Telling the story of your strategy

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | Comments Off

As you stand in front of your team about to tell the story of your strategy, you want to be sure that the message gets across. That is the essence of “Communicating Strategy”. You want to have through through how you construct and tell the story of your strategy so it comes to life.

I usually start my presentations with stories. I use “The Sesame Street Connection” for strategic balanced scorecard presentations, or “The Deer and Rabbits” story for strategy presentations. The Sesame street story works on curiosity, intrigue leading to a simple but vital principles that changes how people think about Balanced Scorecards. The Deer and rabbits story lines up a collection of thoughts about collaboration, priorities, trust, teamwork and choosing what to focus on. One is literal, but sets me up as someone with inside knowledge. the other is more metaphorical and invites the audience to think for themselves.

The reason I describe these is because I have been reading a superb book called “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. In it they explain how messages can be constructed in a way that have impact, are memorable and stick in people’s mind. They use one example to demonstrate the mount of saturated fat in cinema popcorn. He could tell you it is 38 grams in a medium sized serving, but that would probably mean very little. Instead Art Silverman placed on a table a Bacon and eggs breakfast, a Big-Mac, fries, and a whole a steak dinner with all the trimming. Put next to a bag of popcorn, he explained that you would have to eat ALL of this combined to get somewhere near the fat content of the popcorn. Now that is an image that sticks in the mind.

Art got his message across with simplicity and power. Can you do the same with your imperative for change in your organisation, without using a full cooked breakfast? I strongly recommend you have a read of Made to Stick. You can buy Made to Stick here I an sure you will find within it much that is useful.