Thursday 21 July 2011

Giving your strategy its best chance - Strategic Narrative

In the 200 or so products I’ve worked with over the years, there have been some truly excellent strategic plans developed by the teams involved – cutting insight, opportunities and challenges uncovered, winning strategies innovated to meet them.

However, regardless of the quality of that strategic thinking, undoubtedly the greatest threat comes after their creation – in their capture and communication.

Inevitably it seems, these delicately nuanced arguments get boiled down into bullet points, charts and tables. In doing this, words and phrases that might challenge are replaced with the deliberately ambiguous. Important connections between insights and ideas are ripped apart and clumped in lists or abstract diagrams. Bullet points reign supreme.

We’re left with a strategic plan that is a pale semblance of the thought that went before. To the outside observer it appears to be largely generic and is hardly inspiring to senior stakeholders who must bless it, or to those who must ultimately implement it.

Sound familiar?

There is a better way - it’s called strategic narrative and it means capturing your strategy – with all of the nuances and interconnections - into a strategic “story”.  
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