Strategic Narrative: The Complete Guide for Business Leaders

About the Author

John Rougeux is the founder of Flag & Frontier, a strategic narrative advisory for mid-market executive teams. He has helped public tech companies, VC-backed startups, and global non-profits pull off critical transformations while winning new market territory. Prior to founding Flag & Frontier, John spent nearly two decades as a co-founder and marketing executive.

Introduction

A strategic narrative is a story version of a company’s strategy. At Flag & Frontier, we treat it as a tool for aligning a company’s executive team and its employees around a shared mental model of the business, particularly when the business is transforming itself or trying to effect a transformation in its industry. While it's intended to be used as an internal document, a strategic narrative is often the foundation for the stories that shape beliefs in the market: with customers, investors, partners, and even the media. It is typically around 800 to 1,000 words, owned by the CEO, and done before positioning, brand, and messaging. Not every company needs one, and it cannot solve fatal flaws like a lack of product-market fit.

The contents in this guide were authored entirely by its author, without any content created by AI, whatsoever.

General Definitions

What is a strategic narrative?

A strategic narrative is a story version of a company's strategy. It reflects key decisions about how a company intends to win and how it defines its competitive territory, while capturing its views about the problem it solves and what the solution to that problem should look like.

That being said, you may come across other definitions of a strategic narrative. Some define it as a way to tell the market about a shift that's occurred in the world, which can then be shared with sales prospects in a pitch deck. Others may define a strategic narrative as a way to define a new market territory. While these are valid uses of a strategic narrative, they are narrow use cases that don't always capture a strategic narrative's real utility. At Flag & Frontier, we treat a strategic narrative primarily as a tool for aligning a company's executive team and its employees around a shared mental model of the business, particularly in situations where the business is transforming itself or trying to effect a transformation in its industry.

The term "strategic narrative" is also used in other fields. In international relations, a strategic narrative refers to a story that's designed to shape perceptions and influence the behavior of states and other actors on the geopolitical stage. In defense communications, a strategic narrative is a story designed to shape how different audiences interpret conflict.

This guide solely refers to strategic narrative in a business context.

At a Glance: What is a Strategic Narrative?

What problems does a strategic narrative solve for a business?

Internally, a strategic narrative helps a business avoid misalignment among departments and working at cross purposes. Externally, a strategic narrative can prevent customers, prospects, investors, and the market at large from viewing a business in the wrong light.

Let's expand on that.

Many businesses are in situations where they are making big bets on an uncertain future. Sometimes the business is in the process of transforming itself, and is making a bet that it can pull off such a transition successfully and ahead of competitors. In other situations, a business might be trying to effect change in its industry, perhaps by introducing a new market category. In either situation, we believe that the root cause of success (or failure) is whether the company is aligned and committed to the strategy at hand.

While that might appear straightforward on paper, reality is usually much different. Leaders each have different perspectives and agendas, which can quickly water down the strategy or fork it in different directions. Employees might be committed to helping the company win, but may end up confused about the best way to do that. These "fractured beliefs" can force the company to work at cross purposes, pursue dead ends in product development, or waste money on marketing and advertising that sends the wrong message. This not only creates immense inefficiencies internally, but it also slows down adoption in the market.

A strategic narrative addresses these issues by providing a foundational blueprint that the entire company can rally around.

Is a strategic narrative only for B2B companies?

No, a strategic narrative is not only for B2B companies. A strategic narrative can be equally useful for B2C companies, non-profits, government agencies, service-based businesses, or any other organization that would benefit from having clarity across its team on how it intends to succeed and what it stands for.

This isn't theory.

At Flag & Frontier, we've worked on strategic narratives within the consumer non-profit sector, industrial manufacturing, and B2B software. While the products being sold were very different, every situation has the same thing in common: the organization needed to align its team around a clear strategy and change what the market believed.

Does every company need a strategic narrative?

No, not every company needs a strategic narrative.

While every business will benefit from having a team that's aligned on a common purpose and a powerful story to share with the market, a strategic narrative might not always be the right tool for the job.

