From Radio Tales To Strategic Narratives | David Sloly

Strategy doesn’t fail in spreadsheets; it fails when people can’t see themselves inside it. We sit down with David Slowly—journalist turned radio producer turned B2B strategist—to unpack a practical, repeatable way to turn direction into action through narrative. David traces how radio taught him to spark imagination without visuals and how working with data-driven teams demanded proof that stories change minds. The result is a simple 5-4-3-2-1 toolkit leaders can use on Monday morning: five Ws for raw facts, four Ps (princes, purses, pets, places) to hook attention, three acts to structure challenge–struggle–resolve, two states to maintain emotional momentum, and one killer headline that sticks when the room closes the deck.

We stress why most “strategies” read like to-do lists and how to shift from internal busyness to external effects. You’ll hear how to define the effect you want on your environment, then show what you will actually do to enable those effects to emerge. We build vision stories that make future states tangible without pretending certainty, and we argue for embracing ambiguity as a source of agency. People act when they feel trusted to fill intelligent gaps. That’s where identity matters: know what your organisation is today—capabilities, constraints, ethos—so you can choose the next credible moves and the options they unlock.

Expect hands-on tactics you can apply now: one-message emails that reduce friction, headlines that are promise, intrigue, or news, and live read-backs to test whether a message landed. We show how to use real places and specifics to feel true to your culture, map likely struggles by function, and define a crisp resolve: when the smoke clears, what will be observably different out there. Tell the journey and cast your audience as the hero; they’ll start pre-solving as you speak. If people can’t picture it, they won’t do it—so give them a story that fits the work and earns belief.

If this conversation helps you rethink how you communicate strategy, subscribe, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with your one killer headline.

Find David's work here: https://harveydavid.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Why-You-Need-A-Business-Story-And-How-To-Create-It-1.pdf

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

Mike Jones 0:00

Most people don't think of strategy that way.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Developing a new strategy. Strategic blind spots.

Mike Jones 0:05

When strategy meets reality. Strategy and innovation.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

In the strategy world.

Mike Jones 0:09

Drive their strategic goals. And welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. Welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. I'm delighted today to be joined by David Slowly. It's slowly, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 0:20

It's slowly, but that's okay.

Mike Jones 0:22

Slowly. Sorry. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

It's alright.

Mike Jones 0:25

I keep it's good. I keep messing up people's names. I really do apologize. Um that's right, Alan. It is. Um terrible at that. I might just stick to first names. It's it's great to have you on the show. Uh, we got connected by a previous guest, Matt Mullins, he was so kind to introduce us. And we had an initial chat, and I was like, you'd be fantastic for the show. For our guests, do you mind giving a bit of background and a bit of context about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah, I'll keep it short, but I'll also try and include the important points, which I think will start coming out during the podcast why they were important points. Then you'll go, oh, that's why he can talk about that subject. So I started life as a journalist and then went to work in broadcast. And my speciality was radio, which means there were no screens. So the stories you told had to invigorate the imagination because you couldn't show a picture. And then I did go and work in advertising, and then from advertising, I went to work in B2B marketing, which is a much bigger, you know, there would be more of a strategic approach to advertising or to to to connecting with the audience. And it was very, very much B2B. Then um, so 10-15 years into that, I started my own agency because automation was in the um ascendancy at the time, whereas similar to the way AI is now, um, and started my own agency, which I've been running now for thir thir 14, 10, 11 years. Eleven years.

Radio Roots And The Power Of Story

Mike Jones 1:54

10 years. Yeah. Awesome. I mean it's it's a fascinating background, and the reason why it struck me was because I'm I am quite skeptical when you you hear like the coaches or consultants talk about storytelling and narratives, they they make out, you know, it don't matter how bad your strategy is, as long as you can tell a story, you you you can you'll execute fine. And I I think there's a difference when I was speaking to you about the importance of that storytelling, that narrative, um, which was really captivating compared to what I'm normally hear about, you know, narratives.

Data Meets Narrative At Google

SPEAKER_01 2:35

So I got I saw the power of storytelling. So in broadcast, um my first real jobs in radio was working for the first independent production company, and they gave me a tape recorder and a microphone, because that's how it rolled back then, and said, go out there and find some stories. Now I'd studied journalism, so I knew how to find and tell a story, or I thought I did. And I just started drifting into weird and wonderful places. I met a guy that had created a machine that could tell if someone was lying, a lie detector that you could use on your telephone line. And I did an interview with him, and I made this whole feature and made the whole story around someone lying on a telephone call. And it was a bit of fun, and I took it back to my boss and he loved it, and he got a sponsor on board, and it was sponsored, and uh it was amazing. I'd be I remember cycling home through Shepherd's Bush one day, and a car window was open, and I heard my feature being played out of someone's car radio, and it sort of came came home to me that I was crafting, I was making something, and I became fascinated by the power of stories because I was hearing these stories coming out of car radios that were in between them listening to pop music. So I was making my stories three and a half minutes long, I was really studying pop music at the time. How do they work? Well, they have this intro and then they have a hook, and so I was making my features three and a half minutes long, and I was following a format, if you like, of pop music, and I found that really worked for commercial radio stations. But when I went to work um in marketing, my first real job in marketing was for Google, and Google were B2B, and they were trying to get hairdressers and all kinds of people to use Google AdWords, and they were doing it through sending them a promotional code, and you'd tap the code in, that would give you 50, 100, whatever they deemed the right amount of free uh advertising on Google, and that would put you on what used to be the right-hand side of Google search, which now that's what 10 blue links, and you'd be on the right hand side of the search, you'd show up there, uh, and people may click on you. And every quarter I'd have to go to the Google offices and pitch them something creative, another way of engaging the audience. One of my earlier pitches was we should tell the stories of the successes. You guys have got the data, let's tell the stories. And they said, That's a fantastic idea. What do you mean stories? And it all began to sort of piece together in my mind. These are these are there's an incredible amount of horsepower, intellectual horsepower in the room of the Google office I'm speaking to. And they're right to ask me, what do you mean by story? And it's like, these are data, guys. Data is true, it is there in the field, you can read it. Story is subjective. What do I mean? And it was fascinating. It was they they allowed me to go and train. I went and trained as a clinical hypnotherapist so I could understand how words alone could move someone's state of mind. I I I um I studied decision-making theory and behavioural economics. All these things were fundamental to create, if you like, this lattice work of which I could demonstrate how a story and why a story changes people's attitudes and the beliefs and the decisions they make from a science point of view. Because without that, Google would be like, well, that's nice, but where's the science? So I went through this entire journey, which got me to a point, if you like, where I was able to move away from saying we should use a story to understanding the fundamentals of what we'd need to include in that story in order for it to influence people's attitudes, beliefs, and the decisions they made. So I got to a point where I was hearing other people like you heard saying, Oh yeah, we're using stories to influence this. We don't we've got the strategy now, do we gotta have a good story? And I challenged it by asking, what kind of story do they use? Yeah. And they would say, I use the old beginning, middle, and end. Right? They didn't even sort of say Aris, Aristotle's three acts. It wasn't even that deep. Um, and I began to realize that I think the the point I got to, the question, the what if, is that it kind of went back to as a child, I intrinsically understood when I was being told a story. And I understood stories, but during my schooling, no one ever taught me how to create a story.

