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 tend to think they can delegate writing their strategic narrative to someone else, typically a copywriter, an administrative assistant, or even an intern. This is irresponsible.

Delegating the writing of your strategic narrative means that you’re removing most of the value in the process:

• Clarity: writing forces you to get rid of clutter and think clearly.
• Decision: carefully choosing your language means weighing your options and making important decisions.
• Ownership: when you put the time and effort into writing something, it becomes yours, and you defend it.

What you can delegate is the technical aspect of writing. Get an Ai-powered writing assistant like Grammarly. This type of tool will review spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes.

But the act of writing is not just about transferring your ideas on paper or screen. It’s not just communication. Writing is also about organizing your thoughts into a coherent system of stories that form a narrative. In case you don’t know yet, I make a difference between story and narrative. See in the footer for more info.

Unlike what most people think and what schools teach us, writing and reasoning go hand-in-hand. They happen at the same time, in somewhat of a messy and cryptic process. In our context, it’s not about beautiful words and pretty sentences at first. It’s about meaning first.

Writing gets to the unexplored parts of your mind. It’s about extracting insights that would not have otherwise been accessible if you just sat down and thought about this process.

Innovation, strategy, and vision come from writing. Would you delegate these to somebody else?

Yes, writing is a lot of work. It’s painful. But the good news is that although you should do it on your own, you don’t have to do it alone. It’s OK to get some help. For example, I constantly run collaborative writing sessions with my clients. We write together, and I make sure that I am not the leader in this, but the accountability partner, the moderator, the advisor, and the sounding board.

In the end, you forget the frustration caused by writing; once you’re done, once “writing” as a verb has turned into “writing” as a noun, once you have created your narrative and you’re ready to activate it.

Because in the end, writing is bliss.