Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

This is part five. It’s also the final part. In part one we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). In part two we discussed the Value Network (Who), and in parts three and four Strategy (How). In this final part we get to the heart of story, Vision (Why). We’re almost to the end. I promise.

Vision

Your strategic vision should serve as an anchor point for everyone to rally around. Human beings are curious creatures. There are people who will follow direction without much question, but without motivation you don’t get their best. There are lots of different things that motivate people to various degrees. While it’s true that a certain amount of motivation is personal, it infuriates me when I hear phases like, “we want people who are self motivated.” This is the difference between a manager and a leader. The manager is lazy and wants others to find their own motivation. The leader understands human nature and provides an environment for motivation to take root. Strategy is about leadership. The strategic vision is your main avenue to motivate and inspire. It’s your opportunity to capture hearts and minds.

How do you turn strategy into a tool for motivation? Story. This whole series has been leading towards telling the story of your strategy. We’ve talked about what (theme), who (characters), and how (plot). Now we’ll talk about why (story).

While you’ll use parts of your overall vision for different purposes, your strategic vision should consider the following:

• Paint a picture of what the world will look like after the strategy has been executed.
• Set the context of your story.
• The key benefits of that future state.
• The major opportunities and challenges along on the journey to get there.
• It should be a simple view (vision) that everyone can understand.

I want to call out the first and last bullets, as the main reason for communicating strategies through story. The three in the middle; context, key benefits, and major opportunities/challenges, are all components of your story telling. The view of the end state (first bullet) is your overall vision. It may include technical and operational details needed for decision makers and people who need to execute strategies. The simple view (last bullet) is the true rally point for motivation. This is the vision you share broadly to build excitement. It should be a story that anyone can tell and understand. It’s the story of us not me or you.

Theme

In part one we discussed the notion of turning your larger goal into a theme for your strategy. Your theme acts a your through line. It’s a way to validate your strategic vision (story). Test the elements of your story against your theme. Do they re-enforce each other? If not, then why not? The theme doesn’t ring true to the goal? Adjust the theme. If the theme is right, then dig deeper into why your story isn’t following the theme.

In traditional forms of story telling, the author may find that through the telling of the story the theme they wanted to focus on has changed. When we’re telling the story of our goals and strategies, we have less latitude. While there is latitude, in how we get there, we don’t get to throw out the goals if we don’t like them. The theme doesn’t fit your narrative? Tough. Dig deeper and figure out why? If you truly feel that the goal is wrong then seek to understand it better. Who knows, you may be able to influence the direction. However; if you really can’t reconcile things, chances are it’s because you’re telling the wrong story. You may be telling the story of a different goal then the one in front of you. Raise your voice. Goals come and go over time. Use what you’ve learned to impact the next set of goals. If you find that your story falls more in line with a different goal, then share that knowledge. Pass it on and get back to the drawing board on the task at hand.

Another reason for feeling that you’re story has missed the theme is that you’ve surpassed the original goal. When you approach your strategic vision through he lens of story telling, it isn’t uncommon to go down the rabbit hole. The typical strategy has a three year shelf life. When you truly connect with a vision you may be seeing the next steps past that three year point. One test of this is to revisit your story with a shorter time-line. If you find you’re on theme after that then you’re in good shape. Separate out the longer vision, but don’t loose it. look at where you need to be in the next three years and let it inform you. You’ll end up with a better strategy. Spin off the longer vision as a side story and start telling it. Get feedback and refine it. You may find you have a chance to fold the two visions together. At the very least you’ll be in a position to influence the next set of goals and strategies.

Character

In part two we touched on personas. These are the characters of your story. There are several fine resources that can help you develop personas. I’m not going to cover that here. The internet is your friend for that. I do want to touch on the different types of character functions that can come into play in your strategic vision.

A few things to keep in mind about characters:

1) Try not to make supporting characters too flat. Even in the briefest encounter you should be able to find one thing to make that character distinct and add a little depth.
2) We’re telling very short stories here. The fewer character the better. Can you consolidate two characters into one? do it.
3) I’m only covering the bare minimum here in terms of character functions. There are many books on the topic of character. This list is to get you started and thinking.

