The Next Narrative Archive
The Silent Key to Success
Quick update: there are 7 spots left for Thursday’s live course about The Strategic Narrative Canvas. Time to register. Recordings and material will be available for purchase after the live session. Let’s turn to today’s message… Suppose we’ve said everything about...
The Choir Effect
Rebecca Solnit's essay on "Preaching To The Choir", illuminated the value of engaging with those who already share our beliefs. In business, the primary assumption behind the idea of preaching to the choir suggests that we often mistakenly assume that our primary...
Crafting Emotional Value
I once helped a client develop a keynote on innovation for a major healthcare company's annual planning retreat. We spent hours crafting the perfect structure for the talk, ensuring every point was clear, concise, and backed up by data and stories. But what my client...
New Course: The Strategic Narrative Canvas
New live course alert! Many of you have asked for this one, so here you go: The Strategic Narrative Canvas: Charting The Course To Success for Your Professional Service Business A 90-minute, free-to-attend live session that I will facilitate live online on Thursday,...
The Dinner Party Approach to Webinars
Webinars are for professionals about what veggies are for kids. One vegetable is good for you, and so is a webinar. Done well, a single webinar will help you: Demonstrate your expertise. Validate it with clients, prospects, your team, and, most importantly, yourself....
Uniting For A Better Future
Bonjour, Here is a recap of the top content I published this past month. Enjoy! 1 - Why I don't use the word “competitor” or “competition.” I wouldn't be surprised to hear you all say that I’m a dreamer or even crazy, but here you go anyways... maybe I’m not the only...
Is This For You?
Who else needs help? A few of you already work one-on-one with me to build a successful business you also love. I am now opening two more spots for Expert On A Mission, my coaching program with the Strategic Narrative method for solopreneurs and independent experts...
Should You Repeat Yourself?
We, creators, often view repetition as boring. However, the truth is that repetition is far more important than we often give it credit for. Narratives are the sum of repeated experiences, knowledge, and insights people have gained through shared experiences and...
Joyful Content Creation: A Simple Plan
You can view content marketing as a burdensome strategy that wastes time and money. Or, you can see it as a chance to grow personally and authentically grow a business based on a narrative aligned with your mission and what your clients want. If that's you, don't...
The Missing Piece Of Your Business Strategy
I always begin with a diagnostic phase when working with a new client. You can see a sample and free version here. There is a skill that I am specifically looking for during this phase: the ability to differentiate your business through the development of a unique...
The Power of Wholeness: A Reminder for Advisors
It’s easy to get caught up in the narrative of our profession. We are expected to wear a professional mask, conforming to the expectations of our clients and colleagues. As a result, we lose sight of who we are and what we truly stand for. We are not just...
In Praise of Customer Dating
Reminder: please join the live recording session of my course, Intentional Service Offerings: Technics to focus, structure, and launch thoughtful professional services this Wednesday, February 22nd at 9:00 am PST. Sign up here. Free to attend/Recording for sale ($100)...
Going Beyond Cosmetology in Strategic Narrative Work
It's not uncommon for CEOs and founders to approach me with their sales deck or marketing materials in hand, hoping to get a quick diagnosis of their firm’s narrative. While these are somewhat relevant pieces to consider, it’s imperative that the diagnostic process...
Intentional Service Offerings: New Course
I've launched a ton of crappy services in my career. But that changed when I stopped guessing and started using key principles for better service design. Next week, I will share my experience with you during my monthly free-to-attend course. Welcome to Intentional...
Why Your Business Needs An Opinion
In business, it’s tempting to strive for a flawless image and invest in the surface level of branding too soon. Instead, I’d rather see you invest first in forging a personal opinion on your discipline and the market your serve. Absent an opinion, your business may...
The Art of Value-izing
Bonjour, Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing this month: 1. Focus Your Value Proposition in Two Words Creativity comes from constraints. So I tried to summarize the value I promise to deliver to my clients in two words. Easier to see. Very valuable. What...
Mastering the Gym of Business: Building a Strong Narrative
Before we jump into today's article, join Meaningful Content Creation this Thursday, January 26th, at 9:00 am PST. Sign up here. Free to attend/Recording for sale ($100) after the session. Watch my intro video and grab your seat! Now, on to today's article… “We've...
Meaningful Content Creation: New Course
Happy 2023 again! Let’s start the year with the good habits we built in 2022: join a free-to-attend MetaHelm course every month! For January, I invite you to join Meaningful Content Creation for Professional Services Firms: stop overthinking and start posting. It’s on...
He Who Has Hope – Welcome, 2023!
In 2023, I hope that: You will be deeply dedicated to your own personal growth We will dialog more I will live undivided They will want to buy more from you Your work will feel more like a mission to you We will see more stories of peace than stories of war I will...
Sometimes, It Sucks
Sometimes, it sucks. Nothing worked as you wanted. You lost the deal. You lost the trust. You forgot to pay on time. You lost your cool. You lost hope. Darkness wins. And that's OK because, like everything else, success comes and goes in cycles. Today's narrative is...
You Can Thank AI For Creating This Opportunity
If you don’t create and publish any new thinking, or if all you do is come up with chip thought-leadership-ish advice with no personality, the kind you find in fortune cookies, then you might soon be in a tough spot. But if you put just a little bit of effort into...
A More Useful Goal
Reminder: join MetaHelm 2022 Wrapped this Thursday at 9:00 am PST. Sign up here. I will look back at a year of development and growth to share with you my pick of the best strategies, tools, and tips to build your strategic narrative and become an expert on a mission....
Your 2022 Wrapped Is Here!
Learn to launch lightly so that you can launch more often. So let’s do it, and let’s have fun! I invite you to join the MetaHelm 2022 Wrapped free-to-attend session on Thursday, December 15th, at 9:00 Pacific Time for 90 minutes. It’s free. It will be fun, and you’ll...
Damn Good Advice ( for people with talent)
Bonjour, Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing this month: 1 - Telling isn’t always advising Everybody agrees that enquiring is more important than telling if you want to help someone change. But very few people practice this art like Rick Torseth. He...
Expert On A Mission
Many professionals say that they have a mission. Most of the time, they refer to the fact that they've developed a mission statement because… in business, you have to have one. So it’s a standard business practice to have a mission, a vision, and values carefully...
Do You Need Cash?
No bankrupt company ever changed the world. To have an impact, you need cash. And rumor has it money is tough to get these days. So, what's your biggest hurdle to getting it? Many times: yourself. If you're having trouble asking for money for your startup, your...
The Courtship Never Stops
If I could only pick one thing I am thankful for, it would be my marriage. The day I married Deana Wiatr, I won the lottery. I am blessed with a fantastic wife, and thanks to our 20 years together, I’ve also learned to build many other successful long-term...
How To Power Through The Storm
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. Running a transformative business is learning how to survive white waters. You can power through the storm by building narrative power for your business. Narrative power allows you to shape norms and values in your business...
Dig Deeper
Don’t lie to yourself. To get in shape, cool new sports clothes will not replace discipline. A new logo will not change how you lead sales calls. A one-day offsite will not fix your team’s long-time alignment problem. The surface level is just the beginning of what it...
Strategic Narrative Essentials #3
What are you doing next Thursday at 9:00 am PST? I am inviting you to my free monthly Strategic Narrative Essentials course. Learn a new way to build an authentic and inspiring business. It is Thursday, November 17th, at 9:00 Pacific Time, for 90 minutes. You can...
Are You An Optimist?
Here are 5 things worth sharing from last month. But first, let me ask a few questions: 1 - Are you building narrative power? Narrative power is your company’s ability to dictate organizational and market norms and values. It’s how you mobilize people to work with you...
Let People Improvise
If you want to solve complex problems really fast, there is something to be said about letting go of control and letting people improvise. If your company culture is all about scripting everything and improvisation is new to you, it may look like chaos in the...
Know What You’re Up Against
You won't win the race just because you have the fastest boat. You will also win because you know more about currents and headwinds. In fact, your knowledge of the elements is so indispensable that if you have a slower boat, it can level the playing field and make you...
Share Your Vision More Often, Publicly
Here is one of the 12 questions of the Narrative Power assessment I recently published: “How often do you appear in public to share your vision for the future and call people to action?” It’s easy to believe that once you’ve published a vision statement, for instance,...
Strategic Narrative You
Who needs help? In recent weeks, several people in my network and on this email list told me they're seeking help to better define who they are as a leader and craft a vision for a personal or entrepreneurial project. I typically work at the company level vs. the...
How To Turn Your Audience Into Participants
If you want to build narrative power for your company, move away from telling cute stories. The "Let's make our business cool by telling more stories" bandwagon left the station long ago. Instead, help people become participants in a movement. A story has an audience....
No Answers Today
Dear readers, Today, I don’t have answers for you. Today, I have questions. There are 12 of them. Will you dare to answer them? To decide if yes, click here.
(Re)Introducing the Strategic Narrative Canvas
In this email, I want to share an updated version of the Strategic Narrative Canvas, the framework I use to help CEOs, Founders, and Business Owners of transformative companies align people and accelerate innovation adoption. Register here to attend my free-to-attend...
The Secret of Not Being a Bore
Bonjour, Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing this month: Project Drawdown, the hottest course ever, a storm of podcasts, 5 rules for practical inspiration, and the secret of not being a bore. 1 - Moving to Mars? Skip this Everybody else, check out Project...
Strategic Narrative Essentials: Part 2 – Free To Attend
Did you miss Part 1 of Strategic Narrative Essentials? Here is your chance to catch up and learn about a new way to build a differentiated and inspiring transformative company. You have something awesome to offer. Great! But is it obvious to people? If you’ve been...
Narrative Power For Entrepreneurs Explained
What is the value of building a strategic narrative for your company? What’s in it for you as an entrepreneur? My most straightforward answer to date: narrative power. Since I started my newsletter in 2020, many entrepreneurs have asked me about the benefits of the...
7 Questions For A More Aligned Company
The City of Seattle has been building more curb cuts in our neighborhood. I am happy to see that. There is still a lot of work to do, but there is progress. Curb cuts make public spaces accessible to people with disabilities. But, in reality, they help everyone. If...
Constantly Work On Your Core Message
So many of us entrepreneurs obsess over figuring out once and for good our company's message. It's an event: "This year, we have to redo our messaging!". Like we have to get our tires changed or our teeth cleaned. But instead of thinking of messaging as an event –...
Why Dr. Robb’s Product Demo Rocks
Dr. Robb Akridge, co-creator of Clarisonic, early pioneer at Sonicare, and one of my legacy clients, didn’t update us much on his work in the last couple of years. Finally, last November, we heard from him when I read that Time magazine awarded his new product,...
Can You Explain Your Business?
Consider this famous Einstein quote: “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” If that quote is accurate, many business leaders and entrepreneurs don’t seem to understand their businesses very well. How many of them? I don’t know exactly....
15 Examples of Transformative Companies
To keep exploring the topic of “transformative agenda”, I thought it might help you to see a list of companies organized per my three types of transformative agendas in What Are You Transforming, Exactly?. So, I started building that list, and it’s below in this...
5 Rules for Practical Inspiration
https://youtu.be/d2Fl4B2O3mU Every entrepreneur I’ve met secretly wishes they could raise their hand to inspire people to do what they want. Like this: Raise your hand and say: “Buy my product.” The customer buys your product. Raise your hand and say: “Come work with...
You: The Last Marketing Strategy
This is a little message to my entrepreneur friends with beautiful branding and no spine. To build a business, we used to be able to scream loud and clear in the red megaphone of branding, marketing, and storytelling. It didn’t matter if the “song” we sang was almost...
Strategic Narrative: New Course – Free To Attend
I am thrilled to invite you to my September online course! This experience is about my overall approach to building a differentiated and inspiring transformative company. If you've been wondering: What is a strategic narrative exactly? Why should I build one? How do I...
Leadership Is Always A Choice
5 things worth sharing: Focusmate, a new online course, weekly insights, my best August article, and where I stole the title of this email Bonjour, Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing with you this month: 1 - Can you reach a “flow” state on demand? Yes....
What Are You Transforming, Exactly?
Writing in a foreign language is a challenge. As an exophonic writer, I’ve often had to go beyond myself to overcome self-doubt and impostor syndrome. To compensate, I do my best to respect English grammar and verify every word’s meaning, sometimes the most basic...
” It Didn’t Exist. So, I Created it.”
In the 80s, computers didn't have photo-editing features. So, the Knoll brothers created Photoshop. Fascinated by technology and art, they decided to develop software that eventually caught the attention of Adobe. Photoshop 1.0 was put on the market in February 1990....
How To Respond With Leadership
Creating alignment happens step by step, one conversation at a time. It can happen faster if, first, you choose to slow down. Remember you always have a choice: jump to solutions, or explore the challenge first. If a meeting looks like it is going to be tense If the...
