Is It Recognized?

Earlier this week, I started to lay out the questions that you should explore to figure out if your strategic narrative is effective or not. You could use these as a framework to self-evaluate it, which is always a good thing to do.

So far, I highlighted the following characteristics (with links to the articles in case you missed them):

• How Well Did You Articulate It?
• Does It Inspire People?
• Did You Integrate It?

The next piece to evaluate is how people inside and outside your company recognize your view of the world.

Is your strategic narrative recognized?

Here is the thing: you can articulate the most inspiring narrative and then use it for every decision you make, but if not enough people know about it, it won’t help your business grow as much as it could.

This question might seem almost too obvious, but I guarantee you that it is not. You need to have a sense of the public’s affection for your narrative to realize how much you need to repeat yourself.

I am sure that you have your own answer to this question, but you must ask the people your serve directly (not just customers but everyone else). They will tell you how different your business is and why, with their own words. And that's priceless because you can use the language they give you to mobilize many other people.

Stay tuned for a couple more questions.