Mike Jones 7:32

Yeah, true. Yeah.

Why “Tell A Story” Isn’t Enough

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It was just a given that I understood, oh, that's a story. But they never layered how a story is created. And I realized that there's lots of books out there that tell you how to create a story for fiction, how to create but they are five, six hundred pages long. And they're actually very difficult. If you're not a nerd and really interested in beats and how these things work and deconstructing stories to understand how they go back together, if you're not really into that, if you just need a story, they're not helpful. So I thought I need to put together a sort of a something that's sub-a hundred pages that has a process. I like processes, I'm quite a process-y kind of guy. I like flow, child, I like process because I can then work to the process. So I created this uh these five steps to help people like the person that you mentioned, right, when you opened that question to me. They talk about story, but they don't really understand how they're gonna what's the methodology for creating that story, and that's what I went and did. And it took a year to I thought it would take a week, and it took a year. It took me a year because trying to make something really simple is actually quite difficult. And I know Tim Cook of Apple famously waved an iPhone and said it takes a lot of effort to make something this simple. And I understand, I understood that, you know, okay, it does remove every word that doesn't need to be there. Get down, make this something that a busy CEO of a small business can pick up, read, and apply. And uh and that's where I kind of got to. So to answer your question, the there's there's people that are saying they're using story, and you you have to go to really understand storytelling, you have to go very deep into the methodologies and the styles and the types of stories, the basic plots, how they move, where they need to pivot, and then you need to bring it all the way up into simplicity so that anyone can grab it and own it.

Mike Jones 9:43

Yeah, I think that's the key when we're talking about communicating strategy, is that stories are fundamentally to us, and when you're delivering the strategy, the power is in the interpretation. So, how do people interpretate interpret the the direction so that we are reducing the misinformation transfer? And I think sometimes we we we communicate thinking that just because I've said it it makes sense to me, is obviously going to make sense for everybody else, and we want to get that across. And I I've always been taught, you know, give clear intent. You know, we when I was in the military, we structured our intents very clearly, you know, the what by means of how and what success would look like is the three components, and it should be no longer than 36 words.

Reading The Room: Did It Land

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Very good, rigid. For I so before I'd done any of my career, I really learnt about communications from my father, who was also in the military, he was in the RAF signals. So my father um was born and raised in Jamaica and came over to the UK when he was 16 to join the RAF. And th so it'd be quite a strange, it was quite a strange house to grow up in because it went from clipped English to yes man. You never quite knew where where the conversation was going to land. But what he was very good at because of his signals training was communicating to my brother, my sister, and myself, not in a nasty or in a in a challenging way, but very clear communication. And that could be his his love for us, what he wanted us to do, or why we'd done something well, everything. He found the words to communicate it, and he would give you that extra second or two of look to see if it had landed, and if he didn't think it had landed, he could reframe it and deliver it again. To your point, we get things presented to us that the presenter understands, and it's taken as a given that we should understand it because it was presented in a logical flow. Yeah, but the struggle, we're human, so when someone is imparting information, their narrative, we're actually running our own narrative in the background. Yeah, but I don't know what I heard. Well, I saw something different yesterday. Now, these two narratives are running side by side, so the one we've been presented with is being blurred by a second narrative. So therefore, the information communicated by a presenter to me may not land the first time. Not because they're not good at presenting, not because their articulation isn't clear, not because their proposition and their framing and their delivery isn't perfect. It's because I have an imagination and thoughts and I can't stop them. And if they're communicating to me, they're firing up and going, so with anything we're presenting, we need to take a leaf out of my dad's book and stop and look him in the eye. Did it land? And then reframe it and run at it once again. I realized as I was answering that first question of yours, I could start talking about my methodology, the five basic steps. But I thought, if I roll with that, it's just foggy. I'm just delivering fog now. Message on top of message on the top of message. Stop there. Let's move to the next thing. I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to come back to the five basic steps that enable anyone to create a story, a narrative. And I'll use the word narrative because some people find stories as something that's made up and not true. And we need to differentiate that from authentic to fictional.

Mike Jones 13:28

Yeah, true. And yeah, I'd like to explore the process, but that that thing you mentioned a moment ago about you know, your dad would look people in the eye to see if it landed. I think that's such a um an underused skill because we're too quick to just send emails or you know, now we've got you know, Asana, we've got all these tools now, Slack, to communicate, but they they involve communication without the person in front of them.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

So how does it land?

Mike Jones 14:02

Yeah, how's it land? And and and I think that's so good if you you get your people in and you can you can tell the narrative of what you're doing and why we're doing it, and look people in the the the eyes to see how's it landed? I think that's such a such a crucial thing to do.

