Great Grandma's Roast

Stories are wonderful things - especially in business. They're usually told to make a point or to educate the listener or perhaps to evoke an emotion. The good ones are entertaining, easily remembered and easily retold. They're a very effective teaching tool.

And we don't tell enough of them.

They're important to the lifeblood of any organization. Some stories capture a sense of company history. Remember the innovation spirit evoked by early HP commercials with Carly Fiorina standing in front of the shed where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard invented together at the beginning of their partnership? Nowadays you have to search the HP site to find these stories. Like too many stories, they're buried deep in the bowels of the organization.

And untold stories are assets, wasted.

Sometimes the stories are based in historical fact. Sometimes they may even be made up. It doesn't matter. As long as the stories are entertaining, teachable moments, easily remembered and easily retold, they serve their purpose.

One of my favorites is told by my I.T. teams when implementing new processes. Too often, when you ask employees why they perform a function they way they do, the answer is either;

1. We've always done it that way.
2. That's the way I was shown how to do it.

The real answer of course, is "I don't know."

And then we tell this story.

One evening, while helping with preparations for a dinner with his in-laws, a husband noticed his wife slicing the ends off the roast, before placing it in the pan to be cooked.

"Honey, why do you do that?" he asked.

"That's the way my mother taught me to do it." came the reply.

Later that evening at the dinner table, still curious, the husband asked his mother-in-law about the practice.

"That's the way MY mother taught me to do it." she responded.

A couple of weeks later, while visiting Great Grandma, the husband couldn't resist asking again.

"Great Grandma, I have to know. Why do you always cut the ends off the roast before putting it in the pan to be cooked?"

"That's easy dear. My roasting pan is too small to fit a big roast." she replied.

I don't remember who first told me this story, but I've never forgotten it.