ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT With one narrative, you can fuel a top employee, set a positive example for an entire functional area, underscore company values, and connect the work of individuals to the bigger picture. This is what makes the good example story indispensable. It’s incredibly versatile and effective. “You have to treat things like quality and discipline as core competencies your organization needs to win,” says Faul. “At Athos, we’re trying to build the most sophisticated strength and conditioning training system on the planet. To do this, we need everyone to know how high-quality our products are and how aspirational our brand must be. If we can’t get this across, it won’t matter how good our product actually is. So everyone needs to be pushing for this all the time.” The stories he and his fellow executives tell are about people who believe every tiny detail matters and act accordingly. The people who are immediately responsive over email to customers. The people who think through more graceful packaging solutions. The person who decided to use a certain color thread in Athos’ garments to give them their premium look and feel. These stories get told repeatedly over email and in meetings, until everyone automatically connects these actions to the long-term vision of the company. #3 THE INSPIRATIONAL STORY That connection between individual employees and the broader purpose of your organization is very delicate and one of the ifrst things that breaks during scale if you’re not very careful. Inspirational stories serve as the glue making sure these separations don’t happen. As a founder, it’s important that you not only invest in telling these stories, but also in your managers learning and being able to do it too. Telling an effective inspiring story starts with psychologizing your audience — and, to an extent, building an audience you know will be receptive to your message. For instance, at Athos, Faul knows that employees are passionate about athleticism, about helping athletes achieve better performance. Many of them have a background playing sports or doing yoga or strength training. He himself was heavily involved in high school and collegiate sports. Based on this knowledge, he knows the company’s mission to build better athletes will resonate, and that telling stories about how Athos is actively strengthening athletes will incentivize excellent work. “You want to tell these same stories in your recruiting process and watch carefully to see how they land with candidates,” he says. “This is how you can select for people to enter your mission who you know will care about it. These people will always do better work than those that choose to be there for the money or the brand association, or even because they think the product is cool or the problem is interesting. 28