For example, early-stage startups are often in a season of heavy experimentation. They are exploring different product ideas, buyers, go-to-market strategies, and even business models. Since a strategic narrative is designed to solidify a strategy that's already locked in, that kind of work is usually premature for an early-stage startup. It would be a bit like creating the blueprints for a house before the architectural style had been decided.

Here are a few other situations where a strategic narrative might not be the right approach.

A corporation with multiple business units might be too complex for a strategic narrative to be helpful (we don't know for sure, though; we've never tried). A small business that does just fine by selling a straightforward product to its local market would probably be better off putting its resources into something else. Similarly, a stable, going concern that isn't going through any major changes and whose market understands what it offers and why it's different from competitors may not benefit from a strategic narrative in that season either.

At a Glance: When a Company Needs a Strategic Narrative

What is fractured belief, and how does a strategic narrative address it?

"Fractured belief" is a phrase we use at Flag & Frontier to describe the disarray that can happen when a business is unclear on its aim, and the market is confused about what it stands for.

Fractured belief often comes about when a business is going through a period of transition, and its leaders and employees have different views about how to proceed under the new strategy or operating model. Leadership may even disagree about what the new strategy is. This isn't a reflection of the leadership team's talent or effort; it's simply what happens when a new strategy is only defined in terms of results ("increase revenue by 17%") or generalities ("shift to an AI-native platform"). When the leaders hold different mental models about how to move forward, they end up moving in different directions or even at cross purposes.

Another form of fractured belief occurs between a business and the market it serves. When a business evolves into a newer version of itself, the market doesn't necessarily recognize that change, understand what's different, or appreciate why it matters. It may not even believe a business is capable of pulling off that transformation! Companies that are introducing categorically different solutions face a similar challenge: the market has accepted the status quo as just the way things are done. It isn't always able to understand why a different kind of solution is needed or intuit how it works.

At a Glance: Two Forms of Fractured Belief

A strategic narrative is not a silver bullet that will automatically solve these problems, but we believe it's often the best place to begin.

When and Why to Develop a Strategic Narrative

When is the right time to work on a strategic narrative?

The right time to work on a strategic narrative is when a business is trying to effect transformation. It's either trying to evolve itself as an organization, or it's attempting to change what the market believes. In many cases, the business may be attempting to do both. Another phrase for these situations is "strategic inflection point."

Here's a list of eight specific situations we've encountered at Flag & Frontier:

1. Defining a New Category: You are building something the market isn't aware of or doesn't understand yet, and that needs to change.
2. AI Reinvention: You are reinventing the business from a pre-AI company to one that's AI-forward, but the market still views it as the former.
3. Product Evolution: You are expanding from a point solution to a platform, or making a similar jump in capabilities.
4. Market Expansion: You're moving into new segments or geographies where few people have heard your story yet.
5. Investor Expectations: A funding round or an IPO on the horizon demands a bigger, sharper story than the one that got you here.
6. Adapting to Buyers: Values, attitudes, and preferences have changed, but buyers don’t know that you’ve evolved to serve them better.
7. Changes to Strategy: The strategy that you've been operating on no longer serves you, and you need to reorient the business in a new direction.
8. Competitor Moves: You are facing new competitive pressure from startups or because existing players are encroaching on your territory.

Why does a company need a strategic narrative?

A company typically needs a strategic narrative when it is transforming itself or attempting to effect a transformation in the market.

Here are the kinds of things our clients at Flag & Frontier typically say:

• "We needed to lead the conversation in our category."
• "We were evolving but didn't know how to describe ourselves."
• "We were going in circles trying to get everyone to commit to our next move."
• "We kept disagreeing on what to do next as a business."
• "We were starting to be seen as a commodity, even though we were very different."
• "We weren't able to get investors to see the future we wanted to build."
• "We don't know what to say to our prospects."

What are the benefits of a strategic narrative?

The benefits of a strategic narrative are stronger alignment among your team and the ability to shape what the market believes about your business.

That often translates into a faster operating tempo, less wasted spend on the wrong product initiatives or marketing campaigns, stronger investor valuations, and the improved ability to attract and retain customers, employees, and partners.

