The big picture:
When they kicked off with Storyforge, third-generation real estate business Zimmerman Companies owned and operated several multifamily properties as well as the beloved Olympic Indoor Tennis Club, and was preparing to launch Versa, a new coworking business. With a history of team members and partners who had stayed with the business for generations, they knew they must be doing something right, and different from their competition – but they didn’t know how to put it into words, nor into intentional practice as they grew their holdings. The lack of clarity was slowing down decision-making , hampering collaboration… and undermining their confidence in growth.
Storyforge uncovered deep insights across all the company’s many stakeholders to help achieve clarity and forge a meaningful story for the business from it. The inclusive alignment work that followed brought everyone across their diverse businesses onto the same page, fostering teamwork and enabling efficient, confident decision making, even when faced with big challenges.
April Zimmerman Katz, owner of Zimmerman Companies, reflected on how story has been transformative for their decision-making process:
”Every decision – certainly every relational decision, employment decision, client decision, vendor decision, any of those things – that just became so much more clear. Any time we were struggling with some kind of a relationship, we’d just run it through the filter. That was just the biggest gift.”
The challenge:
Over years and generations, Zimmerman Companies had successfully grown its business from a legacy in multi-family real estate to include many different holdings, from a local favorite indoor tennis club to an elevated co-working business preparing to open two locations. This family of businesses shared common management, but the varied teams, locations, and responsibilities made it difficult to explain what the parent company actually did.
“It was difficult to talk about it because it felt too big. There were too many things in the picture. To try to explain what I was doing felt overwhelming.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
The problem ran much deeper than surface level communication – the lack of cohesive narrative reflected how siloed each of the child companies was.
“When I joined the company 20 years ago, really each one was very, very siloed. That was just the way that my father ran things. I’m far more relational. I needed it to be better connected, because, frankly, everyone had stories to tell, everybody was dealing with the same things. There was no reason why we shouldn’t be sharing the struggles and the joy and everything about what we were doing with one another. We would celebrate and we would problem solve. I needed it to come together for myself.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
As the company grew and shifted, it became steadily more challenging to navigate change in a way that brought everyone quickly onboard.
“It was like, the tennis club was here, the apartments were all together over there. And then, we were trying to launch a new business, where we were trying to set the tone with a new team about how we wanted to operate. I just didn’t have the language to explain what we’d been doing for decades in these other companies for a new company. We needed to translate what we’d been doing in a way to move forward so we can all benefit from it.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
Zimmerman Companies needed to bring their story to the surface so that they could lead their family of businesses into the future – together.
After working with Storyforge:
Storyforge started the work with Zimmerman Companies by digging deep into who the business served: their stakeholders. They gathered insights not only from employees and team members, but also from their contractors, vendors, members, and residents, and the company’s previously invisible story began to come into focus.
“One of the things that you [Haley] described to us was ‘When it’s just the water you swim in, you don’t know that it’s any different than anything else.’ I think we’d been swimming there for a long time, but didn’t know how to talk about it. So when you came in and were asking everyone about their experience in working together with us, it really validated everyone. To this day, I remember some of the things that some of our vendors said about us.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
The process of forging Zimmerman Companies’ story was deep and meaningful, but also energizing for the whole team.
”[The insights] got everyone super excited talking about the project. Instead of it just being ‘the air we were breathing,’ it really started to give it form and function. It became really fun. The leadership team that was involved became really close as we were trying to work through this. We were just hearing so much valuable stuff, all the way through the organization.
It validated the work that we had been doing that we didn’t really know we were doing.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
Unearthing the story of the business was an enormous confidence booster. Not only was it validating for the good work they had already done, but it became a filter for thinking and doing that aligned team members across the organization as they weathered change over time.
“I remember Haley saying, ‘You’re going to have this filter now that you’ve done this work, and you just run everything through the filter and it’s all going to be clear.’ And I thought, ‘That can’t be a thing.’ But it was! And we do! We use it to this day.
Every time [my new company president] and I talk about any stressors, that’s exactly what we do. And it becomes so clear so quickly. And then we strategize what we’re going to do from there about solving the problem – it takes a fraction of the time that it did a decade ago.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
Zimmerman Companies’ story goes beyond internal decision-making. It’s become the central driver behind the way they do business with their clients, and how they tell their unique story.
“We are in the customer service business. On the inside of our organization, we exist in a certain way, so that needs to be reflected out towards our customers in a certain way. What it has done for team members, and therefore how it is reflected to clients, has been transformational.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
How story transformed Zimmerman Companies’ approach to M&A
By its very nature as a parent company in diverse businesses, Zimmerman Companies sometimes has to weather serious upheaval that can come from mergers and acquisitions. Having their meaningful story in place to navigate big change has been useful in three specific ways:
- Their leadership teams enter periods of change all speaking the same language and using the same frames of reference.
“Our expansion has not gone the way I imagined it in the beginning. But frankly, when the hard decisions came or opportunities came, I didn’t have to do it by myself. I had high-level team members who were all thinking about things the same way. We could work together to figure out what the best solution was.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
2. They’re able to bring new people onboard with clarity and efficiency.
“It allows us to bring new people into the organization and clearly share with them who we are, what our expectations are, what they can expect of us, how we’re going to work together, how we’re going to work with our clients.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
3. They use their story as the starting point for clear communication through transformation.
“People don’t fear change, they fear loss. Unless you make it clear what this change is going to mean for everyone and how it fits with our core values, then it’s a big scary thing for everyone, and you just really can’t get where you wanna go. With this tool, I was able to move through some of the most transformational times that really impacted my teams gracefully, and with confidence and with care – because I had the right communication tools. And I am so grateful for that.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
Go deeper: on Storyforge’s impact
- On bottom-up values: “Often leaders think that they need to instill values on the team rather than it coming up the other way, as something that you’re building together. Once we went through that process and everyone participated in helping us figure out what our core values really were – and putting words to those values- then the values really resonated.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
- On confidence: “When I had this structure, when I could put the words to all of the ways that I felt we existed as an organization, I was much more competent, and it was much easier for me to have difficult conversations.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
- On transformation as a leader: “This was transformative for me because it gave me the tools that I needed to be able to lead effectively in a large organization with lots of long-standing relationships and people that I cared about. And, of course, you take that work away, you don’t just leave it at the office. It comes into your life, it helps you understand what’s important to you as a person, as a wife, as a mother, whatever your role is. It just helps you refine what’s important to you and how to talk about it and how to achieve it.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
- On stories that last the test of time: “Frankly, we haven’t changed it. Every year with our EOS project or process, we’ll have our annual review and we look at our core values and we ask, Do any of these need to be adjusted? Does anything need to change? And they just don’t. They absolutely have remained crystal clear for us.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
On working with Storyforge:
“I don’t know why everyone in the world doesn’t hire you. It has made such an incredible difference in who we are as a company. I can’t imagine us being where we are today if we had not done this work with you.” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
“You’re an incredible pleasure to work with. You take this swirling vortex of words and emotions and thoughts and brainstorming and everything, and then you just literally pluck the perfect words right out of the air, and make it succinct and lovely. And everybody says, Yes, that’s exactly what we were trying to say!” – April Zimmerman Katz, Owner
To learn more about how Storyforge can help you forge your meaningful story and get everyone and everything in your business on the same page, contact us by clicking the button below.
