Narratives & Memories

Introducing Andi Jarvis

Friends,

I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.

A couple of updates before we go-go

• With the summer conference season now wrapped up, and client work deliberately postponed until the autumn, my full focus has turned to the new book (admittedly with a few interviews and podcast appearances thrown in for good measure). Although there remains a ways to go, it is shaping up better than I could ever have expected. I cannot wait for you all to read it.

• Feedback has started to come in from Cannes and I am happy to report that it has been on par with last year’s superlatives. Very encouraging, and I know I can speak for James as well when I say that we are immensely grateful for all the kind words; it means a hell of a lot.

• Lastly, I have now begun to accept speaking gigs for mid-Q3 2023 to Q1 2024. If you want to book me for your event, or want your favorite organizer do so for theirs, do get in touch as soon as possible. I already have international events scheduled for September and October, with a number in the pipeline for November and December. With a young daughter at home, there are only so many that I can do.

• Speaking of speaking, it gives me great pleasure to introduce today’s fantastic guest writer and keynoter extraordinaire: Andi Jarvis. The newsletter is, as always, split in such a way that the main text is available for everyone, with additional practical takeaways available to premium subscribers below the paywall. Let us get into it.

Narratives create memories

If you want anyone to remember your strategy, start storytelling

I went to church every Sunday until I was 13. It was, for the most part, not something I enjoyed. Too much sitting still and listening for a hyperactive talkaholic to enjoy.

There was, however, one minister who would preach and hold my attention in an unshakable way. His name was Alan Evans.

A giant of a man, Alan didn’t just tell you what the bible said, he painted a picture so vivid, I felt like I was blowing the trumpet outside the walls of Jericho.

Alan was, by any measure, a phenomenal storyteller. Yes, he was a working from something put together by a great team of copywriters. But he still had to sell it to a (sceptical) audience and boy, did he do that.

We’re here to talk strategy, so the religious upbringing of a non-religious marketing strategist isn’t the obvious place to start. But when you unpack it a little, religion IS just great storytelling. That’s not an attempt to belittle anyone’s faith, far from it. The church runs deep in my family and I’m not trying to make Christmas awkward.

Faith is believing in something you can’t see or touch. It’s taking a leap (of faith) to follow something. Why? Because someone, somewhere told you a story that made you believe.

If you think back to all those bible stories that make people believe – in fact, any story I’ve ever heard from any religious text – do you know what is not there? Percentages.

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I’ve never met a stupid strategist.

When I work with other strategists, occasionally have the opportunity to review someone’s work or read about how they work (hey, JP 👋🏽), I’m often left with something close to imposter syndrome.

“Wow, these folks are good”, the voice in my head tells me. That’s because most strategists are good.

I have, however, seen many strategies that – let’s be nice about this – aren’t great. Which begs the question; if most strategists are good, why do we keep creating strategies that aren’t effective?

Well, it must be the execution! It can’t possibly be the strategy. *coughs*

We’ve all heard the frequent criticism that the strategy never made the jump off the page into action. Tom Critchlow writes, beautifully, about “strategy and stewardship” being a better model for success than “strategy and execution”. JP has talked about it in these pages too.

But whether it’s execution or stewardship, I believe part of the problem comes from a lack of storytelling skills in modern strategy. The McKinseyisation of the discipline (a word that traces its etymology back to the bible) means that chunky slide decks, filled with charts and percentages are seen as the fundamentals of good strategy.

Again, this isn’t an attempt to belittle anyone’s faith in stats, charts and quantitative research. They are, to be sure, the foundations of good strategy. But we need to use these datapoints to tell a story.

The data we have access to is just a dot-to-dot picture. It takes a strategist to draw the lines, connecting all those dots into something people recognise, yes. But for that hard work shift from “solid” to “transformational”, you have to learn how to colour the picture in.

And that’s storytelling.

Strategists have, I believe, worked out that we need to tell a story to the C-suite to bring our work to life. Board level buy-in is a staple part of our diet. That story is, however, often dressed up with currency signs and visions of a more cash-rich future. I’m not convinced it is great storytelling, but it can be effective.

Yet the relentless focus on influencing the C Suite leaves a large parish outside of the boardroom completely uncared for. When strategists are looking up, we’re not looking across or down (I don’t really like that language, but it’s the easiest way to convey my point).

When I was 11 and engrossed in Alan Evans’ sermons, I was not alone. The whole church was hypnotised by him. Alan had a wide target market. Its demographics spanned every age from newly born to almost dead, new migrants to been-here-forevers and cashed-up retired head teachers to barely surviving families in social housing. And he captivated everyone.

I sometimes wonder if this part of my upbringing is what made me a “broad church” strategist. I spend an awful lot of time on projects talking to people from across the organisation, collecting different perspectives and insight. I don’t know if BCG lets their staff spend a day in a call centre listening to calls and chatting to staff on smoke breaks, but I do.

Once the barriers come down, these places are full of information you don’t find elsewhere. Stuff that does not appear on the website or C-suite briefing decks.

For a strategy to be successful, I believe it needs buy-in across the company, not just around the board table. If the middle managers don’t understand it or the staff at the coal face don’t recognise its relevance, then our great work is doomed before the ink has dried on the slide deck.

Organisations are inert by default. The famous metaphor of oil tankers taking an age to turn gained prominence for a reason. So you need storytelling to bring your strategy to life.

Storytelling can make your line drawing a masterpiece. Creating a story that can translate the data into a compelling narrative can galvanise people across the organisation. That creates movement. It creates action.

More vaunted strategists than me have said “strategy is about choices” and it is. But not just the choices you or the strategy team make. It’s the choices of the managers, the sales teams, the customer service department, the HR business partners (what does that job title even mean?), operations, whatever. Their choices will ultimately decide if your strategy succeeds or fails. So tell them a story. One they can believe in.

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Alan Evans is an old man now and has been in and out of hospital in recent years. His days of playing in a rock band are probably over. His son, Ashley, is now the man behind the pulpit, in the same church I attended as a child. They have become the Kennedy Dynasty of the Bradford church scene.

Ashley has, I’m told, inherited his dad’s skill of storytelling from the Sunday stage. My mum, still a regular after all these years, looks forward to his sermons.

Thirty years on from my last regular attendance at church, I still remember my vivid imagination painting pictures from Alan’s words about Jonah being eaten by a whale and trying to work out just how big the tower of Babel would have to have been to reach heaven – even aged nine, there was a sceptical scientist trying to burst out of me.

Thirty years and I can still remember the chairs, the stories, the smells and sugary sweet tea after the service, as I was dressed in my Sunday best.

You know what I can’t remember? The presentation I sat through last week, where I was assaulted with statistics about how the automotive buying cycle works. I can’t even remember the name of the people who presented it.

Maybe you’re not the shepherd of a flock and, perhaps, the data you have to present isn’t as rich and textured as the biblical epics. But remember that every number tells a story, so don’t just tell the your audience the number, tell them the story of the number too.

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