During a recent run on the treadmill, I was listening to an episode of Tim Ferriss’ podcast, where he interviewed an entrepreneur named Derek Sivers. The episode is definitely worth a listen in full, but there was one tiny piece of the conversation that was so relevant to the Stories Inc. methodology that I had to make note of it.

In this particular part of the conversation, Tim asks Derek how he went about putting together an early employee manual for his company, CD Baby. Derek replies:

“I think we put it on a wiki, but honestly, most of it was just word of mouth, kind of legend. There were a few internal stories…[similar to the] one I had always heard about Nordstrom, where there was a guy who buys a shirt from Sears, and it gets burnt up in a fire. He goes to Nordstrom to return it, and they give him his money back. They have such a liberal return policy that they’ll even let you return burnt stuff from another store.

A legend like that will travel down, and it carries the [company’s] philosophy inside of it. It’s almost like a little story that can replace 20 pages of an employee handbook.

There were quite a few of those [stories] inside CD Baby, especially for the early people who would see the decisions that I was making…or who would get my philosophies from a conversation with me. The early employees in CD Baby really got the company philosophy [from those stories], and then they would spread it to the new people.”

Other people in the gym must have looked at me funny, when I shouted “exactly!” from the treadmill.

It might not be realistic for your company to have its stories replace the employee handbook, but they should absolutely be supplementing it. Consider developing an interactive employee handbook, and use stories to help communicate why the company’s policies are what they are. Policies tend to get forgotten, but stories can last generations.

You’ll get a lot of bang for your buck by including stories in your handbook, but to really maximize the power of those stories, create employer branding content around them and share them with top talent. It’s stories like the Nordstrom one that contribute to the company’s ability to attract top talent in their industry.