We get it, that sounds like a panacea. So let's unpack that a little bit. Imagine a squadron of fighter planes flying into enemy territory. To complete their mission successfully, each must have a good understanding of the mission's objective: what the target is, how it will contend with enemy forces, and when it needs to do what. If the plans are too vague ("Go defeat the enemy"), each member of the squadron will interpret that directive differently, and they won't be able to work together to accomplish anything meaningful. If they are too specific, they leave no room for adjustment as conditions change. Instead, they need a middle ground: something specific enough that everyone is clear on the contours of the mission, but not so broad that it's a free-for-all.

A strategic narrative provides something similar for a business when it's on a mission of transformation. A high-level goal ("Increase market share by 9%") is too vague to act on directly. And trying to dictate tactics for each and every team would not only take forever; those decisions are best left to the specialists. A strategic narrative provides the entire business with the same "mental model" of how it intends to win, what it needs to build, and what stories it needs to share with the market.

Do you do strategic narrative work before or after positioning, brand, and messaging?

Strategic narrative work is typically done before positioning, brand, and messaging work. Those disciplines are downstream; a strategic narrative is more foundational.

Here's why.

A strategic narrative is a foundational document that exists at the business unit level. It does not fall under the domain of a specific department or function; it's a cross-functional, cross-departmental artifact that unites the entire business unit around the same mental model of its strategy. Positioning, brand, and messaging typically fall under the purview of marketing, sales, and product teams. A strategic narrative provides the foundation on which that work is then performed. Working on positioning, brand, and messaging prior to a strategic narrative is possible, but we don't typically recommend it.

What are some of the limitations of a strategic narrative?

One of the limitations of a strategic narrative is that it cannot help a business if it has fundamental problems, like a toxic culture, a lack of product-market fit, solutions with poor quality, or bad leadership. A strategic narrative will help turn a good strategy into something that the business can execute, but it cannot solve fatal flaws.

Another limitation of a strategic narrative is that it doesn't provide go-to-market teams with the specific messaging or stories they need to use in sales presentations, marketing assets, or advertising copy. A strategic narrative is like a tap root: every external story the business tells will come from that tap root, but the leaves are something else entirely.

At a Glance: Strategic Narrative Limitations

Is a strategic narrative worth the investment for a mid-market B2B company?

Yes, a strategic narrative is worth the investment for a mid-market B2B company if certain criteria are met. First is whether the business is in a position where a strategic narrative would even be helpful. If the business is in the process of transforming itself and/or is trying to effect a transformation in the market it serves, then that's a good start.

There are other factors to consider, though. A major one is whether the business is prepared to follow through with the work that such a transformation requires. Whether the transformation is an internal or external one, it always requires sustained effort. Creating a strategic narrative and then going back to business as usual will always be a bad investment, regardless of how much or little you spent.

The quality of the work also needs to be taken into account. Here's the thing most people don't get until they've been through the process: a strategic narrative isn't really a writing exercise. It's a team alignment exercise. A written artifact just happens to be the proof that the alignment happened. So, while you can hire someone incredibly skilled at writing, if they are NOT experts in helping a leadership team coalesce around and commit to a clear, winnable strategy, then you will have a fancy document that does little for your business.

How to Build a Strategic Narrative

How do you build a strategic narrative?

You build a strategic narrative by building from first principles and by assembling the elements of a company's strategy into a clear, airtight argument.

Because a strategic narrative is a distillation of a business's strategy into a narrative format, it is always a cross-departmental exercise. At Flag & Frontier, we rely heavily on workshops, discussion, and healthy debate with our clients' leadership teams to resolve debates and surface the raw material we need for the narrative itself. Then, we co-create the narrative with our clients, usually with a subset of the leadership team. We pressure-test it, approach it from multiple angles, and explore different options, each intended to capture the company's strategy in the clearest, most concise, and powerful way possible. We then review the work with the leadership team again for fine-tuning. When we're done, we often like to have some fun with a commitment ceremony where we make the story official.

How do you write a strategic narrative?

Writing a strategic narrative is very similar to how a trial lawyer would construct their final appeal to the jury.