Are You Optimizing or Transforming?
What is the purpose of your business, optimization or transformation? This is a valid question because optimization and transformation mean two different kinds of strategic narratives. One is not better than the other, but they mean different implications. Optimizing...
Let Go Of Perfection
Here is a common idea among mission-driven entrepreneurs: "My passion is so strong, my solution is so good, and my message is so powerful, my business can only succeed." We all want to show up with the perfect solution to save our customers. But the problem is that...
Steal Like An Artist
5 things worth sharing: pitching can be good, a new course, a model that cleans up, B corps, and more. Bonjour, You and I always steal ideas, which is a good thing. But hopefully, you do it like an artist. This new email format is inspired from… Let me say that...
Creative Pitching: New Course – Free To Attend
I’m excited to announce a new series of monthly online courses starting next week. The first course is called Creative Pitching: reclaim your natural abilities to sell your ideas with success, not stress. It is Thursday, August 11th at 9:00 Pacific Time, and it is...
Three Ways To Improve Your Pitching Abilities
Here are three easy ways to improve your pitching abilities: practice, practice, and practice. Even more importantly, make sure you practice in public. You will get instant feedback. People's reactions will tell you immediately if you're striking a chord. You won't...
What Do You Do To Be Super Productive?
Who on this list does NOT have any problem focusing and getting things done? Please hit reply and let me know. I want to know what you do to fight procrastination, get things done, and win the day every day. I ask because I’ve observed that one of the biggest hurdles...
Do You Have To Hate Pitching?
When you’re a kid, you pitch. You pitch all the time. When it’s time to go to bed, you know exactly what to say to explain why it’s too early. You just know it. When you want to play, there is nothing that will stop you from selling to your friends the new game idea...
Many Stories. One Narrative.
Open a book on business storytelling, and you will be told the tale of the only story you need so you can hook more people to your marketing and sell more stuff. Open another book, and you will learn that there are indeed ten stories you must master to be a great...
Your Leadership Magic
Chris Anderson, the head of TED, writes this on page 242 of his book Ted Talks: “Almost every human born at almost every place and moment in history has had their potential capped by a single fact over which they had almost no control, namely, the quality of the...
Should You Control Your Narrative?
If you don’t define yourself, people will do it for you. And when this happens, it may create problems: Your competition will turn your product or service into a commodity. They’ll say they do the same as you, but better. Influencers will comment on your choices....
Time Perspective
Your narrative is a question of perspective. Where you stand influences what you see, how you interpret reality, and how you behave as a result. Depending on where you are in your journey and when you judge your progress, your perspective may completely change....
Innovators Lead People Through Adaptation
We, creators, innovators, and problem-solvers, love to emphasize the improvement our product or service brings to people's lives. We know how to explain it in detail and want to persuade others to get it by listing its benefits. However, I've noticed that we almost...
Product-first vs. Narrative-first
A few weeks ago, I explained to one of my CEO clients that she should work backward and think of her product as the manifestation of her company narrative. She was working on a presentation for an early-stage conversation with a potentially large client, and she was...
Articulate To Create. Not The Opposite.
At first sight, the two words “Strategic Narrative” may read like this: The communication (through the use of storytelling), of something of high importance. Most people assume that the process looks like this: Step 1 - First, create your plan. Step 2 - Then,...
How To Stand Out
How to stand out? Many of us look for answers to this question, especially in a crowded market. One way to do it is to care more than others are willing to care. How? Show up more. Spend more time and more resources exploring, understanding, and creating. Talk,...
How I Created My eBook, In Full Transparency
My friend and colleague Rick Torseth wanted to know how I created my latest eBook (Strategic Narrative). So, I answered his question on a zoom call and showed him how, with full radical transparency. This call’s video recording is publicly available here on my Youtube...
Courage. It’s that simple.
Someone asked me this week how I pick my clients. My answer was "Based on their courage". I've brought up the theme of courage many times in my past articles. You'll probably notice that it's a recurring theme on this email list; here, here, and here. I've also been...
The First Thing Great Leaders Do
This month I'm starting to work with two new organizations that decided to build a new strategic narrative. The first thing I don't do is to produce new communication. No. Instead, I help the entrepreneurs and leaders. I work with something more critical first:...
Consistent Repetition
How does the professional pianist make the concerto seem so easy to play? Why do you trust the surgeon that she can save your life? What makes the pilot so confident he can land the airplane every time? Repetition. Consistent repetition. What will make your customers,...
One Question To you
What course(s) would you love for me to teach? Just answer what comes to mind spontaneously at this moment. And thank you if you’ve already replied. I would love your help 🙏🏼 as I'm doing a bit of market research about new topics for my online courses. If you need...
Simple Ikigai Equations
what you can be paid for ∩ what you are good at = your profession what you love ∩ what you are good at = your passion what you love ∩ what the world needs = your mission what the world needs ∩ what you can be paid for = your vocation what you love ∩ what you are good...
Beyond Your Business Plan
What would a sailor do without a chart? Centuries ago, sailors didn’t have nautical charts. Yet, some of them embarked on very long journeys to the unknown. They had a mental and emotional “map” toward success and a spiritual compass in the form of a narrative that...
How To Keep Going
The power of “why” is one of the most significant revelations of the past decade. “Why” will help you explore the meaning of your actions. It will take you deep into subconscious territories. Ask five times why and you will explore the root cause-and-effect...
Quick Market Research Question For You
I'm doing a bit of market research about new topics for my online courses and would love your help. 🙏🏼 If you're willing to give me a hand, here is a question for you: What course(s) would you love for me to teach? In other words: What are you most wanting to learn...
How To Speak and Write to Humans
Today’s post is actually not a post, but a video. How To Speak and Write to Humans:https://youtu.be/kBrCKpSnHVc I’m adding short videos to my Youtube channel on a frequent basis as part of my publication process. I’d love to hear your...
The Great Problem To Solve
Business creators are artists. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed.” Honore de Balzac
How To Clarify Your Business Idea
Was there a recipe? Could I hire a scientist? I was happy to try to work with people who would promise that they would somehow “magically” clarify my ideas for me. For a long time, this question was a mystery to me. And I still get it very often as I help business...
Podcast Alert: The Entrepreneur Mastery Lab
Stories engage. Narratives mobilize. Why should you care? Find out in my conversation with JB and The Doctor, aka Josh Blum and Dr. Andre Caruso. The latest episode of The Entrepreneur Mastery Lab Podcast just aired. Right on time for your weekend playlist! On Apple...
Thoughts On A New Definition Of Marketing
There might be a way to lower the pressure that Marketing puts on our businesses. It would be to think about Marketing first as a collaboration with other people to create something better. Traditionally, Marketing is a product-centric activity. Marketing is the...
Articulation Is Curation
Getting clear about an idea doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t think about something, go to sleep and wake up the next day with a clear way to express yourself. No. Getting clear about an idea happens because you’ve articulated many, many times what it is about....
Learn To Rest
If you’ve quit, keep in mind that you can always come back. You’ll just have to call the interruption a break. “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” Banksy
How To Build The Best Company Ever
How to make your company a market leader? Read on. What follows is the ultimate best practice and one of my best-kept secrets: 1 - Gather your leadership team for a half-day session to craft a new purpose and vision statement for your company. Use a proven template so...
Candidate Or CEO, Same Thing
What happens when a presidential candidate and a political party don’t have a clear and strong platform? As a result, they don’t mobilize people, and they lose. What happens when a CEO and her company don’t have a clear and strong strategic narrative? The same...
Repetition
Repetition sounds boring. But repetition is more important than we think. It builds credibility. It creates commitment. It helps us gauge what sticks. It helps people move through change. If you don’t repeat yourself enough, you leave too much room for your...
It’s Your Chance, So Take It
Do you wish more people understood and believed in your product, project, vision, or company? On April 19th, I will open The Strategic Narrative Workshop to a limited number of business leaders who want to fix this problem for good. SEVEN PEOPLE ONLY. This experience...
Beyond Conventional Wisdom
In my latest eBook, you will find a definition of the concept of strategic narrative that goes way beyond anything you may have heard before. Most business people think that building a strategic narrative means making their sales or company presentation deck better....
Be Free: Apple’s “Underdogs” Will Show You How
After surviving a rough pitch and the chaos of work from home, the four scrappy and relatable workers of the Apple ad series "The Underdogs" are back to leave their job and join the great resignation movement. The new episode released a few days ago is called "Escape...
What You’re Not Aware Of
I always ask business leaders who join The Strategic Narrative Workshop what was their biggest "aha" moments during our group coaching meetings. The answer I often get: "Understanding the role of narratives in shaping decisions, even if we aren't actively aware of the...
eBook: Strategic Narrative
This is an email I’ve been longing to send you. Here is Strategic Narrative: A Simple Method that Business Leaders Can Use to Help Everyone Understand Their Business, Get Behind It, and Believe In It. I’ve packed this book with invaluable lessons: Why alignment is...
And We’re Back
I hope you're doing great since my last email. On my end, it was a very productive rest. Some of the ideas I wrote about in the recent months needed a bit more emptiness in my schedule to be appreciated. I'm back with several new things that I'll share with you in the...
We’ll Be Right Back
Life wants me to pause this daily publication for a few days; therefore, you’ve not received anything from me since last Thursday. But don’t go too far, I’ll bring back some gifts for you from my “vacation”. In fact, it’s not really a vacation because I am allocating...
We All Struggle With This
Here is a paradox I see with many business people, including me. We are so clever about our product or service, so expert at it, that we’re almost unable to say what it does in the language of our customers. We speak “seller-ese”. Our customers talk “buyer-ese”. I...
Founders & Mentors
I was very fortunate to be on the Founders & Mentors podcast, hosted by Jared Orr. During our conversation, Jared and I discuss how narratives influence everything. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast. Listen to the episode on Spotify. A narrative is a frame....
A Question Of Love
There is no successful company if people aren’t motivated. So, what motivates us? Fun. And fun is about doing the things we love. Loving the things we create. Loving the relationship we build. Loving to learn. Loving to experiment and make mistakes. Loving the role we...
Imagination
As you start this week, keep the power of imagination in mind. Letting imagination influence the outcome of your conversations, interactions, and communications can be a powerful thing. It looks like Einstein said: “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will...
The Source
Like any art form, Entrepreneurship is about creating what you think is beautiful. So, you have to learn to be confident and sure about what you like creating. You have to figure out what you like making in your own heart, not what you think others will like. If it...
Two Conflicting Narratives
Two conflicting narratives rule our family. On the one hand, we are raising our kids with a school system where the strategic narrative is to create “job-market-ready employees”: Don’t make a mistake, so you prove you know. Follow the rules, so you conform to the...
How To Frame The Opportunity
Building a strong strategic narrative requires framing an opportunity that will benefit all stakeholders, not just your company. Don’t miss this step if you are currently building a new strategic narrative. Using a strategic narrative to launch a project or grow your...
Us vs. Machines
It seems like machines are trying to take over. Will we be able to resist? Machines look for words to count. We look for words that count. "Words should be weighed, not counted." — Yiddish Proverb.
Doomed To Risk
Entrepreneurship may seem like a luxury. It’s often tied to creativity, freedom, and the rewards of success. But for many, it’s also too risky. Entrepreneurship for sure takes you through crazy roller coaster moments. But realize that for many, entrepreneurship is the...
Personal
In researching how to crack the code of innovation adoption, I realized years ago that framing is the most powerful concept in psychology and a superpower for business leaders. Simply put, framing is how you perceive, interpret and communicate reality. We use it to...
Context
Imagine you are sitting on a bench in a park. If I come to you and ask you to stand up, I bet you’re very likely to ignore my request. At best, you might ask me why. Imagine you are sitting as a student in a classroom. I am standing in front of you after the Director...
Whose Job Is it?
Hakeem Adebiyi, CEO of Hands Associates, wanted to hear my thoughts on whose job it is to build a strategic narrative. He shared my answer on his latest podcast episode in a brief video here on LinkedIn this week. As I like to say, telling a story for your company is...
That’s Until…
Suppose you haven't seen it or need to refresh your memory. Groundhog day is a 1993 movie starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors. He plays the role of a weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the annual emergence of the meteorological rodent that...
Losing Your Mind Did Help
A couple of decades ago, I read a book that supported a revolutionary theory that emotions could be as crucial to your success as your intellect. Crazy idea, right? That book was Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence contributed to the...
The Real Goal
By popular demand, let me bring back the following idea: I recently came across a quote from Jonathan Stark that defines the mindset required to build a company like a movement. "Making money isn't a useful goal. Making money is a side effect of improving people's...
It All Depends
We choose everything based on our beliefs. We even choose what we want to believe based on our beliefs. I want to leave you with a quote from Nelson Mandela to help you reflect on how you tend to make your choices. "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your...
