Why smart companies question their own story

Does it make sense to start before you are ready? Should you take a small step now, or plan the perfect business approach tomorrow? Do others believe what they see you do repeatedly? Should you rely on the story your company tells? Is the only thing that matters for business success what you do? Is strategy an exotic ambitious goal, or what happened yesterday?

Think it, or just do it?

“Behaviour is a cause of behaviour. The more you do something on a probability scale, the more likely you are to do the same thing. And so, if you really want to get out of your situation, or you want to do it differently, there's a couple things to think of.

Number one, it's in the doing, not in the thinking or the saying. One of the things I always say to people is it really doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what you feel. It doesn't matter what you believe. It just matters what you do. And taking that step, that action step, that behavioral step is a huge part of it.

"Going back to the question, how do people change? Most people think, I'm going to change my mind. What Dewey is saying is, no, no, no, changing your mind is one way toward change. What he's saying is we don't think our way into the living, into the doing. We live our way into a pattern of thinking. So what he's essentially suggesting, what I believe is change is what you do,” says the performance psychologist, Gio Valiante.

“We don’t rise to our goals, we shrink to the level of our systems.” Ambitious intentions are great, sometimes they are inspiring dopamine hit, a way to get people fired up. But what really counts is having those practical reliable simple systems in place.

“There's an ‘everydayness’ to excellence,” says Valiante.

Don’t get too comfortable

One school of thought of geneticists is that one of the main functions of the human brain is survival, being able to reproduce, passing on the genes to the next generations.

Companies are the same, they just want to survive until next quarter. Catch is, survival is not a very high state of existence. Would you prefer to eat a tomato that just survived?

Understandably we gravitate toward being comfortable. But being contented, relaxed does not lead to pushing the envelope performance.

Regressing toward the mean is statistically inevitable. But leading edge performers are always challenging the status quo, seeing what others missed and questioning fundamental assumptions. By 2046 in Kenya, most of todays market leaders will have faded to a mere shadow of their former selves.

Half have disappeared

Over the past 20 years, the Fortune 500 - that ranks companies by annual revenue - has shifted from traditional energy and heavy retail to software, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence. Over 50 percent of the companies on the roster from two decades ago have vanished through bankruptcies, mergers, or steep drops in revenue, while tech giants now drive unprecedented market concentration.

Intangible value now matters. Corporate worth has shifted from physical inventory and oil reserves to software, intellectual property, and digital ecosystems.

Does your story matter?

"We put customers first," "Our people are our greatest asset," or "Innovation is in our DNA." Every company and development partner simplifies reality into a compelling narrative. While reflecting genuine intentions, these flowery statements often overlook internal trade-offs, constraints, or inconsistencies.

In a counter intuitive way -- it is often not smart for managers and staff to uncritically believe the official corporate story.

Corporate narratives are designed to serve several purposes simultaneously: inspire employees, reassure investors, attract customers, and protect the organisation's reputation. Those goals are legitimate, but they are not always the same as providing a complete picture of reality.

The most perceptive managers learn to distinguish between the organisation's aspirations and its day to day reality. A dose of healthy scepticism is valuable:

Incentives matter more than values

Organisational behaviour is shaped less by what executives say than by what they reward. If promotions depend on not questioning the boss, or primarily on meeting quarterly financial targets, employees quickly learn that those metrics outweigh other stated priorities such as collaboration or innovation.

Like individuals, companies describe themselves as they aspire to be, rather than how they consistently behave.

Wise managers ask, "What actually happens when resources are scarce or deadlines are missed?" Those moments reveal the true culture.

Reality changes faster than messaging

Seductive corporate stories risk becoming myths that discourage questioning. Employees begin believing "our customers will always stay loyal" or "our business model cannot be disrupted." History shows that many once-dominant firms underestimated change because they believed their own story.

A strategy announced six months ago may no longer fit current market conditions, yet organisations continue communicating the original message.

Success lives more in what you do in the next 5 minutes, not in your feeling about the next 5 months.

David is a director at aCatalyst Consulting [email protected]