A strategic narrative isn't a story like the kind you'd read in a novel. It's an argument. It makes the case for a new perspective; ideally, that case is so clear that the audience can't see things any other way. That means a strategic narrative must first be based on what's true in the world. It must then connect those truths, and the business's opinions about those truths to form an airtight argument. You might also think about a strategic narrative as a stack of logical proofs: each proof must stand up on its own, and strung together, they make the complete argument.

Once the argument has been structured, a good strategic narrative writer will then work on the specific word choice and phrasing that conveys this argument most powerfully. They may even decide to coin new language to help the reader understand new concepts more concretely. Word choice matters a great deal when writing a strategic narrative; swapping one conjunction or article for another, or deciding between two very similar words, can convey very different meaning.

What are the key elements of a strategic narrative?

The key elements of a strategic narrative are: audience, change, ramifications, justification, solution, and new reality.

An expanded version of this template is provided in the section below.

At Flag & Frontier, we don't believe there is a "formula" that should work for every situation, though. With the leadership teams we have worked with, we have often decided that "coloring outside the lines" is needed to properly capture a client's strategy. A good consultant or advisor will know when to follow a template, and when to break the rules.

What's a good template for a strategic narrative?

A good strategic narrative template uses these elements: audience, change, ramifications, justification, solution, and new reality.

Here's an explanation of each:

That being said, at Flag & Frontier we rarely use a template verbatim. The actual structure needs to reflect the business's choice of category strategy, its competitive environment, whether a solution has already been built or needs to be ushered into existence, and many other factors. Templates are simply starting points, never the destination.

Which role inside a company owns the strategic narrative?

The CEO or equivalent role should always be the owner of the strategic narrative. That's because a strategic narrative is a distillation of the company strategy, which is the purview of the CEO.

That being said, in our experience, this does not necessarily mean that the CEO needs to author the work or facilitate its creation. Usually, we have found that a functional leader, like the CMO, CRO, or CPO, will take ownership of the initiation, completion, and rollout of a strategic narrative while the CEO will be heavily involved in workshops and discussions that inform the work.

What roles should be involved in developing a strategic narrative?

Developing a strategic narrative is a full company exercise, so anyone who's involved in making major decisions about the business should be involved.

At Flag & Frontier, if we were working with, say, a 500-person company, we would start with the heads of GTM, product, engineering, finance, and operations, along with the CEO, as a starting point. In a larger organization, we might add others who have unique perspectives on the business, and those will be responsible for downstream work, such as the heads of brand, product marketing, and other product leaders.

Can an internal marketing team develop a strategic narrative?

Yes, technically an internal marketing team can develop a strategic narrative, but there are some limitations you should be aware of.

First, we have found that there is always an inherent difficulty in leading a critical, cross-department exercise from within a functional seat. This challenge isn't specific to marketing per se; let's continue with the example. Suppose the VP Product Marketing facilitates the work. In order to facilitate well, this person must put aside all predispositions of a marketing leader and instead approach the work from a neutral, company-level perspective. That's not impossible, of course, but it can be very difficult to put aside marketing concerns, like "How will our customers react to this?" while simultaneously trying to suss out the CTO's perspective on a difficult technology choice. Our founder, John Rougeux, experienced these challenges himself while taking on strategic narrative work as VP Marketing, and it's one reason he decided to switch to consulting.

Secondly, any time a marketing leader takes on this work, there's an unspoken implication that the strategic narrative is "marketing's thing." That can cause problems down the line. Say, for example, that the product team decides to change course on the product roadmap and follow a direction that is no longer in agreement with the strategic narrative. When that causes a rift, it's "marketing's problem" to fix. The business then starts to work on different things and tell different stories, creating the very situation you sought to avoid in the first place.

This isn't to say you can't have your strategic narrative work done by your marketing team, but you may be much better off having an outside, "neutral" party facilitate the work and help ensure that the CEO is the final owner.

Can you have AI generate a strategic narrative?

Yes, you can have AI generate a strategic narrative, but it skips the alignment and discernment work that gives the narrative its value.

Similarly, you can also have AI generate your business strategy, your GTM plan, your website, your hiring process, your brand identity, and anything else you can think of. What matters (beyond the quality of the output) is whether you will stand behind the result over the long term.

What you might consider is why you are developing a strategic narrative in the first place, and whether you want AI to play that role.