Changing The Narrative on Writing
Yes, there is writing involved in the process of building a strategic narrative. But not the writing most of us in business have in mind. Building a strategic narrative is not an act of literature. Instead, it is an act of leadership. In our context, writing is...
Feeling Good
There are hundreds of burger places in Seattle. But Blue Moon Burgers has me hooked. They connect with me not just because eating their Blue Shroom burger with extra bacon is just the most delightful sin I’ve ever committed. They connect with me because they want to...
When The Narrative IS The Strategy
“For the past 13 years, our culture has been shaped by thousands of stories, each one as unique as the last.” This is what you’ll see as the intro of the about video on MOD Pizza’s website. When Scott and Aly Svenson started Mod Pizza in 2008, the last thing the world...
A Hands-on Conversation
Plenty of tips for building your strategic narrative in this resource. Hakeem Adebiyi invited me to the Hands-On Business Podcast to talk about the one thing you need to innovate and create impact. Did you guess what it is? Here is how Hakeem Described the episode:...
For Those With A Leadership Position
How do you build a profitable company that people want to buy from and work with? These days, great products alone are not enough. Just look at how people interact with big brands, small businesses, or even non-profits. We expect something more powerful than a...
Will You Join Us Tomorrow?
The Strategic Narrative Workshop starts tomorrow. Many workshop alumni have discovered that growing an impactful business takes three things: A container A community A commitment I talk about it in this short video. I’ve built the container. There is a community...
How To Draw A Straight Line
How do you draw a straight line freehand? You keep your eyes on your target destination, not on your starting point. You go over your imaginary path several times to have it clearly in mind. Then you act decisively. The same goes for your...
Making Participants
Some companies are more attractive than others. Why? They don’t treat people as an audience. They make people participants. How do you do that? Instead of making your company about your product only, make it about an opportunity that benefits everyone. Focus on the...
Get With Your Tribe
I traveled to visit my French family, friends, and work allies in the last two weeks. And I had no idea how much I needed to get together with them. I mentally knew I needed to visit, but I utterly undermined the importance of getting together with my French tribe for...
It’s Practice Time
The Strategic Narrative Workshop starts next Tuesday, January 25th. This is your chance to move from contemplation to action. Should you register? Why you'll become a pro Let me throw in a quick story. This weekend, my 11-year-old son landed his first backflip on...
The Promise Of Hope
What are we selling? Simply put, a better version of our customers: the promise that they will be better off with our product or service. That’s all. That’s the destination of the journey. But that only works if our promise aligns with their goal. The more aligned,...
Positioning Map
People will place your company on a mental map. And you do the same; we all do the same. We do it for everything: people, places, moments, food, and of course, brands. It’s called positioning. This is how positioning works: you may not keep the mess in your house...
Optimizing vs. Transforming
What is the purpose of your business, optimization or transformation? This is a valid question to explore because optimization and transformation mean two different strategic narratives. One is not better than the other, but they mean different implications....
Oblique Goal
Sometimes, your goal is best achieved indirectly. For instance, the most profitable companies are not always the most profit-oriented. This reminds me of Walt Disney saying, "We don't make movies to make more money. We make money to make more movies." In other words,...
Your Words
Your words matter. They mobilize people. They sell your ideas and your products too. The good ones can be painful to find but powerful to own. Your words are the indispensable foundation for the movement you should build to create more impact. To find them, join The...
D’you Know That You Can Use It?
Showing up with skills and a great idea is just a minimum. You can’t inspire people around you and make things happen with a lukewarm heart. Passion is essential. Fall in love. Get furious. Defend with fervor. Passion is the fire that fuels everything. And when...
19 Reasons To Think Differently
Building a new strategic narrative is very much about daring to think differently. So, what do you do with an idea? Growing your confidence in your own idea is crucial to making it real but can also be challenging. To help you face this challenge, I updated my list of...
The Ultimate Reminder
You are going to die. If you don’t think about death every day, if you don’t remind yourself that one day, you won’t be here anymore, you’re missing a powerful reminder of why your work matters. When you don’t have that reminder, you’re wasting pages in the journal of...
A Powerful Historical Narrative
In 1887, John W. Nordstrom, at 16 years old, left Sweden for the United States. He arrived in New York with $5 in his pocket, unable to speak a word of English. The young immigrant labored in mines and logging camps as he crossed the country to California and...
Not Just Marketing
Here is a costly mistake I want to help you avoid. Thinking of your “strategic narrative” as marketing only is a trap and a dangerous one. This misconception will lead you to view your company essentially as a facade. When hearing the two words “strategic narrative,...
Time For Action
The Strategic Narrative Workshop starts Tuesday, January 25th. It happens online, and when you attend this workshop, you are going to transform the way you, your team, and everybody else think and talk about your business, so your business thrives. You are going to do...
Can You Hear It?
As I was trying to figure out what life wants me to write tonight, I came across this. In French, the words “voix” and “voie” are homonyms. La voie means the way, the path, the direction. It's also sometimes used to indicate the vocation someone should follow in life...
Come As You Are
You already have what it takes to create more believers in your work. It’s you. A few years ago, I got this piece of advice from a great friend and client, who helped me realize that your best argument is always yourself. That’s why so many business leaders invest in...
Happy New Year!
Unlike stories, narratives are open-ended. A narrative tells you how to start something, but you get to invent the end. For instance, the narrative about the beginning of the year tells us we should make new year’s resolutions to change some of our habits. The bad...
One Digit
As I am writing this, it’s still 2021. In a few minutes, we will add one new digit to it. What’s one digit, really? Not much, yet a lot. One more minute. One more possibility. One new habit. One new narrative: the next one. As you’re reading this, you’re on the other...
The Seven Powers of A Strong Strategic Narrative
CEOs and founders who move from telling stories to building a strong strategic narrative arm their company with seven powers: 1 - Differentiation: your strategic narrative is a chance to disagree with your competitors. 2 - Adoption: your strategic narrative frames why...
Why Co-creating Your Strategic Narrative Is Critical
If you feel like you need help building your strategic narrative, look for someone to help you build it with you, never for you. Your strategic narrative is not something you should delegate or outsource. Instead, engage in a process of co-creation that includes...
Opportunity In Disguise
Life brings us countless opportunities to grow. When we work, work out, and work it out. When we create, launch, and course correct. When we say what we are afraid to say. When we take the scary risk to take. But opportunities often look like difficulties, in...
Hopefully
Today, we stop. We make up. We re-unite. We show and receive compassion. We commit to being better. We believe things can be better. We celebrate humanity. Hopefully. You’ve read it and heard it a hundred times in other emails and from other people, once again, Joyeux...
Change To This New Metaphor
At this end of the year, I hope you bring back peace. Because look around, bringing people together has never been more critical. But for peace to be here, you will first need to demilitarize your narrative. And you’ve got a big job. Because so far, business is war:...
How Your Company Survives
If the reports about retail business are correct, you've been shopping more than before online, especially this holiday season. I hope that your customer experience and interactions with customer service brought you joy. If that's the case, you can thank Zappos for...
Why Make Your Strategic Narrative Resonate
Here is a metaphor to explain the superpower you will give yourself when you join The Strategic Narrative Workshop that starts on January 25th. Cymatics is very cool. This is what it looks like. Cymatics is a phenomenon visualized when you coat a metal surface called...
The Magic Of Leadership
Chris Anderson, the head of TED, writes this on page 242 of his book Ted Talks: “Almost every human born at almost every place and moment in history has had their potential capped by a single fact over which they had almost no control, namely, the quality of the...
What To Do This Season To Revive Your Strategic Narrative
Don't miss it. The end of the year is a crucial opportunity to revive your strategic narrative by remembering and reflecting on your company's origin. Your origin story plays a significant role in the foundation of your strategic narrative because it holds the first...
Easy Mode
I worked on something really hard yesterday. Then, around 11 pm, I finally sat down to email you something that I will publish later because I was so tired that I literally fell asleep on my computer and didn’t finish it. I’m sorry. Instead, I should have done...
What A Hard Rock Singer Had To Say About Risk-Taking
So many things need to be reinvented: the way we eat, get around, shop, build houses, feed people, produce energy, teach our kids, build organizations, build teams, manufacture products, etc. The opportunities to start a valuable company are almost endless. Knowledge...
The Question That Sums It Up
In 2021, the most influential question on everything I did about the concept of Strategic Narrative was: Why is the world better off as a result of your company's existence? I stole it from someone, somewhere I don't remember, so I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen...
Success Story: Jason Prothero, ProWorks
When you signed up to this list, I promised to give you concrete ways to take your leadership and your company to the next level. Here is one you shouldn’t miss. I mean it. One of my 2021 accomplishments was to launch The Strategic Narrative Workshop, a training +...
A Christmas Metaphor
Your strategic narrative is like a Christmas tree. If you celebrate Christmas, there are probably dozens of ornaments attached to your tree. Each one tells a different story. For instance, the Nutcracker tells the story of Clara’s dream. The ball with the sunset is a...
Bumper Sticker Mentality
I know; I sent an unusually long email yesterday about a topic that I was trying to explain briefly. But, good news, literally minutes after I sent that email, as I was speaking on John Golden’s podcast, Sales Pop!, almost the same topic showed up in our conversation....
Strategic Narrative vs. Statements
Here is an interesting question that popped in my post-optin survey yesterday and during a podcast conversation this morning. It’s my lunch hour, so I thought I’d take on the challenge to answer part of it quickly. Please forgive the typos and holes if you see any,...
Why Your Company Dies
Yuval Noah Harari explains one of the most potent ideas behind the concept of a company’s strategic narrative in a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Any large-scale human cooperation—whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city, or an...
Now Is The Time
Let me help you plan for 2022 by making a prediction and a recommendation. The prediction: You’re going to start 2022 with new intentions, new momentum, and a great strategy. And, then, as data suggests, about a month in the new year, you’re going to start feeling...
The Website Trap
“A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life-transforming.” Marie Kondo. Similarly, reorganizing the stories and practices internal and external to your business causes correspondingly dramatic...
Two More Grams Of Steam?
TGIF, time to relax. I know you had a long week, but if you have two more grams of steam, you might want to read this all the way through. This is a repeat of my Sunday post about how you could help me and also get a fantastic gift in your inbox on December 31st. A...
Powerful SN Example: Gravity Payments
Here is one of the best strategic narratives I’ve seen in the financial services industry. Dan Price is the Founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based credit card processing company. Dan’s narrative shows up on his Linkedin profile like this: “I want to be a...
Gift Idea
It’s December. If you’re celebrating the Holidays, one of the nicest gifts you can give to people in your team is not yet another gadget with your company logo on it. Instead, give them some alignment. When people work together towards a common purpose, they’ll enjoy:...
Learning From A Rowing Team
I am not a rower, but I used to love watching rowing teams glide on the river in my hometown. The harmony in which they seem to work is always beautiful. Rowing teams are also a beautiful illustration of the power of alignment. They show us how you can always increase...
Success Story: Joy Spencer
When you attend the Strategic Narrative Workshop, you will build a narrative that turns your company into a source of inspiration that few can resist. But don't take my word for it. Joy Spencer, the founder of Reframe To Create, just finished the workshop. She...
Your Favorite Emails?
I wonder if you’d like to help me create a compilation of your favorite emails I’ve written so far. I’ll publish the compendium in a nice format, and I’ll give you a free copy if you do. If you’re up for it, here is my question: What would be your top 1 to 3 articles...
Can You Control Your Company Narrative?
TL;DR answer: You can’t fully control your company narrative anymore, but you can shape how people participate in building it with you. How? Read below and Listen here. To drive the success of their company, CEOs used to control most messages about them. They would do...
What It Takes To Evolve A Tradition
Tradition is the opposite of innovation. When you want people to adopt a new idea or product, be ready to fight for change against deeply-ingrained beliefs. To change the narrative and evolve a tradition, introduce new practices and new knowledge. --- Thanksgiving was...
In Praise Of You
Dear email list, Thank you. Thank you for teaching me to show up every day. Thank you for forcing me to look deeper inside. Thank you for letting me cultivate new thinking. Thank you for letting me grow new relationships. Thank you for believing in me, the way I...
Give Your Team Alignment The Chance Of A Test
Several years ago, I started working with a leadership team that had always prepped their yearly strategic plan in silos, figuring the divide-and-conquer method was the most efficient way to get the thing put together. They’d meet once to kick off the work, then start...
Who You Will Not Be After My Workshop
Last week, I announced that The Strategic Narrative Workshop is back. Here is the thing I promise to show you when you join this workshop in January 2022: how not to end up like the guy with the wheels on the left, exactly. You see, even the most genius idea won't...
The Irony Of Company Growth
When the company is small, you focus. You bring your passion, energy, grit, and constant creativity to pursue a dream. You ground your narrative on the conviction that you can create more impact. You mobilize people. But as the company grows, there is divergence. The...