Email Clarity And Single-Message Comms

SPEAKER_01 14:22

You know, when you're watching a movie, it's escapism. So you allow, you know it's a film, you allow it to wash over you, and before you know it, you find yourself as part as if you are role-playing how you would respond to certain situations, which is why we get drawn into stories, the narratives. We imagine ourselves as the hero. I've never waved a sword around on a ship, but I could imagine myself in Pirates of the Caribbean when I'm watching it, and I'll almost flinch, you know. I would do this and I would do that. So I wouldn't. Um whereas when we send an email, it's it's it's just gonna land when someone's doing something else. So I I have a policy. When I send an email, one message in the email. So the headline in the subject box, and then the message. Succinct as possible. If I've got another message I need to communicate to them, I'll send a second email with that one in the so where it makes it easier for them to fish it out later if they need to find it, and they can act on one thing. They can't act on two at the same time. And why should I why should I hold them for two actions on my behalf when I one is what I'll be happy with them doing one and one a bit later?

Mike Jones 15:29

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So I like that. Well, what so what's the process?

The 5-4-3-2-1 Narrative Method

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yeah, thank you for asking. So as I said, I I wanted to keep the process as simple as possible, as actionable as possible, and I'm gonna point you to a place where you can download the book. It's free of charge. And that process in there. But I'll walk you through. It goes five, four, three, two. Five is the five views. The five views are the who, what, why, when, where. They are not the story, but they're the questions you need to ask to get the information that is the raw material of your story. Who is it about? What happened? Why did it happen? When did it happen? Where did it happen? Day of fundamentals. Who, what, why, when, where. And you you write those down first, and then you move to the next one, which is the four. The four Ps. So we had the five W's, who what why when where, the four P's. And the four P's are princes, verses, pets, and places. When I was studying as a journalist, it was with the BBC, and they used to second you off to different places to help you go into new directions. And I was sent to work for two days with the an editor at The Guardian, and it was fascinating. And it was him that said it to me. People are only interested in four things princes, purses, pets, and places. And I scratched my head, you know, I'm a new guy on the block then. I'm like, but people are interested in all kinds of things. No. A prince is anyone you can name, but you don't need to explain. Anyone or anything. So Google is a prince, Prince Charles is a prince, David Beckham is a prince. You know, it goes on. Anyone you can name, you don't need to explain, is a prince. So you go back to your five Ws and you say, is there a prince? So maybe you're writing a case study and your client writes uh you know delivers for Virgin Atlantic. Okay, there's a prince. Princes. Are there any princes you can talk about? Second one is purses. Purses relates to finance. We're obsessed with numbers, big numbers, small numbers, house prices going up, house prices coming down. So are there any numbers in there that are big or small? They could be percentages. You know, when we finished this, 72% of people said it was a success. Well um, when our client made their investment, they got 100% return on investment. When our, you know, well, any numbers, big or small, it only cost them six pence per lead. Small number, but a big story. So princes first, anyone you can name, you don't need to explain. Purses, money, princes, purses, pets. We're obsessed with pets in the West. They don't fit into everyone's story, so you either know it either is in or it isn't in. But pets are incredibly important to us. We care more about our own pets than we do about our neighbours.

Mike Jones 18:40

So I've got my dog right here.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Brilliant. You've got your dog right there. I wish I had your dog right here with me now. And you know, now you'll start to anyone that says poppy cop, start to check your news bulletins, chart start to check how it ends with pets. You know, look at that pet story, go, what was either side of it? Big new big news, pet, you know, anywhere they can get a pet story in, they know it. Pets, incredibly important. Uh, princess, purses, pet, and places. Places, you know, they say that if you find yourself in a foreign country, you are more likely to trust someone who comes from your same town than you are to trust someone, the locals from the country, even though that person from the town you came from could be a criminal, you're just more likely to trust them because they came from the same place. So it's a strange phenomenon, but it's true. So here's the thing especially if they relate to the audience, but also places that conjure images in people's minds. I only have to say Christmas in New York, and you got it, right? Uh Caribbean sunset, and you're there. I don't need to start describing, imagine waking up, yeah. It's like, I got it, a Caribbean sunset. I know Christmas in New York, I know it. It's cuts you right through to the bone. It's yeah. So that's the four P's. Princess, Perses, Pets, and Places. You go back over your five W's and you start to put those in. It's still not the story, they're just the raw materials. Now we move it to start structuring it into a story framework. Aristotle talked about the three acts. Act one, the first act, is the challenge. A story without a challenge isn't really a story. A man that you know, Mike loses his dog, turns around, and there's his dog. That's not a story. Mike loses his dog. Heaven forbid, I hope this never happens, and goes hunting for his dog and and is is led on a journey to the highlands of Scotland through the cold of winter and finds his dog on a peak at two o'clock in the morning and hugs him. That's a story. Yeah? That's a story. And on that journey, you would no doubt go through some changes, you'd reflect and all these things. You'd become a new Mike Jones, yeah? That's transformation which story does. So the three acts, the first one is the challenge. The story must have a challenge. So what is the challenge? The second is the struggle. Most case studies I read are the challenge, everything that went really well, and we'll come to the resolve, the third act three in a moment, but it's like everything that goes really well. That's lovely, but the measure of a company sending me a case study is about how they dealt with the things that didn't go well. Yeah, the problem's not the problem, it's how they handle the problem. That's what I'm interested in.

Mike Jones 21:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

So I'd love to see something that didn't go well. And then I'll know if they're the kind of people I can work with. Because I know when they're working with me, something's gonna go wrong. It's just gonna go wrong. So you've got these three acts act one, the the challenge, act two, the struggle, yeah, and act three, the resolve. What did we learn from going through? At the challenge and the struggle. That's the real resolve. And that could be we learned that this process gives you a 20% uplift on ROI. We learned that trying to um shortcut and hack it isn't the way to build it. We had to go back to fundamentals and design from the ground up. We learned that strategy isn't a list of two do's.

unknown 22:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

It doesn't work. No get delivery. We're going to come to the strategies in a minute. So you've got these three acts. So now you take your five W's, which have got your four P's laced into it. Act one. What was the what was the challenge? Who, what, why? Why did we do this? We did this because that's the challenge. There we go. There's the challenge. You probably get you'll probably get the um when in there as well. It's 2025. We da da da da da. And then you've got. Go on.