At Flag & Frontier, we believe that a strategic narrative is ultimately an exercise that helps align a company's leadership team and its employees around a clear mental model about the business. In our experience doing this work many times, the actual writing part is only about 10% of what matters. The real work is what happens before the writing begins: the discussion, the debates, the listening, the research, and the discernment.

Yes, you can take the raw material that surfaces during that period and have AI turn it into a narrative for you. It will be easier, for sure. But you may want to consider what you are giving up. The fact that wrestling through a narrative is hard is a feature, not a bug. It forces you to really understand how you think about the business. If you offload that to AI, then when your work gets second-guessed weeks or months later by that new board member or VP, you will be less likely to be able to back it up.

At a Glance: Three Options for Generating a Strategic Narrative

How long should a strategic narrative be?

A strategic narrative should typically be around 800 to 1,000 words.

That's a guideline, though, not a rule.

Since a strategic narrative is the distillation of a company's strategy in a story format, it should be as long or as short as it needs to be to get the job done. In practice, we often develop different versions of the strategic narrative for our clients at Flag & Frontier. We'll start with a standard-length one, but then we might create a shorter, punchier version for external use, or even go the other way by turning the strategic narrative into a full-on content series.

That being said, a strategic narrative is not a tagline, and it's not a 100-page deck.

How long does it take to build a strategic narrative?

It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to develop a strategic narrative.

There's no standard answer because there are multiple factors at play. One is simply the size of the organization. An enterprise business with a 20-person leadership team will require more time and energy than a startup with just five people involved. Another factor is the complexity of the situation. A business building a new category might have the raw material for a strategic narrative right on the tip of its tongue. The process for them is mostly about crystallizing what they already know. But an older organization, with decades of baggage to unravel, might need a lot more time to discover where they need to head and how they are going to get there.

How to Use a Strategic Narrative

How do you roll out a strategic narrative?

You roll out a strategic narrative by starting with your leadership team, then working your way outwards to employees and other stakeholders.

The fun thing about rolling out a strategic narrative is that there are lots of ways to do this, and it is often a great time to be creative. One client we worked with produced a cinematic video of its CEO reading the strategic narrative on camera. Another turned it into a keynote presentation at a major customer event. A strategic narrative often gets developed at a pivotal moment for the business, so it can be a good idea to do something memorable and out of the ordinary.

That being said, a strategic narrative always needs context when it's shared. Especially internally. Simply rolling out cold, by making a company announcement or sending it out in an email, is a terrible idea. Not only will the story fail, but most employees won't have context for why it's being shared in the first place. Always set the stage for why the company has been working on a strategic narrative, what a strategic narrative is, and what happens next. And you will likely need to share it with your teams multiple times before it really sinks in.

How often should you update your strategic narrative?

Your strategic narrative should be updated whenever your strategic competitive situation changes and your existing narrative has become outdated.

The pace at which that happens, though, can vary significantly from industry to industry. An intense space, like AI, can change so quickly that a strategic narrative might need to be refreshed every six months. A more stable situation may only require an update every few years. At Flag & Frontier, one of the diagnostics we run with our clients is an assessment of whether the current strategic narrative is good to go as-is, needs some fine-tuning, or requires a complete overhaul.

How do you know your strategic narrative is good?

A strategic narrative is good if it successfully helps a leadership team commit to the same strategy, if employees gain clarity on how to help the company win, and if it can help shape the right beliefs in the market.  

Here are the nine criteria we use at Flag & Frontier.