The Difference Most CEOs Don’t Understand
To grow your company, what's the story you should tell to everyone–customers, investors, partners, your team, recruits, yourself, I mean everyone? I'm asking because the answer to this question is the wildest dream of many CEOs, founders, and business owners who want...
A Narrative Is Not A Story
I was on a call with Klaus today, a German colleague based in Bruxelles who works in the space of technology for aging well–a crucial challenge we’ll all face at some point. We were speaking French, with some English in the mix. I invited Klaus to react to my model,...
What Makes A Product Interesting
Just talking about it more often, more clearly, louder, everywhere, with pictures, with videos, infographics, colors and special effects does not count if all you do is say the same thing as everyone else. What counts is to make it interesting. So, what makes a...
Meaningful Tip, Hopefully
Don’t forget that you’re creating something that ends up changing a bit (or a lot) of at least one human being’s life. Most people forget that their work must talk to human beings. Get meaning into your product and your company so there is meaning to your...
2022 Workshop Released
Do you know what I like about 2022? It’s going to be better than 2021. So I have zero doubt that we’re getting an update with this one. Our phone and computer apps are also getting an update. Automatically. New versions for everything. Now, will your company get an...
What You Will Need As An Entrepreneur
What would a sailor do without a chart? Centuries ago, sailors didn’t have nautical charts. Yet, some of them embarked on very long journeys to the unknown. That’s because they had a mental and emotional “map” towards success in the form of a narrative that they had...
Leaving Self-doubt At The Door And Other Topics
Although I would say that I am optimistic by nature, self-doubt knocks at my minds’ door all the time. But I almost never let it in. It wasn’t always the case, but now it is. Self-doubt affects many people. Maybe you? Innovators, idealist entrepreneurs, and original...
The True Powers “Of What If?”
The next narrative shaping your market or industry will come from someone asking themself a critical question. That question starts with “What if”. “What if?” is most important for helping people align, change, innovate and commit. In a society that overvalues...
The Return Of The Common Enemy
As we're ending Veteran's Day in the US (Armistice Day in France), I'd like to share with you the content of a post I wrote last May. This is my way to show military members gratitude for their sacrifice. I thought exploring a pattern typical of powerful strategic...
We’re Moving From Telling to Activating
Here is a standard and kind-of-old narrative in our business community: great leadership is about telling others what to do in the clearest possible way. In that regard, communication gurus have put storytelling on a pedestal because stories help clarify and provide...
First, Deconstruct The Old
Innovation is a battle between two narratives: the old and the new. If you want to introduce a new idea or product with the goal that we will adopt it, you have to help us realize that the current narrative–aka the current way we do something–is now old, worn out,...
How To Create Commitment
What does it take to make your customers commit to your new and innovative product? Certainly time, effort, and resources. Unfortunately, in some cases, a lot of those. I am currently helping several clients directly with this challenge, and I am also facing it myself...
Fighting Bees
Even the most genius invention won’t sell itself. For people to adopt your idea or product, you have to sell it with zest. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.” Be ready to fight bees for a...
What It Takes To Write Your Positioning Statement
This week, I re-wrote the positioning statement that defines my specialization, and I posted it on my website. Here it is for your convenience: MetaHelm specializes in strategic narrative for established companies. We guide CEOs, Founders, and Business Owners to align...
Using Your Strategic Narrative To Resolve Or Prevent Conflicts
Your company strategic narrative is your most precious asset. Why? Your strategic narrative is the glue that keeps people working together. Therefore, it is indispensable to achieve a common opportunity through challenges and triumphs. To cooperate, our species needs...
Helping People Cross That Chasm
There is a canyon in Nepal that people have been crossing for years by going 20 miles around the valley. What might be a better way? You could help them with a few possible solutions: For example, building stairs to walk straight down, cross the canyon and climb right...
How To Write The Perfect Strategic Narrative
I get this question a lot: Can you help me polish my strategic narrative so that it’s perfect? Yes, I can, both in English and in French. But let’s define what a “perfect” strategic narrative is. “Perfect” means impactful. Not beautiful. First and foremost, it means...
The Talk, And Most Importantly, The Walk.
Let’s say that you’ve articulated an inspiring strategic narrative for your company. And let’s assume that you have an excellent new presentation about it. You and your team are excited to use it externally. Are you done? Well, not exactly. Writing your narrative is...
Your Chance To Stand Out
A standard narrative in business is that storytelling is a skill that will make you a better leader. There are thousands of books, articles, and stories to prove it. We all agree. But what very few people understand is that it’s not your story that makes you win....
The Storyteller’s Job Description
In too many companies, here is the implied job description of the storyteller: Works in the marketing department Makes sense of our cryptic strategy for us Helps us embellish the truth Works on the receiving end of the business processes that spits out obscure jargon...
The Most Valuable Money Moment
Your strategic narrative is never done. But it’s always due. You’ve probably heard me say this before, like here. Some of the money moments when your strategic narrative must have an impact include: Getting investors to back your company Talking to the media Launching...
From The Get-go
A former colleague of mine is an investor in the tech industry. Here is a pattern he sees all the time: Most CEOs focus on making their company solve a problem better than anybody else. For them, it’s all about the product. So, they put all their energy, attention,...
Accept The Offer
The idea of control is attractive. But in times of change, turbulence, and uncertainty (which is almost all the time now), if you control, you will fail. Instead, you have to improvise. To improvise, you have to postpone all decisions until you've first listened to...
The Real Thought Leaders
Your idea is not great because you label it “great”. It will be great when other people adopt it and will deem it great. Your idea becomes great because people welcome it in their minds like they welcome a new friend in their home. Making an idea great is a collective...
How To Make People Care
This is a fundamental question. The answer: we care about what’s at stake. As humans, we need to know two things to decide if we will join you. First: what we would lose if we didn’t join. Without a clear understanding of what we might miss, we may never fully feel...
Again, Will You Be Ready?
A Dear friend of mine reminded me of the words of French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry this morning. So here they are again, followed by a question to you. Will You Be Ready? “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them...
Recruit Yourself Everyday
If you could talk to your younger self about joining your company, what would you say? The first person who should be proud of what you’ve accomplished is you. How do you expect to sell anything, enroll people, grow your team, or get investors to back your company if...
AI vs. AS: It’s Up To You
I know nothing about AI. But I am trying to understand it and the impact it’s already having on all of us. We are building more and more companies using artificial intelligence, so just for that, the subject matters. The narrative about AI (artificial intelligence) is...
Control Is For Beginners
Will your product work? Will your team respond well to change? Will next year be the best? Will you reach your goal? We don’t know. And it might not be worth predicting. How about letting go of control? Control is for beginners. Instead, trust seems like a more...
Four Stories
As I’ve said before, a strategic narrative is a system of stories that you build intentionally to mobilize people to participate in a new opportunity. Four stories; these are the four indispensable stories you need to build a killer strategic narrative: The origin...
Time For The Planet
Happy Monday! I wanted to start the week by sending something positive. So I sat down and let the positive come to me so that it could go to you. And there you have it: Time For The Planet, a nonprofit investment fund that creates and finances companies fighting...
Dig Deeper
Don’t lie to yourself. New cool sports clothes are not going to help you get in shape. A new calendar app is not going to help you be on time for dinner. Your new logo is not going to help much with sales. A one-day offsite is not going to fix your team problem. The...
Musical Interlude #6 – Stromae
Music is back. And so is Stromae. https://youtu.be/P3QS83ubhHE Today, the Belgian musician, rapper, singer, and songwriter returned with a brand new single called "Santé", which translates to "Cheers!" - a timely celebration of the working class. Stromae, whose name...
No More Hesitation
Lately, I've been experimenting with many new things, to the point that I've sometimes caught myself starting to second-guess myself. It takes time to adopt new ideas, even when they are your own. There are days when I could use some inspiration or a pep talk from...
15 Ways To Mobilize People
How do you mobilize people? 1 - Don’t just tell stories. Build a narrative. People will pay for a story, but people will die for a narrative. 2 - Co-create your strategic narrative. When people have their fingerprints on a strategic narrative that they built together,...
Repeat Yourself: What Visionary Leaders do
Aligning your team with your strategic narrative–the ultimate direction of your company–takes time and repetition. But, unfortunately, we underestimate the number of times it takes for people to adopt a new narrative. As Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, Chief Product...
The Strategic Narrative Workshop Starts Tomorrow
Hi there, The Strategic Narrative Workshop starts tomorrow. My alumni CEOs, Founders, and Business Owners have discovered that building the innovation and momentum for their dream company takes three things: a commitment, a container, and a community. I talk about it...
Avoiding Commoditization
If your customers are starting to treat your product or service as a commodity, you have two choices: First, act as the victim and blame the market. Second, take responsibility and try to turn things around. You guessed it, and you know me, how about #2? Firstly, no...
Before And After
To make people adopt a new opportunity, show what the world looks like if you succeed. Paint a picture of the change you want everyone to live. Or take a photo of it. Framing your strategic narrative with a “before and after” shows people what it will look like if...
The Gauge
What do you see when you have a great strategic narrative? First, people take action in the right direction. Second, it gets easier for you and your team to sell. You’re making traction. You’re driving adoption. More of the right people want to work with you. More of...
Who Should Write Your Strategic Narrative?
The process of building a strategic narrative includes writing. Therefore, the critical question is, “Who should do the writing?” Answer = You. Most of my prospective clients assume that I’ll do the writing for them. But I don’t. Some CEOs, Founders, Business owners...
How To Avoid Building A “Me-too” Company
For context: a strategic narrative is a system of stories that you build intentionally to mobilize people to participate in a new opportunity. That's what you will create when you join The Strategic Narrative Workshop. One of the stories of this system is your...
Can I Crash Your Party?
If you are organizing or hosting one of the following types of events: Q&A/fireside chat for your company, conference or industry event, podcast/YouTube interview, in-person/live event, small private session (<10 people), book me for a talk or an interview....
How Do You Translate “Strategic Narrative” In French?
(Note: the next Strategic Narrative Workshop is starting October 12th. If you’re ready to turn your company into a movement few can resist, hit reply and let me know, so you don’t miss out.) A native French speaker recently sent the following question through my email...
Who Is It For?
Today, one of my coaches helped me understand a bit further who my work is best suited for. So I thought you might find value in reading a bit about how I approach that question. I was interested in having this conversation because I always like to understand the...
And Now Here Is A Secret
To succeed, get a coach. But if you are a professional athlete, that’s not so much a secret. You’ll probably laugh at me because, for you, it’s not a secret at all. It’s the norm. In sports, all professionals hire a coach. However, if you are a CEO, a founder, or a...
Engage Vs Mobilize
Stories engage. Narratives mobilize. Loads of workshops will teach you how to engage people. But only one will teach you how to mobilize people. This one: The Strategic Narrative Workshop. Starts on October 12th. Register now. Engage: Transitive verb to attract...
Build A Movement: What Visionary Entrepreneurs Do
This week, a work session with a CEO client on his investor pitch reminded me about the importance of taking the time to understand people's point of view so you can inform your point of view, a design research technic also known as "using empathy." Well into our...
How To Get A Second “Date”
Say you're going on a first date. And the whole thing is about the other person, telling you everything about themself, what they do, who they work with, why their features are the most beautiful, their achievements, their career and the awards they've harvested as a...
Polarize: What Visionary Entrepreneurs Do
Visionary entrepreneurs think of their company as an instrument for change. They focus on inventing, improving, or transforming. But in doing so, they take the risk to come up with unpopular ideas. It's counterintuitive, but when this happens, it's a sign that they're...
Shift Role: What Visionary Entrepreneurs Do
Here is something visionary leaders do: instead of making themselves and their company, product, or project the hero of a story, they talk about you. For them, you are the hero. They shift their role from Luke to Yoda. Visionary leaders position themselves as the...
The Word, Then The Image (With A List)
Everything begins with the word. When I work with CEOs, founders, and business owners to help them build their strategic narrative, we write. We focus on effective oral and written communication as much as we can. As I wrote in an earlier article this week: Your words...
Promo Time
It's always promo time somewhere in the world. TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read): Are you a CEO, Founder, or Business Owner ready to make your mark on the world? Build your strategic narrative the right way, so you and your company can thrive. Transform the way you, your...
Season 1: The End
Have you attended one of my Thursday Strategic Narrative Underground Sessions yet? If not, this morning/today is your last chance. If you’d like to join, register here. It’s free, fun and a little French. Since last April, I’ve shared with you my principles and tips...
Don’t Just Tell Stories. Build A Narrative.
If you want to maximize your impact, know the difference between story and narrative. Unfortunately, most business leaders use both words interchangeably. Yet, the subtle difference between a story and a narrative is massive. People will pay for a story, but people...
Guess Who?
