Narrative Strategy: Internal and External Storytelling
I recently had a client who was standing up a new organization within a public company. They were now in charge of digital capabilities that served both their organization and their customers. And as they were developing their flagship product, they found that their stakeholders were losing the plot. Employees were confused. Customers were anxious. Investors were losing their confidence. This new growth opportunity was turning into a massive headache.
I was brought on board to help steward the growth narrative, while also understanding the current stories that were circulating amongst the stakeholders. What was causing confusion? What opportunities were being missed? What did everyone believe about the initiative?
Initially, my client asked me to focus on the marketing materials. The external facing stories that were being shared with the press and customers. But I pushed back. If the organization itself wasn’t sure of what was going on, what gave us the authority to tell the public?
So we took a step back. I started with meeting with team members across the new digital organization. I collected their stories and language about what they were building, why it was important and what they understood to be the desired outcomes. Quickly I saw disconnect between the terminology used, and a growing concern that what they were building was not valuable.
That’s the interesting thing about building something new — if it’s never been done before it can be tricky to get buy in.
The new digital organization lacked a cohesive “why”, and that was causing friction with the rest of the company. We needed an internal narrative that would help guide the team past uncertainty and onto the other side of innovation.
I put together an internal narrative document - a mini narrative bible that would be their source of truth. It contained the digital organization’s north star narrative, as well as key messaging to be used in different contexts. There was the messaging to be used with the rest of the company, messaging to be used across functions, and bite size stories that demonstrated their progress.
With the internal storytelling initiated, we saw a shift. The digital organization was more harmonious, acting in concert with each other, knowing what role they played in the narrative. The internal storytelling enabled engagement, alignment and mobilization.
Then it was time to start externalizing the narrative. Working with the marketing, communications and sales teams, we started crafting an external narrative that built off the internal one. Focusing on the needs of the customers, we adjusted some messaging and repositioned the flagship product and digital transformation into stories that made sense to our customers. This required an agile approach to storytelling, willing to iterate based on new information.
With a bit of narrative strategy, the digital organization went from flailing opportunity to value multiplier. With a narrative to hold onto and messaging to lean on, the company had the infrastructure to grow and innovate. Their internal storytelling informed their external storytelling, enabling shared understanding and coordination.
Narrative strategy is more than just marketing and press releases. It’s the internal system of stories that makes change irresistible for all stakeholders.