Three stories leaders should tell during uncertainty

Executive overview

Organizations are emotional systems first, yet leaders keep feeding them data. During uncertainty, people need stories — not data — to find their footing.

David Hutchens frames leadership storytelling around three needs every organization has during crisis: continuity (what stays the same), novelty (what's new), and transition (how we're changing). Each need maps to a distinct type of story.

The core insight: stories don't just communicate values — they make people feel them, which is what drives action.

Continuity stories: anchoring identity

• Tell when people ask: "What can I count on?"
• Goal: reinforce the unchanging core — values, founding principles, identity.
• Origin story: something true at the beginning, built into the organization's DNA.
• Value story: a time the organization stuck to its principles despite a real cost.
• "At our best" story: a vivid example of the team doing what they do well.
• Always end by explicitly connecting the story to the present: say out loud what the story means — audiences won't draw the conclusion themselves.
• The Patagonia/piton example: Yvon Chouinard killed his best-selling product to protect the environment, then innovated his way back — the story closes with "that love for the planet will never change."

Novelty stories: making the future real

• Tell when you need to spark curiosity or challenge current behaviour.
• Problem: the future hasn't happened — so how do you tell a story about it?
• Option 1 — reach outside the organization: find a world very different from yours and ask "what if we had this?" (Steve Denning's Zambia story at World Bank: a health worker in one of the poorest countries accessed CDC knowledge that World Bank — with all its expertise — couldn't provide. "Imagine if we were in it.")
• Option 2 — positive deviance: find a team inside the organization already doing the new thing and surface that story. "Raj's team in Denver did something counter-cultural — imagine if everyone did this."
• Option 3 — bridge to innovation: show how a solution from one context was applied in a new one. Makes innovation feel achievable, not abstract.
• Stories work where elevator pitches fail: pitches stay in the brain; stories move people into emotion and empathy.

Transition stories: documenting the learning

• The most important and least-told story type.
• Tell during change: "We're getting from here to there — here's what that looks like."
• Failure as asset: describe a thing that didn't work, what it cost, and — critically — what you now know that you didn't before. Turns sunk costs into knowledge assets.
• Eureka story: tell problem-solving as a mystery. Show the dead ends, invite the audience to guess, reveal the elegant solution. Lets the team see the organization thinking. ("We tried X — didn't work. Tried Y — didn't work. Then Jerry said...")
• The 21st century competency: learn, unlearn, relearn. Transition stories are proof the organization can do this.

How to find and use the stories

• Start with story mining: list story titles, not full stories. ("The time we saved the big account in Phoenix.") Revisit them when needed.
• No fixed sequence — match the story type to the moment and the conversation.
• Numerically, transition stories should be told most; leaders default to novelty.
• You don't need to be dramatic. Telling a story sounds like talking: "I was with a client yesterday and we ran into a challenge..."
• Be intentional about the connection at the end — always state explicitly what the story means.