Mike Jones 22:54

I can see this quite easy when you communicate in that sense because you've got the challenge. The challenge is normally the challenge that we're facing now. The struggle is is against what what are the difficult decisions, where and when and how we're gonna get to this point. And the resolve, I suppose, when you're talking to communicate strategy, the resolve isn't there, but what you hope to resolve is the vision. Yeah, the vision, yeah. So you've got that whole journey there, quite easy. And I think I like that idea of the axe, especially the the struggle, because I think there's a lot of over-optimism in strategy.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You could put the SWOT analysis right in the struggle. What's the struggle going to be? Well, you know, these are our strengths, this is our weaknesses, this is the opportunity. You can just bake those right in, and then so that's the three acts. Now you've got your three acts laid out, and then you moved, so we've done five W's, five, four P's, four, three acts, three. Now the two, better do it that way, two. So the two is the two states. A story relies on moving between two states. And I'll do this bit quite slow because authentic stories do the same, and it's difficult for us to believe that would be the case. The two states are what is on will go off, what is good will go bad. What is a win will become a loss. And if you look at any project you've worked on, you'll see it actually starts mapping that way. The client says we'll do it, the client changes their mind. You present something new, they don't like it. You try again, they love it. You start to deliver and realize you've got this block and you need to overcome that. Up, down, up, down. You pick up any decent fiction book, and if the chapter ends down, it's gonna start, it's gonna move to up on the next one. That's how narratives flow. And it happens in real life. You can look at the last property you bought. It wasn't just I said we'll take it. They said, Where's the money? They gave them the money and they gave me the keys. It won't be that. Yeah, there'll be this on, off, up, down, good, bad. So now you look at your story in particular in that struggle area, and you look at how it actually organized, and you start to allow it to go up. You tell the story of, and we won the pitch, we were so so stoked, we all went out for a celebration, and then the next day the client said, We're changing the brief. Down we go.

Mike Jones 25:25

Yeah, yeah.

Three Acts For Strategic Communication

SPEAKER_01 25:27

And we couldn't figure out a way of changing that brief. And then Steve phoned me at two o'clock in the morning, sent me a message at two o'clock in the morning, so I cracked it, and up we went. We had the client, we presented it to the brief, we presented it back to the client, and the client said, We love it, but we did that exact same thing last year. You know, that's kind of how it goes, right? No, you don't need to invent them, be authentic, they're in there. I've never met a business leader, I've never met anyone in marketing, I've never met anyone in any industry that when I've unpacked their story with them, hasn't had the up, down, up, down. The two states.

unknown 26:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

And so you take the state up and then you bring it down. Those two states of emotion, emotion, keep us emotionally engaged in the story. Yeah? Stops it being a boring story. So that's the two states, and the last one, the one is the one killer headline. We don't always need a headline for a story, but it may be a talk you're giving. It may be a presentation, it may be an email you're sending, yeah, and you've got a subject line. And I got obsessed with this because also as part of my training, they we studied headlines. How do you create a headline? And there's only three types of headline that exist. There's the promise, it promises something, cure for baldness found. There's the intrigue, it intrigues you. Man bites dog. Got a lot of pets going on here, yeah. And so there's the uh what do we say that was what was the first one? We said there's the promise, the intrigue, and the third one is news, which by definition is new and interesting. Humans land on Mars. Yeah? So you're gonna create a headline from this, and it's got to be one of those three. So when you look at your headline, you go, is it a promise and intrigue or news? And then you've got this one killer headline. So if you were doing it for your strategy, which closes with the vision, it's gonna have this one headline that draws people in. And this is also for if you're doing pitches, you know, there could be three or five other people pitching, and they tend to take all the pitches and and discuss them, but they tend to hang on the to the title, they address them each time by the title. If your title's 46 words long and really complex, they'll stop talking about your work because they cannot recall the title.

Mike Jones 27:55

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

And I know that because I used to do a lot of pitching for a marketing agency, and I'd go all over the world doing these pitches, and one my thing was make sure the title is so memorable that they'll forget everyone else and remember our title, and I'd dr I'd drum that title home all the way through. So when they seem around discussing it afterwards, mine's the easiest one to say, and it's a psychology thing, right? So that's the five steps to creating a narrative.

Mike Jones 28:26

Okay, I like it. I can see there's a lot we do in futures, and in futures we um talk about storytellings really important in that because they don't exist, and you create the plausible scenarios, and in those you will create the stories, there's heroes, there's villains, you know, there's um it's not all dystopian, there is good and bad. And I suppose I was reflecting on that, and that's that state change you're talking about. Actually, it's not all it's not all bad, it's not all good, and actually those state changes are quite useful because when people are telling stories about the future, I find they're either all purely utopian or they're purely dystopian. They're not they haven't got that state, that reality of the state change that you go through.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah. And I just want to say something about narrative stories. You don't have to have the story yet. You can do a vision story. So you can do exactly the same with the who, what, why, when, where, and you can do exactly the same with the Princess Perses, Pets and Places, and you can do exactly the same with the three acts, only now you're layering in what that vision is going to be, what is going to happen on that journey. Now it may not play out exactly as that, but without the vision story, it's difficult for people to grasp what the change will look like and how the change will come about.

Mike Jones 29:47

Yes, and that that's key when you're when you're given direction, you want people to remember it. Because there's no point when that's the thing, when they're when they're there enacting the strategy, they they are dealing with so many different tensions, challenges that you want them. So when they when they are making those choices, they're making those choices in line with the the intent. Yeah, not anything else. And you see strategies, I I get sent strategies to read all the time, and they are normally woeful and boring and not strategy.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

So let's say Carrie, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Mike Jones 30:27

Well yeah, so I don't know how people people don't remember them. So they say they've got a strategy and then they they they send it out to people and people don't read it. It's not memorable, it's quite generic. So people just go back and do do what they want anyway.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

So let's see. I I've given you narrative. Have we got time? Maybe we see if we can align narrative and strategy.

Mike Jones 30:50

To see Yeah, we've got time.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Okay, so let's go back up the chain. I've got a question for you. Let's go right to the top. What is a strategy?

