Have You Lost Your Stories

Every successful organization, whether a nation, a corporation or an engineering team, is woven together by a collective belief system—a core narrative that not only drives action but also gives meaning to its existence. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, all is impermanent. Both stories and organizations go through a lifecycle of formation, stabilization, decline, and emptiness—what in Eastern philosophy is described as 成住坏空. When an organization's story reaches the end of its natural life, what's left? The ashes of obsolescence or the fire of rebirth? * Buddha's Finger and the Moon: The Risk of Mistaking the Format for the Essence When organizations detach from their original narrative, they replace the profound wisdom of their stories with bureaucratic rigidity. The core story, once the driving force, becomes an overlooked artifact. The real essence is lost, just as people focus on Buddha's finger instead of the moon he's pointing at. * The Lifecycle of Stories Stories follow the same impermanent nature of entities. Stories are formed, they stabilize and become foundational, eventually decay, and ultimately become cliche, enter a phase of emptiness or obsolescence. Great empires like Rome or the Tang Dynasty in China rose to prominence through powerful narratives but fell into decline when those stories reached their natural end. * Holding onto the Past Some organizations, sensing their decline, resort to hindering competition rather than fostering innovation—patent wars, litigation, and other tactics to stifle the rising tides. But history cannot be halted. Organizations must recognize when their core narrative has run its course. Clinging to the past is akin to resisting the natural order of things—a futile act. * Be The Phoenix The only way forward at the end of a story's lifecycle is transformation. Much like the Phoenix, which burns itself to ashes only to be reborn, an organization needs to dismantle its outlived narrative to make room for a new one. Apple, on the brink of bankruptcy, rekindled its founding spirit of innovation and essentially rebirthed itself in the mobile phone era. The "Day 1 Spirit" is essentially a reincarnation of an organization's core narrative, adapted for a new age. * Embracing Impermanence The journey of an organization and its core narrative is one of constant change. Recognizing the impermanent nature of stories and being willing to let go of them when their time has come is not a sign of defeat but of wisdom. The organizations that acknowledge this cycle are the ones that stand the test of time. In a universe governed by impermanence, the only constant is change. Organizations that embrace this philosophy, not by clinging to the ashes of their past but by rising anew from them, are the ones that will etch their names into the echoes of history.