StoryQuest Blog

Maybe Robert Fulghum is right; maybe all we need to know we did learn in kindergarten. The lessons that we learned from the Tortoise and the Hare and the Emperor’s New Clothes are moral constructs that transcend their fable form and become an architectural construct of lessons in our adult life

Carol Mon tells us in her blog “Applying Fairy Tales to Business” folk and fairy tales are full of values and morals we learn through repetition and that as an adult storyteller she sees these lessons applied to the business world.

“Business people see the tales as a frivolous waste of time, they want to learn from ‘real’ business situations experienced by colleagues…”

Mon thinks that the fairy tale/fable language can be translated into big business stories quite easily.

Her favorite example is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

By changing the character of the emperor to the Executive Vice President, the tailors to consultants and the courtiers to direct reports Mon claims, “The consultants fool the EVP and although the employees see it they fear the EVP’s reaction if they speak out against the consultants.”

Of course the result is the same as in the classic tale that the EVP finds he has no ground to stand on because he has a “huge bill with nothing to show for it,” Mon said.

Either way, old lessons from childhood are truly life long lessons that can be easily applied to business storytelling. With a little creativity and imagination we can place ourselves in the shoes of such archetypes as the emperor, the three little pigs, etc… All of our life lessons have already been given to us in-between our ABC’s and nap time.