How to cook a successful Stone Soup culture
By Alexandre Pereira, Communication Coordinator and Stone Soup’s Consultant
Storytelling is as ancient in human culture as humanity itself. It started much before humanity invented language and writing. When the first humans wrote their stories in a cave and used their hands for a kind of mixed communication and ritual purposes, to mark the places they lived as a community, or to celebrate their victories and milestones.
Today storytelling is a powerful communication tool in different areas of human activity. Storytelling is not (just) about entertainment; it is a powerful and relevant community-building, an essential branding and communication tool. In the context of internal and external communication, it can bring powerful leverage reinforcing a strong company culture. In Stone Soup Consulting, it’s an important support means to help connect consultants, based all over the world, working remotely and assuring alignment with the organisation’s purpose, values, and mission, fostering a sense of belonging and community.
Why are humans still getting together “around the fire”, and in our case, around the “Soup”, to share their experiences, achievements, successes, or lessons learned from their failures?
Storytelling is deeply inscribed in human DNA, a key element of our communication, as a way to bring emotional connection, share values and beliefs, inspire actions, and also partake in knowledge. In a community working remotely, this becomes crucial to generate these connections, to build up trust, confidence, empathy, collaborative spirit, feedback and “love (quality feedback with kindness and empathy).
So why does Brand Storytelling matter in the building process of a company’s culture?
Empowers emotional connection: Brand stories have an amazing power to connect and evoke emotions and create deeper connections among the community. These stories transcend the mundane day-to-day tasks and help all stakeholders see the bigger picture and their role in it.
Sharing values and beliefs: each organisation, profit, or non-profit, has a uniqueness in their values and beliefs. Through storytelling, abstract concepts become tangible and relatable, making it easier for all, from partners to stakeholders, to embody them.
Inspiring Action: An engaging story is a powerful way to inspire and motivate all levels of an organisation. It can drive action, aligning personal goals with the organisation’s objectives.
Knowledge Sharing: as a continuous learning process, stories are an excellent medium for sharing experiences. They can be used to share lessons learned, best practices, and even inspirational tales.
I can connect these ideas described above, with some stories that remain alive from the projects I’ve collaborated with in the last years; rescuing a personal story precisely twelve years ago, when I lived in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, (Spain); it was a tapas’ circle* where I was sharing this inspirational story, about the “stone soup legend”, without knowing the universal aspect of it. When sharing it with another storyteller from Uruguay, she immediately recognised that story. From that time till now this raised my curiosity, and I started to investigate it. I found out there are hundreds of stories around the planet that become an archetypal story and that have inspired many organisations and brands, That was the case of Stone Soup Consulting, as the Stone Soup legend, in its essence, represents the company’s values of collaboration, Honesty, Integrity, Inclusion, Diversity, Innovation, Responsibility, Accountability and Transparency.
I see the main takeaway from this story as the power of community involvement and contribution in creating a rich and successful brand story. These diverse contributions fulfil the brand’s storytelling, raising awareness and making a positive impact on our planet Earth.
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* In Galicia (an autonomous region, of north Spain), it is very traditional for people to gather throughout the day to share a ‘tapa’ (a small piece of bread with toppings like cheese, ham, or other delicious ingredients) followed by a ‘caña’ (pint of beer) joining around a table with friends, usually accompanied by a good story.
