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 friends in the Aerospace industry lost their business, their job and their financial peace.

In this context, who needs to work on their business strategy right now? The whole concept of strategy feels almost vain.

To me, focusing on your strategy is indispensable right now. It is even 100 times more “indispensabler” than ever, please excuse my French.

If you think about strategy only as planning, the rigid and tedious process that typically happens behind closed doors during long executive retreats, geared towards figuring out every little detail, line by line, then no, I’m not sure anybody has time for that anymore. A few days ago, I wrote something about the fact that unlike common belief, the strategy is an ongoing process, not a project.

What’s vital right now for many teams, is to continue to collectively create, imagine, and believe in a common myth.

This myth is your strategy, and it’s the most human thing you can build.

The proof is, one of the reasons why humankind exists and dominates other species is because of our ability to imagine things collectively. Our ability to believe in common myths is what has kept us alive.

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari explains how religious, political and economical myths give us the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers and to adapt.

Strategy building is myth-building.

I see many organizations either postponing or cancelling the work they were going to do to build their strategy. Some of them have rushed to finish rebranding and are now stuck with a new fuzzy positioning that doesn’t help. That’s because they want to cut costs. I get it.

This is a huge mistake as it deprives them of a unique possibility to reframe and revive the myth that will make them endure.

I call this myth the strategic story, the metahelm. Call it yours however you want, but don’t kill it.

Use the creative problem-solving power of your team.

Spark new ideas.

Tweak your focus and affirm your point of view.

Redo your sales deck.

Finish that website on which you were going to reveal what you really stand for.

Have you finally digitally transformed?

Change your business model for good.

Now is not the time to contract, but to rethink expansion.

Whatever form or symbol it takes, the most important myth you can build right now is your strategy.

Of course, your strategy starts with your story, first.