All Hands On Deck: 8 Essential Lessons for Building a Culture of Ownership

Chapter 7. Lesson 5: Use Stories to Reinforce Cultural Norms

"Hang on!" Walt and Corey were sitting side by side in the latest ride, strapped securely into their seats. With explosive acceleration, they were launched into a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors—and sounds.

"Music?" Corey looked inquisitively at Walt, then instinctively grabbed his shoulder harness as the capsule they were riding in corkscrewed through a burst of the aurora borealis.

"Yes, music!" Walt shouted. "Isn't this great?" The spacecraft hurtled onward, and Corey waited for his stomach to settle back into the accustomed space in his anatomy before nodding in agreement. "Yeah, Walt, great."

"That's Toccata and Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach, as orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski. You've seen Fantasia, haven't you?"

"I think so, when I was a kid."

"Well, right now you are 'in' Fantasia. Oops, hang on; here we go again." The ship lurched forward and to the side, and Corey felt as much as he heard the music change, now becoming dark and wild. The craft stretched over a landscape scarred by volcanic lava flows. Corey recognized the powerful pulsations of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

"Fantasia was the first movie ever to use stereophonic sound," Walt said with obvious pride. The ride smoothed out. As they flew through the chords of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Corey was astonished at how profoundly a change in the music could shift his entire emotional and sensory presence. "We needed a lot of special equipment to get ...