.

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