Two States: Keeping Attention With Ups And Downs

Mike Jones 30:59

What is a strategy? Um it's really key. Well, there's there's there's really two elements when we look at strategy. So the one is the identity of the organization, so that needs to be there. So I I term that as the grand strategy. So you have what the organization actually is, it's is identity, it's ethos, you know, it's it's constraints, it's you know, it's all the things from past decisions that have got you to what you are. Now, this is really crucial because if you don't understand that, then you won't understand what is afforded to you in strategy. And your identity uh or your grand strategy is really important for that. Strategy, therefore, the other part, the act, and I suppose there's a difference, the act of doing strategy is how an organization continuously interprets, adapts, and acts within its environment to sustain advantage and maintain viability. So that's that's like the the act of strategy. What is a strategy? That is a sense that what what is the what is the effect that you're trying to have on the external environment that you're in?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

So we we talk you you've um you've I've just taken notes because I really actually I will listen back to this podcast, but I do also want I really am to achieve effect. So we talk, we we know what a bad strategy is. We get this list of bullet points to do things. What's a good strategy? What would you look at and go, that's a good strategy? What is it that you draw a circle around and go, that's why it's good?

Mike Jones 32:33

Well, it's quite a lot. So there's there's a good show, it all depends on the context. Say, for instance, I was with I I'll go say we had a the client and they were part of a a huge technological program that they needed to do. But the problem is the way that they got structured and in the environment was it was consensus madness, they couldn't make any decision about what needed to be done, and it means that they were they were failing, they weren't getting that advantage. So when when they'd done the strategy, it was it was came very clear that to main viable as we're talking about, they needed to change the dynamic of that relationship to lead and shape. So their strategy was about how do we move from being very static, can't do anything, to how do we change it so that we are actually leading and shaping the decisions of that ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

So that's a good strategy, yeah?

Mike Jones 33:28

Yeah, for them.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, for them. But it's a sentence almost, isn't it?

Mike Jones 33:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

And that becomes very memorable.

Mike Jones 33:36

Clear.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yeah. Yeah. So if we align storytelling to strategy, because I I just think there may be other people like me that think a strategy is 40 slides.

Mike Jones 33:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Without ever really having that top line, that articulation of understanding of this is what we were trying to achieve, but understanding why they're trying to achieve it. And I thought that was a really clear sense of purpose that you just described there, that anyone could embody and understand the part they're going to play in achieving that strategy. So if you align that to narrative, because I think the hard thing for a strategist is to just go back to that line and go, does that land? Right, my work here is done. Don't forget to pay my invoice. It's like people who come up with strap lines and propositions and and logos, you know. They go, Okay, so the logo's a tick. How much about pay do you? I think I think actually she got paid$25 for that. But I did.

Mike Jones 34:38

Yeah, yeah. Apparently went back and on to do with shares in the end. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

She now lives on a beach. I think I'll be big numbers, small numbers, right?

Mike Jones 34:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Yeah. Sorry, we both had neither of us could probably remember a name. I think it's Karen something, is it Karen Davies that that did the original tick?

Mike Jones 34:56

But I can't remember a name.

Killer Headlines That Stick

SPEAKER_01 34:58

But to you to your point, you know, if you're just going with that sentence, they're gonna go, Why am I paying you thousands of pounds for a single sentence? So you have to show them all the working out and how you got there. And I think the part that where narrative helps works for strategists is showing them how that will take them from where they are, the place they don't want to be, to where they want to be, and how it plays a continual part in the narrative. And you could follow, I I did it for um insurance company, and they had some very awkward ways of making customers interact with them through legacy, it made it very difficult, and we've all had a difficult experience with a telephone system, be it an insurance company, a bank, or one of those. It was very, very difficult. And they wanted me to bring that to life, and the story of the long short of it is I got the CEO to take a step forward when everything was going well, and turn right and take a step to the right when he hit the wall, when it wasn't working, and within five moves into it, the room was roaring laughter, and the CEO was standing facing an actual wall, which I knew would happen. And that just dramatized it and drilled home this home the story that we need to make change here and enabled him to start the journey for us all to make the change that was required around their operations. So for strategy, you kind of go, I've got my idea. How do I take them on that journey? What do I want to show them? Is it how that department will start behaving differently? Is it, you know, whatever you've got 101 things, I'm sure, in each strategy. And then you tell that story. And the differences between showing them slides with numbers and telling that story is when someone shows me the numbers or starts telling me what they're going to do, my guard immediately goes up, I'm guarded, yeah? Because they're coming out of something. When someone says, I want to tell you a story of how we see this, our guard drops. We have a natural curiosity. We've grown up since children hearing stories that do not hurt us, they enlighten us, they take us on journeys, they're incredible, they give us imagination, they uh educate us, they do everything. And we're our guard drops. So when you say, as a strategist, let me take you on the journey, and rather than take them on dot points on a Gantt chart of deliverables, take them on that journey. And obviously, some of it's going to be unknown, unknowns, but they'll understand that this is our snow. And you'll put the struggles in there as well. We know struggles have to be in there. We may struggle to get the systems updated to be able to perform this new task, but we overcome that and that moves us on. And take them on that story, and that enables them. And I talked about I have never been a swashbuckling pirate of the Caribbean, but my arms twitch when I watched that film with with my son years ago, and I noted that, and it's because we become the hero in the story. So when you're telling them this story, and they're the hero in it on that journey, they'll be deciding how they would make decisions as you're telling that story.

Mike Jones 38:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

They own it then.

Vision Stories And Futures Thinking

Mike Jones 38:27

And that's a really crucial thing because often what gets confused in this strategy and why it becomes also cumbersome is that they start to define stuff that is unknown, and they start to go too l far um too many levels down into detail, and it removes the agency from people. Where actually you can say, Well, this is what we need to do, lead shape for that. I need you're not telling them how to do things, you go, you know, we need you to this is what we need you to do, this is what we need you to do. And I suppose you bring that into um story like you're talking about, the challenge is quite clear. You can talk about the challenge now. You you can talk about the um the struggle, and the struggle could then start to include you know the various functions or teams, as a struggle being, you know, what the challenge for them is, not what you want them to do. And then the resolve, you know, we'll will know that we are we are doing this and we are working because we would start to see these things. And I think that in what I'm trying to get people to look at in strategy is is we get too internalized and we think the strategy is being done by the outputs that we do, the business, busyness that we create. Really, the strategy is one by we look externally to see if the if our efforts are starting to change our relationship with the external environment. So we should see if we're doing these things, we should see these things.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

And it's no reason sorry.

