Back to my hair salon.

Sally shows up on time. She gets through two colours and three trims buy lunch, then waits impatiently for the hands on the clock to turn the next four hours until closing.

Carmel makes five minutes to chat to the pensioner who took two buses to get there. She remembers that the awkward teen just started university and forgets to take a break. The clients who ask for her by name are happy to sit and wait until she’s free. The day is gone before she realises it.

The story we tell both as people and in our work is our impact. You might think it’s impossible to make this scale in a big organisation. And yet story is how Airbnb has grown a hugely successful business with a presence in more than 33,000 cities and 192 countries around the world.

The truth is that story scales and in an increasingly connected world business is built on interactions and not transactions.

Image by Ed Yourdon.