The Protagonist

Every good story has a protagonist. Look back through your persona list. Is there a principal persona you want to use to convey your story? Someone who can be a vehicle for your theme? It doesn’t diminish the value of the other personas you’ve developed. It creates a way for your audience to place themselves in the story. It builds empathy and leads to motivation. This was true for ancient Greeks, and it’s true for us.

Exposition

These are characters provide our protagonist with the information she needs to reveal the theme. They tell us things we need to know and provide context.

Disruption

These are characters who move the story forward. They may bring a challenge or reveal something that changes where we’re going. If an exposition character is there to set context, the disruption character is there to change the direction of the story.

Note that the disruptor doesn’t need to be an antagonist. They may be there to support the protagonist, but through them some plot point happens that changes the story.

Assistance

Similar to exposition character, but the assist character moves the story forward through actions. They may provide a service, give a helping hand, or save the day.

Plot – Weaving Story into Strategy

We covered the elements of plot pretty thoroughly in the strategy sections. When it comes to turning the strategy into plot, I want to touch on a few considerations to keep in mind as you craft your story.

The Starting Point

think about where you want to jump into the story. In the strategy section we developed our strategies to “Get medical supplies from point A to point B.” It would be tempting to start our story at the beginning. We could. But what if instead we started our story at the point where the team hits rough weather. We could even elevate the situation to a blizzard conditions. Right off the bat our story is more compelling. We’ve raised the stakes, and have a better chance of engaging our audience.

Rhythm, Polarity, and Turning Points…

Oh my. There’s a lot to unpack there. First, I’d like to suggest the book “Story” by Robert McKee. Wile his focus may be screen writing, he covers much of what I’m talking about here in far greater detail. Here are a few things to wet your appetite.

Scenes: Every story has scenes. It sometimes surprises me when I see strategic visions that ignore this. They tend to weave the narrative into one continuous scene without depth or rhythm. “Of course we have scenes. We broke it up into separate tasks and locations.” Fail. Just moving people form place to place and having them do different things doesn’t make it a scene break. If each action is building to the same turning point, then it’s the same scene.

The Turning Point: Each scene needs to have to have a point where things change for the characters and moves the story forward. Things will no longer be the same after this. The turning point usually signifies a change in the polarity of a scene as well.

Polarity: Each scene should start with either a positive or negative charge. No matter which charge the scene starts with, it needs to end with the opposite charge. If it starts on a positive, then it needs to end on a negative. How positive? How negative? that’s where rhythm comes into play.

Rhythm: Every story needs to have a rhythm to it. Emotional highs and lows. These are different than our polarities. of positive and negative. Both positive and negative polarities can be emotionally charged to various degrees. it’s these degrees that lead to the rhythm of the story and scene. Normally a story starts in a neutral position. The world is status quo. Then something happens to raise the stakes, taking it higher. Every scene will play out as a series of steps with these highs and lows (ups and downs). Typically a scene will start low and raise to a crescendoed (the turning point), then come down just a bit at the close. Each scene will also typically raise a little higher each time until we reach the final conflict of our tale. The rhythm of each scene mimicking the overall rhythm of the story.

There’s more, but this is a good start. I’ll try to expand on these themes and touch on others such as cliff hangers and hooks in later posts.

Less is more

I once had a writing instructor tell me that you could fit all of the original Star Wars trilogy into just five comic pages. He’s right. The essence of any story can be communicated in a few pages. You want to take the audience on a journey, but it doesn’t have to be a long one to communicate and have impact.

Closing Thoughts

Let’s recap. We’ve taken our goal, “Get from point A to point B,” and identified the main challenges to success. We’ve dived into each challenge and identified a series of strategies needed to overcome those challenges. Finally we’ve put together the major steps needed to execute our strategies. We also related all of this to the elements of story craft. Conflict, plot, and outline. And finally we pulled all of our elements together into crafting our vision and telling our story.

One final note (reminder). While I covered all of this in a particular order, I did so to drive clarity and create a narrative. In reality all of these components work in conjunction. Each affects the other, and you will work on all of them in parallel.

I hope you found this a useful overview.