Telling the Story Approach to Strategy

Business Strategy for Results

Organizations have been coming to CFAR for strategy development for almost thirty years. While many consulting firms offer strategy support, clients choose us because our approach naturally blends rigorous business analytics (economics, finance, strategy formation) with the social sciences (psychology, anthropology, ethnography) to stimulate effective behavioral and cultural change. Our clients see that strategic direction must be broadly understood in the organization and often linked to real change to be effective.

 

What makes CFAR's approach different?

We are experienced business strategists with sophisticated views of leadership, management and team dynamics. Our approach to strategy is based on several principles.

Strategy is what you do, not what you say.

Many organizations experience a gap between the strategy described by the CEO and the one enacted by people across the organization. Effective strategies demand that organization members get it viscerally, and see its implications for their own job. Then, strategy becomes the coordinated action of organization members: the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.

• A story can communicate a strategy such that employees know how to make decisions and choices on the ground.

 

Strategy is built on assumptions about the environment that can change quickly and noticeably, or slowly and imperceptibly.

Strategies are based on a set of often unquestioned assumptions about the marketplace and the business environment. When the environment changes and those
assumptions no longer hold true, a perfectly good strategy
becomes irrelevant, regardless of how long it worked.
Using a rigorous analytic process, we work with clients to
unearth and test their assumptions, thereby building a new
understanding of the current state of the business.

• The story begins with the current state of the business, serving as the foundation from which future strategy options can be considered.

 

Strategy creates winners and losers, making it an anxiety-producing process.  

 

Strategy is as much about what a business will not do as it is about what it will do. This frequently results in winners and losers in the firm, and creates tension and resistance. CFAR helps prepare organizational leaders for how individuals and groups are likely to feel and respond to new or different goals.

• The story provides the organization with a clear image of the past and present to motivate a particular strategy for the future.

 

Strategy usually requires change.

Our approach emphasizes strategy in action. We identify the behavior changes any plan demands. 

• The story articulates how to roll out the plan and hold people accountable for its success. It explains how to keep the strategy fresh by reviewing and readjusting it as new information or changes to the environment emerge.
  

 

How does it work?

We carry out our distinctive approach within a traditional three-phase process. We start with an analysis of the business, connecting what we learn from interviews to what we learn from quantitative analysis to bring to light assumptions that have long been accepted as the truth. We work with the top team to stimulate "a-ha's" about performance and craft an alternative story about the future that incorporates key choices, economics, culture, people, and risks. We complete our work with the top team to create an action plan for the future of the business, including methods to monitor progress and to adapt as the strategy unfolds.

 

Why is a story important?

Storytelling has recently become popular in the business press, but CFAR has been using stories to motivate organizational change for decades. Our experience shows that managers improve performance when they develop the ability to tell a believable story about their business's strategy. A CEO talking to industry analysts or shareholders, for example, needs to speak coherently and credibly about the future, what opportunities the firm will pursue, and how it will overcome its challenges. A "believable" story moves beyond bullet points by knitting together products, markets, financials, prices, and people. It makes sense, addressing basics like how the firm makes money, how it will compete and how it will organize to realize its goals. It rings true, appealing to organization members in their "gut." The very act of developing the story compels executives and managers to make connections across different parts of the business.

 

What do our clients get?

At the end of an engagement, our clients report that they:

• Have improved business performance and organizational commitment.
• Experience more effective communication within and beyond the top team.
• Share both successes and mistakes, with less blaming and more organizational learning.
• Become a motivated organization that is moving in the desired direction, and learning to adapt as it goes.

 

A version of this page, including phase descriptions and case vignettes, is available as a pdf.