The greatest commercial value is to create value for someone. I have a game to help my clients become more aware of their competitive landscape. I call it Guess Who? because the original Guess Who game somewhat inspired me to come up with it. My game goes like this:...
Reminder
A brief reminder as you start this week with ambitious goals and crucial conversations: Your words matter. They mobilize people. They sell your ideas and your products too. The good ones are painful to find but powerful to own. Your words are the indispensable...
How It All Started: Why It Matters
Traffic is a pain in Seattle. Yesterday reminded me of it. I am lucky enough not to have to drive much anywhere for work. But that’s not the case for my wife. She is a teacher in a school district 15 miles (24 km) from our house. She commutes every day with our two...
What Podcast?–Your Top 30 list
If you replied to my email asking for your favorite podcasts for business entrepreneurs, CEOs, executives, founders, innovators, creators, visionaries, pioneers, movers, and shakers of all sorts—in that case, people just like you on this list–, thank you! The list got...
Measuring Your Good Ideas
When Steve Holmes, a Canadian businessman, needed to decide if he would invest in commercializing the spring-free trampoline, the first thing he did was have his kids jump on it to see their reaction. So, he asked the inventor, Keith Alexander, to ship a trampoline to...
Until You Can Explain It Simply
Consider this popular Einstein quote: “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” If that quote is true, then many business leaders and entrepreneurs don’t seem to understand their business very well at all. How many of them? I don’t know...
Build it, Activate It.
Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about a strategic narrative as a product–a system of stories that you build intentionally to mobilize people to participate in a new opportunity. I may have accidentally reinforced the idea that once you’ve built this system, that’s it....
Human After All
A common narrative about talented artists and entrepreneurs is that their success comes effortlessly. But alas, this is a malentendu. (French, from mal entendu, misunderstood, from mal badly + entendu, past participle of entendre to understand, interpret, be...
Definition & Examples
Here is the #1 question I am getting from you when you join this list. “Hey, Guillaume, thanks for inviting me; sounds interesting, but what is exactly a strategic narrative?” While I go into great detail about this in my workshop, I am also writing a free email...
Lynda’s Opportunity
(Note: the next Strategic Narrative Workshop is starting September 14th. Only a few days left. If you’re ready to turn your company into a source of inspiration that few can resist, so people buy more from you and work with you, hit reply and let me know. Don’t miss...
What Podcast?
Quick question for you: I am researching podcasts for business entrepreneurs, CEOs, executives, founders, innovators, creators, visionaries, pioneers, movers, and shakers of all sorts—people like you on this list. What podcasts are you listening to? Hit reply. I’d...
Write Your Own
Most musicians write their own songs. Most comedians write their own jokes. Entrepreneurs should write their own strategic narrative. Do it yourself. Ok, maybe not alone. It’s good to get help, and you must also solicit the input of your team. But get your hands dirty...
The Fire That Fuels Everything
(Note: the next Strategic Narrative Workshop is starting September 14th. If you’re ready to turn your company into a source of inspiration, few can resist, so people buy more from you and work with you, hit reply and let me know. Don’t miss out)...
Helping Your Entrepreneur Friend – Take II
Imagine that a friend entrepreneur came to you for help and asked this: “Can you help me tell my company story?” What would you tell your friend about how to do that? I already sent this question a couple of weeks ago. Thank you if you already responded. This is just...
How Urgent Is This?
(Note: the Strategic Narrative Workshop starts September 14th. If you’re ready to turn your company into a source of inspiration few can resist, so people buy more from you and want to work more with you, hit reply and let me know, so you don’t miss out.)...
Netflix 2004
Here is a piece from last April that I will discuss on Thursday morning during my free and public weekly "Strategic Narrative Underground" session. Enjoy this article and please join us if you can. We would love to see you!...
Judged By Your Map
Yesterday, in The Strategic Narrative Workshop, we talked about the difficulty of changing the place your company occupies in the minds of your customers. People will put you in a mental box; you do the same. We all do the same. It’s called positioning. We do it for...
The Story Of Your Great Idea
I was on a call today to brainstorm concepts for one of my CEO colleagues’ business. The goal of our conversation was to generate new ideas about a service he is launching. It was a fun call, and shortly after we started, our small group got excited about a few goofy...
Outside And Inside Too
Thinking of your “strategic narrative” as marketing only is a myth and a dangerous one. It will lead you to view your company essentially as a facade. When they hear those two words, most people think about a website, a sales deck, an ad campaign, or someone doing a...
Helping Your Entrepreneur Friend
This week, a bunch of new people joined this list. So, as a welcome activity, here is a thought experiment for you… And if you’ve been reading my emails for a while, this might probably be a fun challenge for you too. Imagine that a friend entrepreneur came to you for...
Everyone Else Is Already Taken
So be yourself. This is, of course, from Oscar Wilde’s famous quote, an essential reminder for anyone working on leading better. Yes, that’s right, “working” on leading, not “being” a leader. I’ve always had a hard time thinking of leading as a state of “being” a...
Why Your Product Story Goes Last
When you join The Strategic Narrative Workshop, you learn a very practical process that you can reuse forever to boost your company with a magnetizing strategy and communication asset: your strategic narrative. One of the current participants of the workshop also...
Serving A Community
The best entrepreneurs grow movements by asking themselves, “how may I best serve the most people” vs. “how may I make the quickest money making the least effort.” Their narrative is about a community. Instead of building a business that serves shareholders only, show...
Is It Actionable?
Throughout a series of previous articles, I’ve proposed five questions you could use as a framework to do a rapid diagnostic about your strategic narrative: How Well Did You Articulate It? Look at your messaging, marketing, what you say, write, and show inside and...
What Does Building A Strategic Narrative Really Mean?
Many of you on this list have asked a question I would paraphrase like this: “What Does Building A Strategic Narrative Really Mean?” Here is my full definition of a strategic narrative: A strategic narrative is a system of stories that you build intentionally to...
What’s A Perspective For?
To building a strategic narrative, you must develop a perspective. Call it a philosophy, an ideology, a viewpoint, or a religion; it’s up to you. But you need to establish and make public the fundamental set of beliefs that define how you look at a situation and how...
Because You Are On This List
Since late April, many of you have said “yes” to my weekly invitation to hear me talk and engage together in a brief conversation about strategic narrative. Thank you! It’s been absolutely wonderful to see several of you religiously come back every time. We’ve done it...
The MOD Perspective Story
A company's success depends on how its team looks at a problem, starting with the founders. I call this the “Perspective Story,” and it’s one of the four stories that the participants to The Strategic Narrative Workshop learn to master as they build their strategic...
How To Create A Better Mission & Vision
Defining your vision and mission in a few hours during your leadership retreat is a practice from the past. I helped a few clients do it years ago, and I quickly realized that I was encouraging the wrong practice. Here are the problems with the way mission and vision...
What Should The Story Say?
Here is a thought experiment for you… Imagine that a friend entrepreneur came to you for help to tell her/his/their company story. What do you think the story would have to say to actually help your friend’s company gain momentum? (If you don’t mind me publishing your...
Dealing With The Truth
Am I inviting you to tell lies? Building a strategic narrative is for sure an exercise in dealing with the truth. I see this with all my clients and the participants of The Strategic Narrative Workshop. I say “dealing” because the virtue of telling the truth can also...
Don’t Make The Mistake
The narrative of the United States is documented in the constitution and the stories about our founding document and the efforts to improve it over the years. “Every provision of the Constitution has a narrative, a story of the people, events, and cases behind its...
Whatever Shows Up
A few readers interested in publishing to an email list like this one asked me to share my content planning tool and what I am doing to develop so many post ideas to write about. I don’t have a content planning tool. So whatever idea must show up, shows up. Here is...
The Meaning Of Your Opportunity Story
I would argue that telling the story of a clear opportunity is essential for your company to thrive. But what do we mean by opportunity story? A bit of research about the word opportunity itself might help you tell the right opportunity story. If you look up the...
Thoughts On Asking For Help
We’re all the same about help. When it comes to giving it, we’re more than happy to do it. Helping others brings many emotional rewards, such as a boost of happiness, energy, a deeper sense of purpose, and better relationships. But when it comes to asking for help and...
Why Explaining Evolution Matters
Everything around us is evolving. Evolution is the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex and sophisticated form. Evolution is generative. Evolution is an integral part of our context. If we want to invite people to adopt a new...
I’m Giving You Two More Weeks Off
I don’t know about you, but here, at the Wiatr house, we feel like summer is going too fast. Today, my kids and I counted only three more weeks until we are back to school. Feeling the same? What if I could give you two additional weeks of vacation? Would you scream...
To Differentiate, Explore Your Past
This week, my Strategic Narrative Workshop participants are starting to document and explore their origin story. Curious to know why and how this might help you too? Read on. Your origin story is the written or spoken account of the series of events that explain why...
Time Travel For Change
Have you ever wondered why time-lapse videos of landscapes are so compelling to watch? They give us a sense of standing apart from the regular flow of time. For a few minutes, they remove us from our human condition and elevate our point of view. Our perspective...
Simple Question, Big Meaning
You’ve probably heard it before. People will often ask you a simple question that sounds a bit like this: “So, how did you start?”. Or if they haven’t asked it yet, they are probably wondering about it. In any case, what people want to know then is your “origin...
The Value of Wandering
You’ve probably heard it before. People will often ask this simple question: “How did you start?”. Or if they haven’t asked it yet, they are certainly wondering about it. Depending on the context, “you” might refer to your company, your project, your product, your...
Never Done. Always Due.
“Design projects are never done. But they are always due”, as my teacher Jeff Barlow used to say. Building a strategic narrative for your company is that type of project. In fact, it’s not a project, it’s a process. There is always a reason to spend more time...
You Are Not Delivering Value
“Delivering value” is a misnomer. What your company does has no value. It’s not like you can show up at your buyer’s door and say” “Hello, I am bringing the value you ordered. Where would you like me to drop it?” Notice how the value of an object depends not only on...
Brag Zone: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 13
One of the main differences between a story and a narrative is this: A story has an audience. A narrative has participants. This difference really matters if your goal is to motivate people to engage in new positive behaviors actively. That difference is powerful. A...
Quick Test
Which one of these two calls to action makes you want to take action? Call to action. #1: “Buy our stuff. It’s the best. Get it here.” Call to action. #2: “We are a company on a mission, and we invite you to join us because it will transform how we all live. For this,...
For When You Want More People To Participate
If you’re trying to mobilize people to participate in a new opportunity, remember this: the goal is not to make things all about you and your solution, product, or service. The goal is to make everything about them. If you’re the star of the show, everyone else is a...
Mission & Vision Ignored
How often do you think business leaders turn to the wall where the company’s mission and vision are posted, so they can read it and make sure their decision aligns with it? That’s right. Rarely. First, nobody has time for that. When you are in the midst of closing a...
Why Most Pitches Stink
Why? We put things in the wrong order: product, then pitch. We build something, and then we make up a story. We come up with something new, and then we spend a fortune asking, “Who wants it?”. Meanwhile, our competitor also built a similar thing and is also yelling at...
Five Days Left
Your words matter. They mobilize people. They sell your ideas and your products too. The good ones are painful to find but powerful to own. Your words are the indispensable foundation for the movement you should build around you. Join The Strategic Narrative Workshop...
Easy And Hard
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. Saying inspiring stuff is easy. Living up to your words is hard. Busyness is easy. Productivity is hard. Starting something is easy. Growing it is hard. Writing a strategic narrative is easy. Acting on it is hard. But...
Do It Yourself, But Not Alone
I got a request to “translate a strategic narrative into a more impactful version as a presentation, on behalf of the company's CEO.” I turned it down; unless I can work with the CEO to guide him and rebuild it from scratch. Here is why: If the architecture of your...
The Real Goal
I recently came across a quote from Jonathan Stark that defines the mindset required to build a company like a movement. “Making money isn’t a useful goal. Making money is a side effect of improving people’s lives. Start there.” Movements start with the goal of...
What It Takes
In a previous post, I mentioned Tesla as an example of a company that offers the best product on the market (the Model S) and created a movement. Over time, the company perfectly balanced a “product-first” strategy with a “movement-first” strategy. Tesla changed the...
A Broader View
Many people think building a strategic narrative is about making their sales or company presentation deck look better. This is a very limiting and dangerous view. So I’d like to suggest a way to broaden it and give you a useful tip. Although a strategic narrative can...
Organizations And Movements
Organizations organize. Movements revolutionize. For the former, the purpose is stability. The latter requires a bit of insanity. Although they’re not from the same list. Like Yin and Yang, they need each other to coexist. Take a company for example. Its...
I Will See It When I Believe it
We are, of course, used to the reversal common phrase. But this sentence points out something that we are all subject to every second of our day: we can’t see things that fall outside our mental models. It takes a lot of effort to accept something new without...