Mike Jones 40:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just activities, it's got to be with meaningful to see these things. You can bring that nicely into a, as you've explained, using your structure, you could bring that to a really clear narrative that's partners.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

This is possible, this is probable, this is you know, worst case, but you could deliver your narratives in there so they are not locked to one narrative that they may be. Remember, we're we're running our own narratives all the time. They may be going, John will never do that. And as for Sarah, he's not changing system. Okay, narrative two, probable to changing their behaviors, that's really tough. Let's say they don't. What's the workaround? We create this workaround, and then you you've got them back in the room.

Mike Jones 40:51

Yeah, yeah. I can even see with those narratives and stories, you could even, you know, I I like to sometimes bring in the reality of what it's like in that organization I'm working with. Because you you get to know them, right? I I I've I almost become part of them. Um that's part of my my thing because I hopefully try to remove the fact that they've they forget they they stopped seeing me as a consultant, and it I almost like one of them. But you you know the stories because what they tell themselves, so you know that yeah, we're gonna struggle this because typically we we would do this, you know, we don't normally follow through and things, but you know, you can like you said do your phase change. Yeah. So you can really bring in the actual true truisms of the organization.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Yeah, which is even more powerful. Places, right? You could talk about in the you know the the accountants pod, and uh we're talking to them. And then it also when you start mapping it out as a narrative, you start to see the questions that aren't answered. So you go, well, hang on a minute, we're gonna hit this problem. Will will the finance team adopt that? Well, let me ask them. Yeah. Let me uh let me ask them, what's the last software they they changed and adopted to? Did they did they hack it and do workarounds? Did they adopt it fully or not? And you and you've got there there when you're telling your narrative, that becomes part of it. So your recipient is going, okay, they won't adopt all of it, but if they adopted 80% of the last software that was implemented, so we're going to take it that the worst case they'll adopt 60 of this change. And 60% would get that outcome, so we're okay. It just helps us build realistic playbooks.

What Strategy Is And Isn’t

Mike Jones 42:34

Yeah, I like the the idea of um sort of the incompleteness. I I talk about strategic ambiguity a lot, and actually ambiguity is not a bad thing in the sense that there always is going to be ambiguity, and it's not something to shy away from or try to have all the answers because that ambiguity gives optionality to people um to explore and to experiment. I suppose in your narrative, if you've got gaps, you know, I I quite like the idea that there is gaps and that um people ask me questions, well what what what about this? And I'd be like, Well, who's who's the who's the um I suppose it won't be prince, but who's who's the who's the person for that story? And you can ask them. Yeah. Well, what would you do?

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yeah. And then then, wow, that also when you bring people into the story, when they are adding to it, they used to call it in advertising blue ships. So they used to say, you know, we make the image, we take it into the client in the pitch, but in that image I want you to put a blue ship, which is something that shouldn't be there. And the client looks in and says, I like it. I'm not sure about the blue ship in it. And you go, You're right. If we took the s blue ship out, it'd be perfect, wouldn't it? And they go, Yeah. And it's that IKEA factor, isn't it? They've contributed to it. So they've added value to it. So therefore Yeah, they have now bought into it. So the ambiguity creates the space for opportunity. You go, I don't know what will happen here. Hey, that makes you look like an incredibly trustworthy person. You're not just bridging across it with something made up because you don't want to admit ambiguity. Ambiguity is great. It enables opportunities. We don't what's the opportunity in this gap? Who could we bring in? Who would best solve it? What could it also reveal? What else could happen? What threats are there? And it just it just brings them right right into and then when they're giving and you're adding that in, now they have ownership, they have skin in the game.

Mike Jones 44:39

And that's what you want because you're not and I see this too too often that senior leadership teams try to solve the whole strategy at their level and their thing, and they they wonder why um it's just not it's not achievable in that sense. Where if you if you're giving that good direction to people, the agency comes in, they get invested by the fact that they have got an element of their skill, their capability, that you're trusting them to execute that. Not you're not telling them how to do it, you're asking them. And this is this is the challenge we have, this is a struggle we're gonna have. Like, and you're inviting them, what what can you do to help us um resolve this? And you're bringing in that yeah, that that narrative and inviting in them for the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

I think that's and it's capturing it as a narrative as well. Too often we capture everything when we replay it to them, we're doing it as this list of bullet points. Whereas we want to replay it, try and bake it. If we've got a fast way, 5-4-3-2-1, they can have a tea break and you can bake it into a quick narrative. What they've said. The who, what, why, when, where, shuffle those around. Okay, any princess, person's pets, places, no, right, move on. Let's put it into the three apps. So, what we're looking at doing is this and tell it back as the narrative, and it helps when you know we in our DNA literally built right into us, we understand narrative when it's presented as narrative. We understand it. So when you present it back to them as the challenge, the struggle, the resolve, you don't need to explain yourself. You never need to say, first, let's start with the challenge. Now let's move. It does it's not required, you just say the thing and they know that's the challenge. Disney films don't start by saying within eight minutes you'll know the challenge of this film, then it will move to an hour and ten minutes of struggle, and then there'll be 15 minutes of resolve, in which time your parents will get up and make a cup of tea.

Mike Jones 46:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

During the resolve because they're just not interested in it.

