Participant: What do you think about mission and vision statements? (Laughter)

Larry Prusak: Another category of story is stories about life itself. Now I’m not an expert on life itself. In fact, I probably am deficient in knowledge in this area, given the way my own life has turned out. But very often, stories in organizations are about life, about children, about spouses, about love, about death, about parents. And it’s another category. People learn about these things. You can read Ann Landers. You can buy books about it. But I’ve noticed that most people talk about issues in their lives. 

   So people view the workplace as a place where you can learn about life, or can experience things about life, rather more than in the other venues where they used to learn this. 

   In the past, people would just go to work and come home and maybe talk to their neighbors. Or talk on the green. Or talk at church. Or talk in some civic association. That seems to be waning. So the workplace becomes the place where people talk and learn about little life stories, you might say, and the behavior in those stories.. .