Last Call To Get The Early Bird Price For My Workshop
Final reminder: the Early Bird price ($900) for The Strategic Narrative workshop ends tonight (West Coast time). After that, it increases to $1,250. It happens online, and when you attend this workshop, you will transform the way you, your team, and everybody else...
From “Product-first” To ”Movement-first”
Some companies thrive because their product is so amazing that people have no choice but to fall in love with it. Therefore, the other competitive alternatives disappear from people’s minds. Think about Sonos, Clarins, or Dropbox. They’ve set the bar so high for the...
What To Do Before They’ll Quit
Would you mind raising your hand (or reply to this email) if, during this post-pandemic period, you have been reevaluating your priorities regarding work and life? A study by Microsoft found that 41% of the global workforce would consider leaving their current...
Three Seconds Away
I am sitting at one of my usual writing spots near the wide windows overlooking my front yard. My writing process is simple. Sit in front of the computer. Put my hands on the keyboard. Start moving my fingers to help my mind pick up an idea worth sharing with you....
Regions Have One Too
Building a strategic narrative is not exclusively for organizations. If you’re a company of one, you should build one too. The same goes for solopreneurs or independent practitioners. If you are one, you have an opportunity to boost your impact with a thoughtful...
The Value Of Effective Collaboration
Yesterday, I posted a video on Linkedin to invite people to join my upcoming workshop. My friend Erik Molano commented: “Sounds amazing! I wonder... how can brands or leadership teams exist without a strategic narrative?” Here was my reply: “Thanks, Eric! Exactly....
How Much Is This Worth To You?
“Is a strategic narrative demonstrably valuable?” That’s a crucial question. And a challenging one too. At the core of any successful movement, you can hear, feel and see a narrative. A strategic narrative makes your organization run like a movement. It gives it an...
When & Why: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 10
There are hundreds of stories about your business. Which one should you tell? The question is not to find which one dominates every other one. You can’t erase stories just like that. The question is, how do you organize those stories into a coherent system. Then, how...
Like A Rolling Stone
A few years ago, my colleague Seth and I were having fun coming up with ideas for a new business we might start together. That’s what geeky entrepreneurs spend their breaks doing, after all. At a table of Sushi Kudasai that day, we started talking about our recent...
It’s Here For You
Today, I am announcing a new service that I am really excited about: The Strategic Narrative Workshop. Until now, the only way people could work directly with me was through private custom consulting engagements. They’ve been very effective, but they’ve limited my...
Principles: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 9
How do you build a company that people want to buy from and work with? These days, great products alone are not enough. Just look at how people interact with big brands, small businesses or even non-profits. We expect something more powerful than a simple transaction....
Money Hides It Well
Some companies have been extremely lucky in the past 18 months. They’ve enjoyed just the right change of trend to make the COVID crisis a huge opportunity. Their profits have skyrocketed. This week, on one of my sales calls, the CEO at a prospective client company...
The Other (Hugely Important) Thing Storytelling Is For
These days, storytelling is all about clarifying your message. It’s all about making what you do more compelling, appealing, interesting, easy to understand, and emotionally connective so that people buy your stuff. This common assumption is a dangerous trap. Here is...
The Value Of Imperfection
One of my clients has a crucial meeting tomorrow with a potential partner organization. They could potentially resell their products and services in large quantities. The impact would be to improve the daily job of many more users who are suffering from inefficient...
Is It Different?
How do you know if your strategic narrative is working? So far, I’ve proposed four questions you could use as a framework to do a rapid diagnostic: How Well Did You Articulate It? Look at your messaging, marketing, what you say, write, and show inside and outside your...
Back On The Menu
Summer is here. Cafes and restaurants are reopening in Paris. So, today, I am feeding you with a post that I wrote last year around the same time. I am bringing it back on the menu because I am currently working on more ideas and research about The Perspective Story....
A Critical Language Difference
Sellers want to sell a solution. For that, they like to speak “Seller-ese”. The “Seller-ese” dictionary is mostly comprised of words about features and benefits, curated by marketing. On there other end, buyers like to speak “Buyer-ese”. The “Buyer-ese” dictionary has...
Product Story: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 8
How do you position new products and services, so people sense that it will change their life (in a good way)? That’s the goal of the product story, the fourth element of my strategic narrative system. And this is the topic we explored on Thursday during the Strategic...
Musical Interlude #5 – Giorgio
Who is Giorgio? You already know him, or you’ve already heard something from him, I should say. In their last album, Random Access Memories, Daft Punk invites the music personalities they admire to play with them. On some of the songs, you can hear Neil Rogers,...
Is It Recognized?
Earlier this week, I started to lay out the questions that you should explore to figure out if your strategic narrative is effective or not. You could use these as a framework to self-evaluate it, which is always a good thing to do. So far, I highlighted the following...
Will You Be That Leader?
If you or someone in your organization is wondering, “What’s my/our story?”, I doubt that you’re just looking for an anecdote starting with “once upon a time…”? We’ve heard it a million times from CEOs, executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. That question connects...
Did You Integrate It?
OK, let’s say you’ve articulated an inspiring strategic narrative. And let’s assume that you have a great new presentation about it. You and your team are excited to use it externally. Are you done? Well, not exactly. Here is the thing: writing your narrative is one...
Does It Inspire People?
It’s good if you have a mission and a vision. But here is the thing: you can’t succeed if you only make things about yourself. Your mission and vision are about your company. They usually tend to be defined by people who will brand your business, just like when we put...
How Well Did You Articulate It?
Your business has a strategic narrative. You’ve either made the intentional effort to build it, or you’re discovering what this concept means. How do you know if it’s working effectively? The first thing that comes to mind is communications: your messaging, marketing,...
Perspective Story: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 7
Does your organization operate based on a perspective? I would say yes, no matter what. Is that perspective clearly articulated? Inspirational? Integrated? Recognized? Differentiating? Maybe not. In that case, these are questions worth exploring if you’re claiming to...
Jobs’ Story vs. Jobs’ Narrative
Jobs’ story vs. Jobs’ narrative: what’s the difference? As of today, the price of the story of Steve Jobs’ life is $8.91 on Amazon. As of today, the value of Steve Jobs’ narrative is so high that it’s priceless. And climbing. He innovated and transformed entire...
For Everyone, Especially Leaders
Everyone has the potential to think, talk and act like a leader and should seize the opportunity to do so—especially those with the privilege of a position of leadership. Knowing how to build a strategic narrative helps you do that. It’s never too late. You can still...
What Gets Noticed
Let’s do a quick test: take a look at the diagram below. What do you notice first? I am ready to bet that your brain almost immediately focused on the shorter bar. Contrary to common belief, it’s not because something is bigger that you will notice it more. So, if...
Opportunity Story: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 6
This weekend, my family and I are staying at the Truckee Donner Lodge. It’s a standard hotel, with standard amenities and nothing exciting. From the front desk to the bathroom, the whole experience is a well-known, well-rehearsed process. Check-in happens the same way...
Your Strategic Narrative In 30 Seconds Or Less
Here is a good question from the survey people take when they sign-up for this list. How can I share my strategic narrative in 30-second or less? Ok, so first, let’s highlight the assumption that most of us make: narratives = a piece of communication. When we use the...
You Can Still Join
It’s never too late. You can still join the next Strategic Narrative Underground Session tomorrow. I am looking for a few more people interested in learning about strategic narratives and giving me feedback on my writing manuscript. Here is why I do this: I believe...
Selling Explorations
What drives people to embark on explorations? This seems like an interesting question to explore because, as business leaders, we use the theme of exploration all the time as a metaphor to describe the purpose of our jobs. Our language is filled with expressions such...
How To Figure Why Your Work Matters
To figure out why your work matters to your buyers, ask them this question: “What would you miss if I stopped doing the work that I am doing?” To figure out why your work matters to you, ask yourself this question: “What would I miss if I stopped doing the work that...
When Inspiration Is A No-Show
What do you do when you’re not inspired? You admit it. Truth always wins. I admit that I wasn’t feeling inspired to write anything today. I was going to skip my daily ritual. That was actually a good reminder of the power and the importance of inspiration. In our...
Your Origin Story: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 5
The origin story is one of the four stories in my strategic narrative model. The insights that you gather when you explore it and write it can change the narrative with which you go by today and help you make better business decisions for the future. One of them is...
Creating Participants
Why are some organizations so attractive? They don’t treat people as an audience. They make them participants. How do you do that? Instead of telling a story about your product only, which is focused on serving shareholders only, tell a story about how you can help...
Two Lessons From Our New Online Meetings Narrative
It feels like we’ve already said everything about online meetings. What else can we possibly learn from the last 18 months regarding zoom meetings? I can think of two more ideas. They may even help you build a new strategic narrative. New narratives emerge from...
How To Help Customers Choose You
A strategic narrative introduces your own unique way to see the world. In my four-story model, that’s mainly what the perspective story does. The other three stories are: the origin story the opportunity story the product story Since those stories are all connected as...
Wisdom Instead
Ask around why people want to build a better narrative. Most of them will tell you that it’s because they want to share more information about their business. More information can be OK when it’s understandable. But it can quickly clutter the mind, stopping action,...
Tip To Write Your Origin Story
In his book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Parker J. Palmer wrote the wonderful quote below. I could help you frame your origin story. “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you....
The Story You Don’t Want To Skip
Using a strategic narrative to launch a project or grow your business does something that a single and isolated story alone can not. You will move people from the position of audience to the position of participants. A strategic narrative is a system of four main...
Strategic Narrative Underground Session 4
I am inviting you every Thursday at 9:00 am Pacific to attend a free 30-minute talk+conversation about one of the strategic narrative principles in the book I am writing. I call these meetings Strategic Narrative Underground Sessions. It is a FREE opportunity to...
One More Reason To Be The Anomaly
“Normal leads you nowhere.” Kelly Cultrone Yet another reason to add to the list of reasons to think differently. A bientot, Guillaume
What It Should Really Do
As you embark on a new challenge, you will need help. For instance, the invention of the COVID vaccine required the support of the entire scientific community. Charity: Water, wants to give access to everyone to clean water. This takes the support of everyone, in new...
Story Or Viewpoint?
In the context of strategy, you can use the word “narrative” in two ways. “Narrative” as “story” That’s the most common case. Here, “narrative” and “story” are interchangeable. “Narrative” is therefore associated with a piece of communication, and for many people, a...
How To Find The Next Narrative
We all have a purpose. But your purpose might not be what you think it should be. Entrepreneurs often realize that their company should change course and pivot. We start a company with an idea in mind, and then, later, we realize that we can have a bigger impact than...
Musical Interlude #4 – Jon Batiste
Sometimes, people think that Jazz is music from the past. Jon Batiste deconstructs this old narrative, making Jazz sound fresh and contemporary, and innovates with a new narrative. Not only that, but he also uses Jazz as a powerful metaphor for democracy and...
Machines vs. Humans
"Words should be weighed, not counted." — Yiddish Proverb Machines count words. Humans count on meaning. Who is your narrative for?
Strategic Narrative Underground Session 3
Every Thursday at 9:00 am Pacific, you are invited to attend a free 30-minute talk+conversation about one of the strategic narrative principles in the book that I am writing. I call these meetings the Strategic Narrative Underground Sessions. In today’s session, we...
What Realizing Your Dream Really Takes
A good question from my post-opt-in survey: How do you connect early-career folks with the idea that at the end of the day, a compelling mission and strategy requires hard work and some sweat equity from people like them to realize the dream? Let’s explore the...
What’s Up With Your Attitude?
One of the biggest problems I run into when I help CEOS, Leadership Teams, and entrepreneurs create a strategic narrative is their attitude. It’s not that they have the wrong one. No, it’s more that they don’t have one at all. As a result, their strategy is too fuzzy,...
About That Blank Email You Got
Friday’s “This Email Intentionally Left Blank ” post triggered many reactions. You sent me replies like “???”, “Nice!”, “Made me smile!”, “This piece is worth a lot.”, or “I don’t know what this is, but it makes me want to write.” And even if you didn’t hit “reply”, I...
Mother’s Day Decency
In the United States, 55 percent of working women supply half or more of their family's household income. Women make up a majority of essential U.S. coronavirus workers. Only 19% of U.S. employees have access to family leave paid through an employer— and those who...
Why Your Business Needs A Common Enemy
On this day, 76 years ago, celebrations erupted throughout the western world. The allies of World War II accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender. May 8th, Victory in Europe Day, is celebrated across European nations as a public holiday. Although it’s less the case...
This Email Intentionally Left Blank
Strategic Narrative Underground Session 2
Yesterday, during the second session of Strategic Narrative Underground, we focused on the first chapter of my book, the Narrative pattern. Talking points about the first pattern - narrative: To illustrate the characteristics of a strategic narrative, I used two...
