Smartmobs friend Alex Steffen of Worldchanging wrote a thought provoking article on ‘backstory communication’.

“How companies tell their backstories is the critical business communication challenge of the next decade“, Alex says.

“There are some practices smart companies should definitely avoid. Lying is obviously at the top of the list, but not much farther down the list is trying obscure negatives by emphasizing the positive. But neither will vague goals help much.

“Effectively revealing your backstory conveys explicit goals about the kind of company you’re trying to be”. “The path to really managing your backstory runs through big visions, hard targets and open admission of shortcomings”.