Mike Jones 46:48

Yeah, yeah. I think once you get used to it, it's like when we start learnt to construct intents, you know. We you would always start with, you know, you write the how, but then you don't need to, you just flow straight into it. So now it's so baked in you just go, there's you know, you say what by means of how and why you you don't need to say the headings. But it's such um even now, we've only just spoke about this very briefly, but already that definitely three acts. Like, you know, I just I just see the value of of of that structure when you're trying to communicate uh the strategy to people because there is there is the element, there's the layer of this is the this is what we're doing, but then there's that that I think there's there's a lot to be said for a leader or a team that can stand up to you know to an audience of people and without any you know slides or anything like that that can confidently explain the strategy from start to finish.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

That'd be amazing.

Mike Jones 47:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

That that's exactly what's required is being able to stand up and explain the strategy. We are here, this is the strategy, and this is what the journey will look like. I think the questions at the end from the audience will be a lot more interesting as well, because they'll see the part, they'll feel the part they're gonna play. And that's the thing, isn't it? The chat the challenge isn't you coming up with a strategy, I'd say the harder piece of work is communicating that to the client in a way that lands, they understand it and they can sign off on. Yeah, there's nothing worse than them saying, email me the strategy, Mike, and I'll um and I'll email it onto my boss. That's killer, isn't it? It's like well, that's not gonna work. So the strategy isn't just what it says, it's how does it make when you present it, how will it make them feel? Because they'll forget a lot of what you're saying, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. So if you walk into that room and tell them the story where they're coming off the back of it and they feel great, and they feel like the strategy is now possible and they've visualised themselves at that end game in that new place, they've visualised it. That's incredibly powerful. And it's only if they've seen it in their own minds and they're now feeling great, you've you know, you're much more likely to get the green light and and move towards delivering it.

Mike Jones 49:18

I think, yeah, and with your people, because you stick to the three acts. One thing that I rarely see in the any strategy documents that I'm presented with or strategy that I'm given is what is it that you're what is it that at the end, what has changed? You know, like we talk about when the smoke clears is a military term in a sense that we always communicate, like give the intent, when the smoke clears, this is what we're gonna meaningfully see different. And I think that's always missing in in the strategy. All it then gets perceived as is loads of actions.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah.

Mike Jones 49:55

And there's nothing that brings that, and if you think in a narrative sense, they're being told a challenge and they're like, Yeah, that's yeah, that's cool. We we know we know that. We've got the struggles, yeah, they we can kind of get that. But I think we're always missing that that resolve at the end where well this is meaningfully what's going to be different. So I think people then stay in that fractured state because they go, Well, I know loads of stuff, but I don't think they realise what the end state is meant to look like.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

And they need to stand in their own shoes in that end state to feel if that's where they want to be. And if you've taken them on a journey there to that end state, then I'll understand the journey is possible. If you just take someone to an end state, they won't believe they can get delivered at that end state. But you could ask someone to sit down and imagine themselves as a billionaire flying in their own private jet, and they can imagine that.

Mike Jones 50:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

But if you took them on a journey of how they get there, that's the difference, that's the the the change of state they need to see.

Turning Strategy Into A Journey People Own

Mike Jones 50:59

We explore this stuff with clients we'll be doing the strategy because the the fun thing with strategy is that it's it it's not happened, right? You know, it's not it's it's not happened, it's it's an imagined future state.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Yeah.

Mike Jones 51:15

Because it it's not either you haven't done it or no one's done it, and you know, it's a imagined future state, which is really exciting. But we always ask them, like, if you were to go this way, and we always talk about strategies trajectory, not an end state, it's not a defined end state trajectory, but like if you were to go this way, would you like what you become?

SPEAKER_01 51:40

That's great. Yeah.

unknown 51:42

Yeah.

Mike Jones 51:43

And that links back to the what I was saying about the two parts, there's the identity of the organization. What is the organization? And the strategy will will will seize those opportunities, take those affordances and all that. But at the end of it, it what that does is it it develops or or adapts or improves your identity. So you've got to be happy that if you go this way and you take this strategy and you you take those affordances, are you going to be happy with what you become?

SPEAKER_01 52:14

And can a strat so I've heard a lot of different strategies, and I like the ones that don't talk about we will become a a this turnover. What what what is it that they should be looking for with a strategy?

Mike Jones 52:31

Well, all all that that turnover and all that stuff, that's an that's an outcome. So it's an effect, and and this is where a lot of times people get uh confused with strategy. They they talk about strategy as a list of effects, i.e., we will, you know, be um, you know, we'll get 10% growth, we'll have happier clients, or that their effects, the strategy is what are you doing to then what will enable those effects to emerge? And that's the difference. That their effects, that's what that's what's going to happen if you you enact this strategy, or even better. So I think they confuse a go, oh, we're gonna be this. Okay, that's an effect. What are you actually doing? What what meaningfully changes are you are you taking to enable that those effects to appear?

SPEAKER_01 53:15

And so the strategy starts with what are you doing to enable those effects to emerge? So you go back and you find out first of all, this is what they want, this is what they want to be, this turnover, that many people, whatever it is. And so that gives you a real opportunity then to create a narrative. What are you doing to enable these effects to emerge? That's a challenge right there. We're at that point. So yeah, so strategies are it is is fertile ground for narrative. I think there is obviously a few challenges to overcome. One is that stories are sometimes seen as something for children, not for the boardroom. They have no place in the PL. So I often talk about narratives, or I don't talk about it at all, which because I learned the hard way uh that uh CEO said it right to my face, we don't really want stories in the boardroom. Well, I I I you know I understood what they meant. They thought stories were lies and what children tell.

Mike Jones 54:15

It's the same with it's the same with me in my discipline. Like the first rule of system thinking is not to mention system thinking. You know, it's like don't you mention it? It's like with um a lot of times, like with culture, I always say to people, oh, we need culture. I was like, first thing no with culture is don't mention culture. As soon as you mention culture, and I think these embedded words, isn't it? As soon as you mention culture, as soon as you mention things, people have a preconceived idea about what that means. Yeah, and it ruins the whole actual skill and utility of it.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

Yeah.

Mike Jones 54:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

So what are you doing to enable these effects to emerge? That's strategy.