Why Some Businesses Change Lives, And Others Don’t
“Why Some Businesses Change Lives, And Others Don’t” is the sub-title of my new talk, “The Next Narrative”. As I mentioned to you in my intro email, sometimes, oh, surprise, surprise, I will also tell you about my services. Speaking is one of them. Of course, I do all...
Are You Optimizing Or Transforming?
What is the purpose of your business, optimization or transformation? This is a valid question to explore because optimization and transformation mean two different kinds of strategic narratives. One is not better than the other, but they mean different implications....
Your Opportunity – Part 4
A new strategic narrative is a new opportunity to call people to action. When you change the traditional way people view the world, you engage and motivate your community. In part 1 of this brief email series, we talked about the main idea behind the concept of...
Virtual Events: The Future Of Strategic Narratives
More and more, virtual events will play an essential role in the development of new strategic narratives. We are still figuring this out. For instance, a poll by the journal Nature highlights that 74% of their readers think that scientific conferences should continue...
Strategic Narrative Underground Session 1
The first Strategic Narrative Underground session happened today. If you were on the call, I want to thank you for showing up with curiosity and benevolence. This time together led us to a great conversation about why strategic narratives matter now more than ever....
The Perfect Time For Your Next Narrative: Now
It’s a great time to take on the role of an entrepreneurial leader. Whether you’re inside a large company or ready to jump ship…. Entrepreneurs are multiplying. The numbers of the US Census Bureau for the beginning of 2021 continue to show the same trend. In the face...
Join The Strategic Narrative Underground Sessions
What are you doing on Thursday at 9:00 am? To find out, read this message. ___________________________________ I’ve been working on a secret project that I am excited to share with you. It’s a book, and it’s for you. What is this book about? Imagine a sort of grimoire...
Choosing Courage
The companies I help range from organizations with a handful of people to tenths of thousands. What they do is also very diverse. For example, NuOz builds networks for large retailers. Spencer Stuart finds the next CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The L’Oreal brand IT...
Your Opportunity – Part 3
This is the third email of a brief series on the opportunities coming from crafting a new strategic narrative. In part 1, we talked about the main idea behind the concept of strategic narrative. Here it is again: Seek to create a new narrative. To grow your impact,...
Your Opportunity – Part 2
To build a business world that champions sustainability, equity, and well-being, you must first change people’s beliefs. That’s what a new strategic narrative helps you do. In recent years, a striking consensus has emerged about the importance of businesses and brands...
Your Opportunity – Part 1
Before I do a keynote speech or a workshop, I always make sure to really understand my audience. Typically, I send out a brief survey to participants ahead of the event. That’s what I did a couple of years ago when I was invited to speak in front of a group of about a...
What If Recycling Didn’t Count As “Good” Anymore?
Right after diner tonight, I asked one of my sons to go empty the kitchen recycle bin. He got 10 points on the board where we keep track of the family chores. He felt good about that. Recycling as we know it today is an example of a powerful and dominant narrative. A...
A Story To Back A New Narrative
If you’re looking for examples of powerful strategic narratives, here is one that is rapidly emerging for the art market: direct trading of digital art with NFTs. When you see the Mona Lisa in Paris and take photos of it, you don’t own it. The same goes for digital...
Bienvenue Again
It’s been great to have you here. I mean, on this mailing list. I value the time you spend reading my emails. So, today, I felt like explaining why I share my insights every day with you. Hopefully, this will provide some useful context and help me meet your...
Your Strategic Narrative As Coordination Device
This week, you are going to have a chance to tell, show and listen to dozens of stories. Storytelling is now a common practice in business, although I would argue that our field is still trying to define it and understand how to effectively use it. There are many...
Pain & Response
If you’ve found the pitch exercise that I shared yesterday valuable, here is another one. I call it the Pain & Response Pitch. It follows a story arc that you might have heard before: "I saw the pain first hand.” “I felt that we needed to do something.”...
Does Grandma Get It?
My Mom emailed me to let me know that she listened to my conversation with Mike Rohde in the last episode of his podcast. Good news, she said she finally started to understand what I do for a living. That was sweet of her to listen and let me know. Her note reminded...
Musical Interlude #3 – Reggie Watts
As you probably noticed from one of my prior posts, I am anti-bullshit. Like an alcoholic, I’ve been to treatment and I am cured. Well, mostly. I sometimes have little relapses. Today’s musical interlude is about Reggie Watts, another artist cut from the same cloth of...
To Innovate, Turn Your Back To The Old Narrative. Literally.
The high jump changed forever when Dick Fosbury won the gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games. Fosbury re-invented the high jump competition with the use of his own “Fosbury flop” method. Instead of using the dominant straddle method, which consisted of jumping while...
When Your Strategic Narrative Fails
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson Over the past few weeks, I’ve been helping a new entrepreneur to craft his strategic narrative. I typically focus on business leaders with a bit more experience than him, but I will add a young...
To Boost Your Leadership, Change The Narrative About Drawing
I am willing to bet that you used to draw pretty much every day. That’s until you started to believe that you were not a good artist or that drawing was for babies. Somehow the narrative about drawing changed for you at a young age, most likely towards the end of...
Three Rules For Your Business Plan
The University of Washington Dempsey Startup Competition started this Friday. The first step is a screening round during which judges will review your executive summary if you’re participating. Over the weekend, I’ve been analyzing six of them, and it’s my twelfth...
Courageous Idiot
In the beginning of my career in the USA, when I had conversations with clients who had complicated things to say, I was feeling lost. My English wasn’t as good as it is now, and in general, I don’t understand very complicated things. I like simple and clear ideas....
A Pattern For Better Purpose Statements
Describing your company’s purpose with a short statement is helpful. It will help everyone understand and remember why your organization exists. However, trying to encapsulate something as big and powerful as purpose in a short sentence is challenging and can be...
Drunk Presenting
"Most people use Powerpoint like a drunk uses a lamp post - for support rather than illumination" - David Ogilvy We see it all the time, and yet we let it happen. Especially if it’s the boss doing it. But who has time for a reading of the presenter’s teleprompter?...
Bullshitters Anonymous
AlphaDingDong Corp. is a leading provider of innovative high-speed, world-class networking infrastructure application solutions. Our customer-centric approach to maximizing the synergies between our customers and their ecosystem enables high levels of performance....
Helping People Feel Good About Bad Choices
There are hundreds of burger places in Seattle. But Blue Moon Burgers has me hooked; not just because eating their Blue Shroom burger with extra bacon is just the most delightful sin I’ve ever committed, but because they also give me good conscience about it. Their...
Learning From The Early Years Of Netflix
To innovate, attack the old way of doing something with a new and revolutionary narrative. Watch how Netflix did it. Do you remember the late fees that you had to pay when you were late returning a movie? In 1997, Netflix embarked on a mission to eradicate them, along...
FAQ: Should Our Narrative Be Different For Each Audience?
Here is a question that I am frequently getting: “We have to create a sales deck and internal deck about our service. Should we create two different narratives?” Although tailoring a message to an audience is always a good thing, your strategic narrative should stay...
Letting People Improvise
If you want to solve complex problems really fast, there is something to be said about letting go of control and letting people improvise. If your company culture is all about scripting everything and improvisation is new to you, it may look like chaos in the...
Hope
What are we selling? Simply put, a better version of our customer; the promise that they will be better off with our product or service. That’s all. That’s the destination of the journey. But that only works if our promise aligns with their goal. The more aligned, the...
Narrative First
We seem to always forget that at the beginning of any organization, there is nothing, but a narrative. Since the dawn of time, we’ve survived thanks to our ability to believe in common myths. We do this through fictional narratives. When we imagine things...
To Make Your Narrative Work, Name It – Part 2
It’s a big deal to give a good name to a new narrative if you want your community to embrace it. When we introduce an innovation, we can categorize it as different if we introduce a new narrative. The name of this new narrative has important implications. If we want...
To Make Your Narrative Work, Name It – Part 1
In the US, bars are reopening. Who will be your designated driver? The narrative The term “designated driver” is common for most Americans, but it wasn’t the case until 1988. In the 1980s, the rate of deaths caused by drunk driving was at an all-time high in the US....
Will You Build Curb Cuts?
The City of Seattle has been building more curb cuts in our neighborhood. I am happy to see that. There is still a lot of work to do, but there is progress. Curb cuts make public spaces accessible to people with disabilities. In reality, they help everyone. If you’ve...
Narrative Inspection: How To Scratch The Surface
“Let’s tell our story”. “What’s our story?”. “Our CEO tells a great story”. The company story is not enough. What matters is the company narrative. Let’s admit it. We think of business storytelling as a sales and marketing thing. Most people understand it as the...
Focus
I understand. It is not always easy for your brand to get into the mind of your customers. You have to grab their attention constantly, and attention is a rare commodity these days. In this situation, it’s tempting to come up with a hundredth product idea to launch....
Purpose At Work: A Direct Method
The core of a strong company narrative is “why” the company exists, aka its purpose. For most business leaders, the default way to articulate the company’s purpose is through a statement. Ideally, one of the applications of having a statement is to help you make...
A Bit More Help
A few weeks ago, I launched a research project to better understand how business leaders think about organizational purpose. I have already gathered some great insights that I am planning to share soon with anyone interested. I need a few more executive leaders in...
A Powerful Historical Narrative
In 1887, John W. Nordstrom, at 16 years old, left Sweden for the United States. He arrived in New York with $5 in his pocket, unable to speak a word of English. The young immigrant labored in mines and logging camps as he crossed the country to California and...
D’you Know That You Can Use It?
Showing up with talent and a great idea is just a minimum. You can’t inspire people around you and make things happen with a lukewarm heart. Passion is essential. Fall in love. Get furious. Defend with fervor. Passion is the fire that fuels everything. And when...
Why Should You Have A Support Network
Leadership is a solitary experience, which is why it is so hard. I realized this many years ago after helping a CEO develop her company narrative for about six months. One of this project's milestones was to inspire people to support her organization during a talk on...
Reinventing Organizations
There are many reasons to be concerned about where humanity is going. And there are just as many reasons or more to be excited about how it’s evolving. It’s your choice. "Doom is inevitable. Gloom is optional. Gloom has no positive effects on ameliorating doom. Doom...
We Plan
"We plan, God laughs.” From a Yiddish proverb. A good reminder not to get too carried away with our predictions and strategies.
Who Defines The Company’s Purpose?
In the research interviews that I am carrying these days, I am constantly hearing that an organisation's purpose has to be defined by the CEO, the leadership team, or the board of directors. It’s like we all assume that the bosses know better than anybody else. As...
Using Communication As A Forcing Function
The surface level of our narrative is essential. For instance, it’s the sales presentation, the website, or the keynote speech where we tell people about our vision and inspire them about possibilities. To create it, we usually focus too soon on making it perfect. We...
Challenge vs. Problem
A problem is something we don’t want to have. A challenge is something we want to overcome. A problem is something we run into. A challenge is something we chose to decide to take on. A problem has negative consequences. A challenge has the potential to...
Musical Interlude #2 – Lous and The Yakuza
Lous and the Yakuza, is a Congolese-Belgian singer, rapper, songwriter, model, and artist. Lous is an anagram of “soul,”. Yakuza means loser or a person outside of the norm. It’s also the name of Japan’s infamous crime organization. "Soul" and "anomaly" are two themes...
Five Rules To Fix Your Dysfunctional Meetings
Last week, I attended an international virtual conference during which we were introduced to an inspiring method for organizing and running a meeting. At the beginning of the session, the facilitator shared the following rules: 1 - Whoever comes are the right people....
To Grow Your Business, Grow Your Impact
"We don't make movies to make more money. We make money to make more movies."—Walt Disney. This quote made me think that the transition to leading a company with purpose as your core strategy has profound implications. One of them is that growth is no longer the...
Shrink Your Brag Zone
Here is a pattern I see everywhere. When we talk about an idea or our business, we somehow feel the urgency to describe all the amazing things that it contains. In fear of not being credible, we jump quickly to what it is. We demo our product, rush to our solution,...
Guest Article: Change Starts With A Different Vision
My wife Deana was very kind to write for you about the work she does with young generations when she changes the narrative on gender equality. The article below is from her: Today, March 8th, in honor of International Women’s Day, I started a unit about women’s...
Forgetting About Competition For A Moment
Traditionally, we’ve seen Big Pharma companies obsessed with beating each other. This week, President Biden announced that pharmaceutical giant Merck would help make Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine. This is one of the latest examples of...
18 Reasons To Think Differently
Many years ago, one of my colleagues in the US used to call me an “anomaly”. He was referring to the way I think and work. I was not too fond of it, but I never told him. We all want to belong, to be part of the tribe and feel accepted. Hearing myself being called an...
Celebrating A Winning Narrative
Earlier this week, I wrote about how I helped Robert White. He is the CEO of Sound Sustainability, a Seattle startup on a mission to improve hearing health for everyone by educating, engaging, and increasing access. Robert transformed his investor pitch with my...
