Does your leadership team communicate strategy with consistent and powerful messages or are different signals and signs creating strategic confusion?
Maybe it is time for you and your leadership team to look at your strategic narrative.
Strategic content is important, but it is your strategic narrative that moves people into passionate action. As you and your leadership team share your strategy into the business, spend some time to review and sharpen how you present where your business is going with the people that make it happen.
Your strategic narrative drives execution. When your strategic narrative is floppy, inconsistent or lacks passion, so goes your strategic execution. Leaders underestimate the power and importance of a well-designed and well-delivered strategic narrative.
Look at your strategic narrative like a rope, that guides people, teams and your organization from where they are today to where strategic success resides in the future. Your “strategic narrative rope” is actually three narratives wrapped into one. They are:
The Personal Narrative
Why is this work important to you?
Why are you at this job and not another?
What is the story that got you here?
Where is the personal meaning in what you do?
The Outside-In Narrative
What is the problem, challenge or opportunity in the marketplace that you want to capitalize on?
What‘s the size of the prize and what‘s the purpose in doing this?
The Inside-Out Narrative
Why is your firm or business group uniquely qualified to success in this strategic journey?
What competences and capabilities do you bring to this opportunity?
A rationally clear and emotionally compelling strategic narrative weaves all three of these narratives into a “strategic story” that enables people to play at their best.