Having a Strategic Narrative is Vital for Leaders Now More Than Ever

One of the most memorable things I’ve done over the past couple of years is to help a government ministry redefine and create their strategic narrative as a key part of the wholesale restructuring of their national health system. Sounds intense… it was.

Creating and amplifying effective healthcare communications is part of what we do at nitro but it’s rare to do so at such scale or at such a critical time for the country involved. Our Strategic Narrative creation service has evolved over years and it’s always iterating but this project and the current period of global uncertainty has got me thinking about why all organisation need to revisit and assess if their strategic narrative really fits the current climate. If you haven’t got one, it really is time to get one. Critical, now more than ever, is considering if it is really touching on the things the recipients of your messaging actually care about. It’s this last claim, making sure we address the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) for the recipient in our strategic communications, that this post is specifically about. 

But first a step back to the beginning and a definition. What is a Strategic Narrative?

The Harvard Business Review defines is as: 

A strategic narrative is a special kind of story. It says who you are as a company. Where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. How you believe value is created and what you value in relationships. It explains why you exist and what makes you unique.

Strategic Narratives are used by individuals or organisations to seed and then create a reference point for large scale, long term organisational or individual behaviour change couched within the construct of an overall narrative arc.

Perhaps the most cited example of one in action is Barack Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Congress speech which if you have not seen it is worth a detailed watch.

There are many things to call out in this not least the inspirational and emotionally connecting nature of the speech. For the purpose of this post though I’d like you to focus on the structure. 

To my mind, there is a definite repeatable structure at play here which reveals a template for effective communication. It also calls out a key nuance where following the template alone without situational awareness can lead to you missing your chance to deliver an effective narrative and set up the conditions for your audience to take your message forward and make it their own. 

Briefly here’s the structure we use at nitro to create the core narrative elements of Strategic Narratives. Please note this is different from wider creative outputs that can be many and infinitely variable.

First, there is the hook, something that through text, visuals or delivery immediately grabs the audience’s attention. If it’s not perfectly poised and delivered the rest of your work is much harder. Second the story of the past, often the individuals but it can be the organisations. Whichever it is, humanise it, make it impassioned, demonstrate struggle but show success. Third, bring the audience into the present, unroll a canvas that lets them see themselves in the picture. A common view of where you are today is a key priming tool for moving on to the next stage where you lay out your vision of a shared future often combined with and culminating in, five, a clear and concise, linguistically memorable exposition of a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins.

Most of those stages largely conform to Simon Sinek’s Start With Why https://simonsinek.com/product/start-with-why/ and stages six (How) and seven (Workforce Benefits) more broadly relate to the practical elements of what is going to happen and when. Lastly all good narratives need to reach a rising crescendo, a call to action that leaves the listener in no doubt as to what is required of them but more importantly ensures that they are ‘bought in’ and motivated to participate and work collectively towards some form of resolution. 

Successful execution, of course, involves deep insight and understanding of the audience and the strategic context that you collectively face as well as perfect creative execution but it’s the insight or rather lack of deep empathetic understanding of the full range of things the audience is motivated by and the extent to which certain things are already known to them which, IMHO, is the real key to generating a lasting behavioural change. 

There is one important nuance to stress. In my experience, many leaders and organisations fail to accurately assess not just what but the relative weight of their audiences needs. Let me give you an example from healthcare but the point is ubiquitous.  

Through multiple projects, we’ve been lucky enough to survey the motivations of Healthcare Professionals. In one example with a sample size of >15,000 representing over 10% of their very international workforce, we have a large pool of data. One question among many has always really stood out for me. We asked what motivates you? A simple question but if you want to create your communications on the basis of understanding the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) for your audience it’s the most important one to ask.

In this case, the results shown in the pie chart below were, if not surprising very very clarifying. Healthcare workers just like you and me are not 100% altruistic. 

Now that is obviously not to say they don’t score way better than most of us in terms of caring about the wider community and directly for their patients, of course they do (Hippocratic oath n all that!). The evidence clearly shows that care for the community at large and patients are both primary motivators, the most important ones in fact. (let’s all take a moment to say thank you for that!). These externalities make up roughly half of the motivations the survey respondents expressed (they could select multiple ones and prioritise them). The other half are, in my opinion, much more interesting, these tend to be ‘internal’ factors more closely related to personal experience and gratification such as the learning, development, career progression, rewards, empowerment, frictionless working and the sense of enjoyment created by collaborating with friends and committed colleagues around a common purpose. 

This pie chart is typical of many similar results but I find it an incredibly powerful piece of communications insight. It’s a template that shows you what factors to ensure you address in your communications and how to weight them all other things being equal. However, there is a nuance that can have dramatic consequences for whether your strategic narrative lands or not and this all relates to where your audience is in their journey.

In this example an overly simplistic interpretation of Simon Sineks - ‘Start with Why’ work and looking at the pie chart above would lead you to the conclusion that structuring communications that major on the patient and community outcomes of your effort first and then cover off the internal factors is a fairly safe bet. However, tell any health professional they should care more about their patients or the community and at best you’ll get a smile and a shrug and at worst a smack. Why because a) this is normally a core part of who they are and what they signed up for b) they live the joy and pain of that decision every day and c) from third parties or indeed administrative leadership it can come across as soooo overdone. I have the sense that the same rationale applies in many other sectors too.

That’s not to say you should not show thanks and respect for those efforts (Clap for Carers being an excellent case in point) or indeed explain context but that when it comes to change management it’s wise to consider and re-weight your communication structure to reflect what is already understood by the audience better than you could ever express yourself. 

So in this particular scenario with testing, we found that more and more of the focus ended up being on the specifics relating to the ‘internal’ factors, ie. how would the changes envisaged affect working conditions and efficiency, career development and progressions, teamwork, proximity to colleagues you like working with etc. Which I think is a simple but profound reminder of how in communications we need to park our preconceptions, put our minds into those of the audience and really consider what is important for them at that particular time.

That’s it for now. This is just one aspect of a large subject area and I'd love to hear your thoughts on your experiences. Strategic Narratives are incredibly powerful unifying tools, every organisation should have one and revisit it to make it ever more owned and created by their audience...but that is as they say another story….

@nitro we are specialists in creating and delivering strategic narratives that involve and engage your workforce. If you’d like to find out more please get in touch.

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