Every business has a story – but what story are today’s most ambitious companies really living? The Dreamers is an interview series exploring how senior leaders understand the deeper narrative behind their work and how it shapes the way they lead – through the lens of the Human Story of Business framework and its four archetypes.

On the morning that we spoke, Marc Kaiser’s son had just had his braces removed. “This is not just a bit of ceramic and metal being taken out of your mouth,” Marc told him. “It’s a transition into a new narrative.” His son texted back after the appointment: “You’re totally right – I already feel so much more confident, like a different person.”

That, in miniature, is Marc’s work. As Deputy Head of Global Corporate Communications and Philanthropy at Straumann Group – the Swiss company that has led the world in dental implants for decades – he uncovers the larger narratives that were always there, waiting to be noticed.

We spoke to him about walking around elephants, warm blankets on cold nights, and why a dream is really a bridge. 

Where do you find inspiration?   

I love fiction and literature. I read a lot of historical fiction in my spare time, especially around the Napoleonic era – not because it’s about war, but because it’s about people telling stories which go beyond their pure individuality. Narratives create this belonging and purpose and contribution, which goes, at the end of the day, to the biggest meaning of your personal life. People bring in everything they have to fight for something bigger than themselves. 

It’s also about charisma. A good storyteller is someone who embodies the narrative, rather than merely communicating it. People often think that if they get a printout of a good narrative, then they’re a good storyteller. But a strong story really comes to life when you embody it – and you see that in these historical figures. 

I really believe that a good story is more than making reality prettier. It’s about making complexity inhabitable. And that needs your personality as well. 

How did your career lead your here?     

Often it was driven like an accident. I always landed up exactly where I’d said, “I don’t want to be in insurance, and I never want to be in finance.” The universe is very strong at listening to what you don’t want. So be careful about that.

What really fascinates me is my role as a travel guide in these organisations. Organisations tend to observe their own elephant in the room from the same direction, the same perspective, for decades. It’s fascinating when you start to listen to the individual stories and invite people to walk around this elephant a little bit – suddenly new rooms open up, and you can start to connect dots.

I’m a strong believer in the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who observed how children play and how they learn. If they’re in a state of flow, they have a huge capacity to unlock in terms of creativity and energy – and a lot of it is driven by narrative. Helping people find their joy in their work, and meaning in what they’re doing – and this goes beyond the buzzword of purpose – is really fulfilling work. I’m a strong believer that life should be enjoyable, also in corporate environments. 

What role do you play in Straumann’s story now?  

My role is really to bring these untold stories alive. The organisation I work for is tremendous – strong culture, super innovative, a market leader for many years, great customer stories. But these are just dots, and they have not been connected yet. To make this picture emerge – that’s what I like to explore with the organisation.

It takes a bit of patience. It’s an education job too – making people dream of something bigger. Right now, for instance, we’re talking about producing a documentary, which is totally out of the ordinary in this corporate context. It’s about making people brave enough to start telling a bigger story about themselves. I see my role as a sparring partner for the organisation and for people, to explore their own story, maybe in a different light.

Making people dream about something bigger, and making it accessible, tangible – that’s the huge task of this travel guide and of storytelling.    

Has there been resistance to that way of thinking?   

Obviously, an organisation like ours has tremendous momentum in operations, sales, revenue growth. It’s very marketing-driven, thinking in quarters and sales campaigns – everything ultimately has to land in revenue. With narrative, it needs a bit more patience.

But in terms of a return profile, it’s very attractive, because you hit many stakeholders with one narrative. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time, and it becomes super powerful. Take the documentary idea. It will be a tremendous moment of pride in your own organisation for employees. It will open up a perspective on your own business to a broader audience, which you couldn’t access before through a marketing campaign. And you’ll be more attractive to investors and journalists, because they think: wow, if you’re able to talk about the market and not about yourself, then you really have to be a market leader. Because that’s what you expect from a market leader. 

There’s a multitude of benefits, but it takes time, patience, confidence, and a certain act of bravery in an organisation. But it’s very rewarding when the organisation and the C-level trust you a bit on this travelling experience.

We believe every business is living one of four stories. Which is Straumann living in?    

My observation, independent of the business I’ve worked in, is that a business doesn’t tell one story. It’s multiple stories coexisting simultaneously. There’s the legacy story, where people are really proud of where they’re coming from – it’s about history, identity and achievements. There’s the monster narrative, which is always there – the threats, the competition, disruption, the huge uncertainty we have right now. And there’s always, hopefully, the hope story, where people talk about opportunity, future possibilities, renewal.

The key thought is that it’s not about silencing one story. The CEO who’s running the hope story might say, “Let’s silence this monster story, this legacy story – it’s hindering me.” But the goal is to help these stories coexist and understand each other. I truly believe that a strong future needs a strong past. The future needs to accept the past, and the past needs to accept the future.

For us, there are certain elements of rebirth in it. We’ve had this market leadership in implantology for decades – known for innovation and excellence. The quest we’re on now is about how we can go beyond these traditional products, beyond these initial successes. It’s an evolving identity: from implantology – the producer of these little screws you have in your jaw – to an orchestrator of digital dental healthcare. It’s very difficult to shut up an old story and start a new one. You have to interweave them – to let these stories intimately talk to each other. 

What stories do you return to?      

A good story is always like a warm blanket on a cold night. I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter – just today I was quoting Voldemort in a business environment, and people gave me irritated looks, but then I got some smiling faces as well.

These very traditional hero’s journeys are just heartwarming, and you like to stay there a bit. They give you confidence that maybe patience is an asset, and certain things need time to evolve. Facts normally run faster than people recognise them.

Narratives and storytelling are not there to simplify complexity – I think that’s a euphemism. It’s about really making complexity inhabitable. And about being fascinated by complexity, because it has huge opportunities as well – it’s not always a threat. Personally, I like to read these warm blanket stories. That gives me peace of mind.

How do stories cut through where numbers can’t?    

In a former organisation, we had a challenging situation talking to investors. We said, okay, let’s do something totally different – let’s tell the story with a metaphor. You might recall from childhood those cross-section pictures where you could see a cruise ship, a little bit like Where’s Wally, everything buzzing around. We illustrated the full strategy with a cruise ship metaphor. It was just one page, in a capital markets presentation.

There was a lovely reach-out from a large investor in the US who said, “Look, guys, you did something amazing. Thanks to you, I can finally explain what I’m doing at home.” That’s super powerful, and it goes beyond key figures and numbers. I told the CEO: here we have touched hearts, not minds.

This is how we were all socialised: we were told stories which have a huge complexity but were easily digestible. It’s how we learned about values, about good and bad. An image speaks more than a thousand words. But people say, “That’s too simple – we have to run 100 slides with a lot of numbers.” That doesn’t tell you a story. That’s maybe just telling people that you’re smarter than them. If you do something which is fun, which connects with how people have learned in the past, that can be super powerful. And it’s fun. 

Find out more about the Four Archetypes of the Human Story of Business here.