STRATEGIC NARRATIVE INSIGHTS
Your Origin Story: Strategic Narrative Underground Session 5
The origin story is one of the four stories in my strategic narrative model.
The insights that you gather when you explore it and write it can change the narrative with which you go by today and help you make better business decisions for the future. One of them is how to position your company for success.
Listen to a leadership team trying to reach a consensus about a plan. They constantly go back to what happened in the past. Sometimes, they need to go as far back as the source of inspiration that emerged when founding the company.
Why?
Science historian James Burke says is better than me.
“Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.”
Another reason is this:
If you want to make people excited about an idea, they need to know why you were excited about that idea in the first place.
We often forget about why we originally started to work on a new business, project, or idea. We get busy working on making it work, and that’s a good thing. But we need to keep in mind our WHY.
I went over this concept in yesterday’s Strategic Narrative Underground Session. You can watch the replay here.
Talking points
- The origin of the origin story
- Example: Mark Frohnmayer, founder and president of Arcimoto.
- Why does it matter?
- A basic story archetype
- What’s in it?
- Example: Blair Enns, on the origin of Win Without Pitching
- The emotional labor that this story takes to write it
- Speaking of how to write it: the pyramid approach
- Example: A visual origin story to help two airlines merge
Enjoying this?
Join us next Thursday, June 3rd, at 9:00 am Pacific.
It’s FREE.
I am inviting you every Thursday at 9:00 am Pacific to attend a free 30-minute talk+conversation about one of the strategic narrative principles in the book I am writing. I call these meetings Strategic Narrative Underground Sessions.
It is an opportunity to connect, learn and provide input on a piece of work that you might end up using for your own benefit. For me, it’s a chance to test new ideas.
If you’d like to check out what we’ve covered so far, you can now watch the recordings of our previous sessions here on Youtube.
Register in advance for this meeting here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.