Mike Jones 54:54

Yeah, in in the simplest thing, it's that it's it's a it's a it's a continuous. I think this is the problem. People see it as a very static thing at the end of the year, we've started a new year, we've got a new strategy, and we're going to enact this. And normally that strategy isn't a strategy. Yeah. It's just really, really, they've just gone through that existential question about who we are. Um, and they're not actually it's not an actual strategy, it's just more about an identity question. But really, it is it's that it's that ongoing orientation, that observation of the external environment, your relationship with it, and your continuous adaptation. So as you the relationship is there, so as you are as you are enacting this part, that enacting is you're you're you know, you're building new capabilities, and as you're doing that, then you're you're gonna have different things afforded to you that you didn't have from your original dispositional state.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

And what about because quite often I think that gets mixed up with mission statements and propositions. How do they sit in this? Yeah, I'll dismiss them.

Mike Jones 56:02

I just dismiss them. I'll take that. Yeah, very much, yeah. So I think there's this there's this whole thing where we've gone from, and I'm I'm writing this in the book, um, where we've gone from um a strategy is a way of being and thinking and sense and responding, to uh over time we've come to this thing by strategy being a thing, an arc uh an artifact. So you ask someone, do you have a strategy? They'll say, Yes, I have it here. And that's the problem. Yeah. And it this is where the whole vision, purpose statements, and all that come. Well, I don't mean nothing because all they are is what I call organizational disassociation.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

I love it.

Mike Jones 56:44

So they create a narrative, and this is my problem when I when I said at the beginning of the show I was challenging around the storytelling, is because they've they've gone and made a story about what they think they are, not what they are. So they create this disassociation from reality and what they project, and so all those things are just um become not very useful artifacts, but really I want to know what you are, what's your identity, what capability do you have, so we can understand the dispositional state, and from that point, then I can understand what's afforded to you because the relationship has to be there between the organization and the strategy, because the strategy then informs changes to the organization, but the organization limits what's possible in the strategy. Yeah, it doesn't mean you can't have ambition, it just means that it's not linear, you can't just go that way. You've got to go, well, we need to do this bit first, take these opportunities first, and then options will be open to us.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Excellent. Yeah, a good learning there, and I think uh it was lovely to hear strategy articulated so clearly.

Mike Jones 57:51

I hope so. I I'll probably get loads of people send me abuse on this. No, that's not strategy.

Ambiguity, Agency, And Realism

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Yeah, I I well well, that's the thing, is it it seems to have turned into so many different things, but I what I like about what you're saying is it's not the list of to-dos. And I keep getting strategy I don't keep every now and then I'll see another strategy, and you go, This is our strategy, how will marketing dovetail into that strategy? And you go, Well, that's a list of things you're gonna do. Yeah, yeah. So it's going to tick some of them and not others, but that's not really a strategy.

Mike Jones 58:21

No, it's not saying how you're going to change the nature of the relationship with the external environment. And the and the thing is, it's the those lists of stuff that they're doing are actions and they're probably good actions, but it's not clear what to what ends. Like why are you doing those actions? What are you what are you hoping to achieve? What is the sort of and result of doing those? And they don't really have it. This guy, we're just gonna do those those things, and then they come up with this um well, I hate is the Greek filler, which is the oh yeah, with the three pillars, the messaging house, yeah, vision, yeah, pillars, yeah, and the behaviors.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, the foundation.

Mike Jones 59:02

I see that. Yeah, yeah, I see that. I'm like, propose a book straight away, right? We we've got a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Yeah.

Mike Jones 59:09

Yeah. But it it's been fascinating, and you have really got me excited about how to merge in narratives into strategy and how actually useful. And it it brings me back really to thinking about the the strategists of old, how they would have used this to help communicate.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Yeah.

Mike Jones 59:31

But before we leave, what would you like listeners to you know go away and think about from this episode?

SPEAKER_01 59:37

So we don't use enough narratives when we're communicating, particularly in business. And I mentioned that a lot of um, you know, there can be this thought that particularly in the boardroom, that narratives, stories are for children, they're not for the PL, they're not for the boardroom. And then look around you at the companies, you know, Apple Gotwork is because of Steve Jobs, he saved it from the ashes. And what did he do? He was a great orator. Look at OpenAI. What is Sam Altman? He tells fantastic stories. People actually say that you feel like you're on a magic carpet when you're with Sam Altman, and then when he you leave, you realize he was moving forward and you were static all the time, right? Yeah. The power of stories, of narrative. You can be authentic and honest, but when you use them, you can communicate, you can help people, and you can communicate so much more clearly. Underpinned with not underpinned with how you make people feel when you tell it. Are you making them feel motivated? Are you making them feel happy? Are you making them feel that's possible? What are you making them feel? And I'd say if you're interested in that and you've got it, and you kind of go, I get that, then look at archetypes. Archetypes is the next layer. What what what is the character and what do they stand for? And you can see archetypes in business, you can see archetypes within the people within your business, and your customers. What are their archetypes and what will resonate with them? And I quite often do that. I look at a customer I'm going to be working with or a prospect, and I figure out their archetype, and I try to figure out how they like to receive information. And I don't do that to be underhand or to try and get one up on them. I do that because I want to do something that makes their I want to remove the friction between what they need and then receiving it and acting on it. So that's what I'd I'd say go away and um think. Go away and think about that.

Mike Jones 1:01:37

Yeah, yeah. I like it, and bringing a bit of Klautzwitz in there about friction, which is always good. And I think that's that's the that's the important part, and I I keep saying to leaders all the time, it is no good if you understand the strategy and no one else does.

unknown 1:01:54

Yeah.

Mike Jones 1:01:54

Because it's not you that's enacting the strategy, it's someone else. And I think that that ability to to communicate succinctly so that you know people interpret it and understand, and more importantly, feel that they can act, I think that's crucial.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

Yeah.

Mike Jones 1:02:15

So I'm sold, mate. Um, thank you so much for being um a guest on my podcast. It's been fantastic to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

Thank you for inviting me, Mike. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Mike Jones 1:02:28

That's cool. And all the listeners, if you really like this episode and you feel that you know people that can get value from this episode, I'm sure there are loads. Please share so that people can to learn actually how how properly we can look at and view narratives. So thank you very much, David. Appreciate you. Thanks, Mike. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Bye.