A Difference That Can Change People’s Lives
“Come to the United States. This is a place where you can achieve things that you would never achieve anywhere else. But first, you have to come here. Will you come here?” Please bear with me… At the beginning of 2008, that’s the narrative I had in mind as I...
Is Radical Transparency That Nuts?
Radical transparency is rare. Why? We justify secrecy with the concern that our competition will steal from us. But in reality, we’re just afraid to be embarrassed if we publicly share too much of what’s going on inside our organization. In one of my articles from...
The Energy To Call People To Action
Yesterday, I helped Robert, a new CEO. He wanted to improve the one-minute pitch he is preparing for a fundraising event he is attending this week. In only 30 minutes together, we transformed his pitch from average to great, adopting one principle. Treat emotions as...
How To Get In The Right Headspace
In 2001, I had to work with a difficult person high up in a large company's hierarchy. This person would stress me out a ton. I was intimidated by his age, his rank and his ways of working. Yet, I was committed to making this relationship work. To better prepare for...
The Reason Why Purpose Matters So Much.
Search “what is my purpose” on Google and the engine will serve you over 1.5 billion results. Clearly, many of us are interested in finding out why we are on this planet. This obsession is also valid for why companies exist. Corporate purpose is one of the most...
Tragically Funny
Are you thinking of shooting a video to tell your story? Perhaps you're about to add some stock images to your next presentation or your new website? Don’t do this. https://youtu.be/2YBtspm8j8M The tragedy with this hilarious video is how little it exaggerates. Too...
I Need Your Help
I am in the early stages of a research project that I am doing to better understand how business leaders think about organizational purpose. Would you be willing to spare 3 minutes for a survey? I hope you're up for it. Here is the link to my questions:...
The Ultimate Sales Team
Today, during my weekly work session with one of the companies I coach, I heard something really cool. The VP of business development told us that one of her best clients offered to help her sell, by participating in her own sales calls. That's because this client is...
How To Choose If Your Business Should Exist
If you truly listen to your organization’s purpose, you might realize that it can’t continue the way it is. How do you know if it should still exist? Here is a 3-point test from my colleague Frederic Laloux. I find it thought-provoking, so I am sharing it with you...
You’re Invited!
79% of business leaders believe that an organization’s purpose is central to business success, yet 68% shared that purpose is not used as a guidepost in leadership decision making processes within their organization. This is one of the findings of a 2016 study by...
Will You Be Ready?
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” This quote carries a compelling message on the power of “Why”. When an organization inspires...
Can You Hear It?
As I was figuring out what life wants me to write tonight, I came across this. In French, the words “voix” and “voie” are homonyms. La voie means the way, the path, the direction. It’s also sometimes used to indicate the vocation that someone should follow in life or...
The Journey Carries On
2020 was the strongest year I’ve ever had with MetaHelm. Despite the chaos in the world, I was extremely fortunate and grateful to achieve this extraordinary result. That’s because I got lucky. Just like Thomas Jefferson, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the...
How To Break From The Past And Innovate
Is investing in a strategic narrative always worth doing? Everybody in the business community seems to agree that storytelling is an important thing, especially if you are in a leadership position. Almost no-one challenges the return on the investment that shaping a...
The Seven Sins Of Strategic Narrative
Good business leaders help their company survive because they know how to adapt to change. Great business leaders go even further by generating the change inside and outside their organization before they suffer it. Many CEOs look for opportunities to use technology...
The Magic Of Leadership
Chris Anderson, the head of TED, writes this on page 242 of his book Ted Talks: “Almost every human born at almost every place and moment in history has had their potential capped by a single fact over which they had almost no control, namely, the quality of the...
Let’s See How This Resonates
Cymatics is very cool. This is what it looks like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRFysSAxWxI It is visualized when you coat a metal surface called a Chladni plate with thin particles like flour, salt or sand, and you make that plate resonate. As sound vibrations go...
The One Thing A CEO Must Do
There is a common assumption that I wish would really change amongst business leaders: once the strategy of a company is defined (At MetaHelm, we do this through the creation of a strategic narrative), it will be the job of somebody else to communicate it. For most...
The Biggest Positioning Trap And How To Avoid It
Over the years, I have had the chance to work on many cool products and services. My CEO clients know how awesome their product is. But their problem is that nobody else around them does. At least, not enough people, and not soon enough. My job is to help them reframe...
Can You Last More Than 14 Seconds at This?
As a team leader, what could you possibly learn from the practice of bedside medicine? To find out, watch the video of Abraham Verghese TED’s talk called “A doctor's touch”. Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School,...
Getting Your Creative Juices Flowing Again
Today, I’d like to share a few tips that might come handy if you need to get ideas flowing as you’re working on a piece of work that requires you to think creatively. Doing the deep work Let’s say you're working on something like an email, a memo, a report, a case...
How To Differentiate In Your Market
How to differentiate: Give your opinion. Politicians know that very well. Change the narrative. Show the outdated way, and compare it to the new and relevant way. Reframe, don’t just repeat or summarize your understanding of your customer’s problem. It’s OK to take...
Narrative and Innovation
A few weeks ago, I caught myself explaining to one of my CEO clients that she should work backwards and think of her product just as the manifestation of her company narrative. She was working on a presentation for an early-stage conversation with a potentially large...
A Three-Question Self-Diagnostic
How strong is your company narrative? You might think this is a question for Marketing to figure out. I would argue that this is a question for everyone, because if your organization doesn’t have a strong narrative, you are probably not cutting through the noise and...
Story vs. Narrative? And Why it Matters
For most of us, story and narrative are the same, interchangeable. Pay attention to your next conversation and let me know if you notice that too. In a way, it is correct. Collinsdictionary.com says the following: Story: a story is a description of imaginary people...
Who is your hero?
It’s that time of the year: back to school. That’s valid for kids and also for my emails. After a break of a few weeks, they will start hitting your inbox again. Although I took a break from sending you my thoughts on strategy and storytelling, I didn’t stop helping...
Stand For Something Or Die
In Paris, there are 40,000 restaurants. Jérôme was one of my former colleagues at a tech startup where he was the VP of sales. He had a side job. He was also a food critic. Our team would always ask him to share his list of “hidden gem restaurants,” and he’d sometimes...
Why Students Should Have Mental Health Days – The Strategic Story –
In the training workshop that I am teaching this week at Microsoft, I share my framework for strategic storytelling - the 12 questions that I use to create your strategy based on a story, first. As homework between day 1 and day 2 of the training, I ask that...
The Shapes of Stories
This week, I will be teaching an online training workshop I named “The Bigger Story: Strategic Storytelling to Drive Profit and Engagement". Anyone in a position where the art of strategy, storytelling and persuasion is essential could benefit from this class. This...
A Musical Interlude
Sometimes, you just need a break and some music. Music brings everyone together, no matter their age, race, gender, political opinions, etc. Music puts you in a good mood on a Wednesday morning, when it feels like it’s already been Friday. “Where words leave off,...
The Most Important Myth You Can Build Right Now
In a matter of days, the priority for many businesses went from growing like crazy to surviving. In our current tough reality, all the rules have changed, people have modified their habits for good, and also lost trust along the way. For instance and sadly, some of my...
Leading Is Not Selling Anymore
Look around. We live in a post-advertising age, where nobody wants to be “sold” anymore. Nobody wants to be interrupted to hear the pitch. Instead, we will stop, lean forward and listen if we are inspired by a story that conveys truth, ideally relevant to us. That’s...
Which Language Should you Speak to Your Buyer
When they present their company, none of my clients want to sound like a pushy salesperson who tries to trick you. I don’t think anybody wants that. When I worked in retail sales, I hated myself for failing to avoid that mimicry. Why is it that at some point, we all...
Black Lives Matter – From 2020 Vision to Reality
The business community had high hopes for 2020. A few years back, 2020 was the year when your big visionary strategy was supposed to become a reality. Your company had to have a “2020 vision”. Whether it was just vaporware or a real thing, if you had one, at least it...
Take Down That Construction Sign
Business strategy is not a project anymore, it’s a continuous process. If you’re still building your strategy as we used to build software in the ’90s, through the waterfall technique, you’ve got a problem. Does the concept of the annual strategic planning retreat...
How To Be Heard
I used to think that big words would make me sound smart. I used to think that a long phrase was a trait of a wise man. At least it felt like that’s what schools, firms, peers and work deemed to be right. Then I learned that it’s not true. And that made sense. I saw...
A 3-minute Masterclass on Leadership Alignment
It is 1980 and the band Queen is about to release one of the greatest hits of all time, the song Another One Bites the Dust. Written by bass guitarist John Deacon, the song was inspired by "Good Times" by the disco group Chic. At the time, Disco is the new game in the...
The Dream of Every CEO
When I started my consulting business, I couldn’t really explain how I came up with the business name of MetaHelm, beyond the fact that “Meta” is a prefix that I always found cool and “Helm” is the second half of my first name in German. That’s Wilhelm - also William...
Parlez-Vous Strategy?
My wife Deana teaches French. She is a language teacher, a real one. Unlike a native speaker who can’t explain grammar better than by responding “that’s just the way we say it” (that would be me), she can go to the root of things. She can really teach French. She will...
How To Not Dream Alone
The most powerful force in getting your message to people is clarity. What else is more important than people understanding what your business is about? I am always surprised to see how many business leaders struggle to explain their strategy in simple terms. At the...
Where to Start
If you have something to sell me, like a solution, a product, a service, an idea, a strategic plan or anything of that sort, I suggest that you resist the temptation to tell me everything about you and your stuff for as long as you can. Don’t tell me what it is yet,...
Change, In One Sentence
How are we going to make people care more? This is a fundamental question. People care and therefore people change because they react to what’s at stake to them. Whether it’s about a change in your life, a change that your clients should operate, a strategy change in...
Repetition
Aligning a whole team on the ultimate direction of your business takes time and repetition. How many occasions to present, discuss and illustrate your perspective will you need until people believe in it? Go ahead, what’s your estimate? Now that you have that number,...
What’s in a Name
Everyone is talking about storytelling in business. And there’s a good reason for this. We all know that a good story will make us more engaging, creating more emotional and meaningful communication. But that’s not all. What almost no one understands about...
Who Cares
The hardest thing about strategy is to implement it. Anybody can have a great plan, but that plan is only as great as the ability of the people around to understand it, believe in it, and make it happen. It comes down to culture. For that reason, Peter Drucker’s quote...
Inner Beauty
I’ve reviewed and transformed hundreds of sales and strategy presentation decks in my career. The number one question that I get when clients ask me to take a look at there slides is “Help me make it look good. I want to be proud of it.” Beauty comes from the inside....
There is the antidote
The mind is a story-making story-storing machine. As a result, stories live in minds far longer and far more vividly than facts and numbers. Stories help us make sense of who we are, what we stand for, what we fight against, and what we can do for others. When your...
When Things Get Complex
The future belongs to a new kind of leader, those able to co-create stories with people. We are in a global idea economy. Technology was already transforming every industry, making any idea possible, and redefining the word success. Now, it has just redefined the word...
Understood
Is your business customer-centric? Of course, it is. As business people, we all know that being customer-centric is important. It’s the condition for staying relevant. In truth: we struggle with it. It’s not because of neglect or because we don’t care. It’s more of a...
Three Minutes That Changed My Life
In 2001, TOTAL, the biggest energy company in France, had invested $150M+ in building an innovative electronic procurement system that would save ten times that amount by consolidating thousands of suppliers and millions of SKUs (Single Keeping Units) into a single,...
Introducing the Graphic Facilitation Gallery: Key Takeaways from Influential Business Leaders
As many of my regular clients and readers know, a large part of my work as a strategist starts with listening. Typically, I listen to help CEOs and executives get their strategic story out of their head so that they can lead their company to greater success. However,...
How to TED Talk your next pitch: the engineering beneath the magician’s hat
A while ago, a former colleague of mine named Jess got a new gig as a consultant to help the CTO of an 8-billion-dollar company build his 5-year IT strategic plan. Shortly after, she emailed me to see if we could meet and chat. The title of her note said, “Can you...
When your Team Builds the Pitch Together: Alignment and the Power of Collaboration
The true power of building a company pitch comes if you dare to scratch the surface, to challenge the underlying strategic narrative and immerse your entire leadership team in the process of redesigning it collaboratively. In my previous article, Pitching using...
Pitching using metaphor: how to communicate complex business ideas and still ignite your audience.
A few years back, one of the heads of a large American consulting firm asked me if I could help him create a new sales deck for a service he wanted to relaunch that helped his clients better manage corporate project risk. He wanted to move fast, so I asked him to come...
Pull the plug on the presentation autopilot
Jumping on PowerPoint is the knee-jerk reaction to any need to communicate with our peers, stakeholders, and clients. Based on what I see when I teach or attend executive meetings, it looks like this isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Before you start creating another...