1. A good strategic narrative does not distort the truth. While it captures a business's opinionated point of view, it is always based on facts.  
2. A good strategic narrative does not make promises it can’t deliver on. If it casts a vision of the future that's too far-fetched, then it undermines trust.  
3. A good strategic narrative is not afraid to make people upset. While it doesn't go out of its way to do so, a strategic narrative should be based on what a business believes and is willing to stand up for; if others disagree or that makes them upset, so be it.  
4. A good strategic narrative must have an owner. What we mean by this is the strategic narrative must have a specific person who can stand up for it and keep the business accountable. That can't be a committee. Usually it's the CEO.  
5. A good strategic narrative can hold its own. The argument it makes is built on sound logic, much like how a courtroom lawyer would make an appeal to the jury.  
6. A good strategic narrative is told in the service of its audience. The narrative should never be designed to pitch a product or extol the virtues of the brand behind it. That's what sales and marketing are for. Instead, the strategic narrative should help the reader see things from a new perspective (that they'll benefit from understanding).  
7. A good strategic narrative paints a compelling vision of the future. It is forward-looking; it doesn't capture what's true today, but points to where the business is headed and the future that will be possible for the market it serves.  
8. A good strategic narrative never makes the storyteller the hero. The hero of the story should always be the customer.  
9. A good strategic narrative has bite. By "bite" we mean that it should have some edge to it. It should make the reader think, and maybe feel some combination of excited, uncomfortable, challenged, curious, and even joyful.

Sometimes, though, the best way to tell is how an executive team reacts upon hearing it. The best responses we've heard are sometimes accompanied by tears. Dramatic? Yes. But when you've been struggling for months to get a handle on what your business really stands for, and it finally just clicks, it can be a huge sigh of relief.

How do you measure if a strategic narrative is working?

You measure if a strategic narrative is working in the market by tracking how often the market repeats back the words, phrases, or ideas core to your strategic narrative.

You measure if a strategic narrative is working internally by regularly asking your employees what the company strategy is and by asking them to rate their belief in the strategy itself.

For example, one of our clients developed an industrial HVAC product that was categorically different (but visually very similar) to other products on the market. Our strategic narrative was designed to help the market see the shortcomings of legacy designs and understand the need for a different product architecture. However, there was no term that captured this architecture, so we had to make one up.

It felt awkward to use at first. The sales team was hesitant to use it and often reverted back to the practiced terms they were familiar with. It wasn't that they didn't understand the term, they didn't feel confident in delivering it. But over time, the CEO worked with the sales team to help them see how this new approach would help the business. As the sales team started to believe that this new term was indeed the right call, they started to use it regularly.

Over time, we also noticed that customers were using this term back to us. They even started to use it with each other. This kind of signal told us not only that we had chosen good language, but that we had conveyed why the product deserved to be treated differently from those that the market was already familiar with.

Why do strategic narratives fail?

Strategic narratives usually fail because there wasn't sufficient buy-in within the business or the narrative didn't resonate with the market.

Since a strategic narrative must begin as an exercise in aligning a company's leadership team around how it will win and its point of view, the work will fail when it's conducted within the confines of a single department. That's been our experience at Flag & Frontier, anyway. If other departments are only brought in to rubber-stamp something, but were never really engaged in a healthy debate about the future of the business, then the strategic narrative will end up as more of a glorified marketing campaign than anything that helps the business truly stay aligned in the long term.

When strategic narratives fail to land with the market, that can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes the narrative is too close to the status quo; it sounds pleasant but doesn't do enough to change how the market thinks. It's forgettable. Other times, the narrative goes too far in the opposite direction; it casts a vision for the future that the business can't credibly deliver. It might sound exciting, but few people believe it. Strategic narratives can also fail to resonate in the market because they focus too much on the features and benefits of a product, and not enough on helping the market see things from a different perspective.

At a Glance: Why Strategic Narratives Fail

How do you ensure a strategic narrative is successful?

You ensure a strategic narrative is successful by treating it like the work it really is: a means of getting your entire business committed to the same strategy.

Here are six guidelines we have found helpful from doing this work with our clients:

1. The work must be treated as a full-company exercise, not a marketing exercise. This helps avoid any perception in other departments that the narrative is "just marketing's thing". We recommend that the CEO is the ultimate owner of the strategic narrative, and that every department feel a sense of ownership of it.
2. The work must be given enough time to be done properly. Creating a strategic narrative isn't really a writing exercise; it's a discernment process through which a company's leadership solidifies its point of view. You must ensure that everyone involved has time to process this thinking and have the necessary debates.
3. The work must be facilitated by an expert. Not an expert in your industry, but an expert in facilitating discussions among leadership teams, strategic thinking, and storytelling. Having the wrong person will result in a "shallow" strategic narrative that is soon forgotten.
4. The work must force hard decisions. If the development process is driven by committee, where everyone has an equal say, then the strategic narrative will be a bland artifact that does little to galvanize a team around heading into an uncertain future.
5. The team building the strategic narrative must be willing to stand behind it. If it's any good, it will inevitably be criticized, both inside and outside the company. If approval is merely conditional, pending "employee feedback" or "market testing," it loses its intended purpose. You don't subject a strategic narrative to external feedback any more than you would your business strategy itself.
6. The work involves real humans, having real discussions and debates, making real decisions. Would asking AI to do this for you be more comfortable? Sure. In the moment, anyway. But if no one has invested their time, energy, and brainpower into discerning what your strategic narrative should be, and going through that process with their peers, then the narrative will soon dissolve.

What are some of the common mistakes people make when developing a strategic narrative?

Here are six of the most common mistakes people make when developing a strategic narrative:

1. The work is treated as a marketing exercise. Instead of helping the business succeed in making a major transition, the strategic narrative ends up being a glorified marketing campaign.
2. The work is rushed. One of the reasons for developing a strategic narrative is to get the executive team committed to the same strategy. If that process is rushed (often because the goal is simply to get heads nodding), then the discussions and debates required to build that commitment never happen. The work is shallow and is soon forgotten.
3. The work is facilitated by the wrong person. This could be a well-intentioned marketing agency, an in-house marketer, a CEO rushing through with the process, or anyone else lacking the right experience.
4. The work is watered down by committee. A good strategic narrative facilitator will hold the room to a high standard and force them to make hard choices. That's what strategy is, no? But if the result is simply the average of everyone's opinion in the room, then it will be a weak, diluted story that doesn't help the business.
5. The work depends on being "market tested." You can test things like word choice, but you don't market test a strategy.
6. The work (the part that matters, at least) is outsourced to AI. The process of creating a strategic narrative is just as important as the narrative itself. Maybe even more so. That's because it's essentially a means of committing everyone in your business to the same strategy. If you jump straight to having AI do the writing, you've skipped the most important part.

At a Glance: Common Mistakes with a Strategic Narrative

Finding Help with a Strategic Narrative

How much does it cost to have an advisor or consultant develop a strategic narrative?

It can cost as much as $500,000 or as little as $10,000 to have a consultant develop a strategic narrative. The fee will depend on the level of expertise the consultant has and the complexity of your situation.

For example, a relatively small company that already possesses a healthy degree of alignment among its leadership team may only need a consultant to help crystallize what they already believe. A larger, or more complex organization may be contending with highly divergent perspectives on its leadership team, while simultaneously weighing multiple options about the future of the business. Untangling the latter situation will require significantly more effort and expertise.

Another factor worth considering is how else a consultant might work with you, outside of the strategic narrative itself. At Flag & Frontier, for example, some of our clients need help with some foundational work ahead of the strategic narrative, like honing their category strategy or diagnosing their competitive situations. Others partner with us after the strategic narrative has been developed to help them roll out the narrative and use it as the foundation for shaping beliefs in the market. We advise them on content and storytelling, collaborate with them on evolving their strategy and product roadmap, and help them navigate the unexpected events that always come up when trying to effect a transformation. Some of these partnerships last multiple years.

At a Glance: The Cost of Developing a Strategic Narrative

When should you use a strategic narrative advisor or consultant?

Here are seven main reasons for when you should use a strategic narrative advisor or consultant:

1. You want the assurance of getting the work done right the first time
2. You need an outside, objective perspective on your business
3. You need someone to facilitate healthy debates with your leadership team
4. You don't want to spend months developing a strategic narrative
5. You know the work is important and don't want it treated as a side project
6. You have a talented team and want to help them achieve their best
7. You have a desire to win and want every advantage available to you

Here's the part you might also be asking yourself: is hiring a strategic narrative consultant an admission that your team isn't capable, or a sign of weakness? Not at all. In fact, it's the opposite. Think about professional athletes. It's the very best professionals who hire a personal trainer, not the average ones. Michael Jordan worked with his trainer, Tim Grover, for 15 years, not because he was a deficient athlete, but because he wanted to invest in turning his already amazing talents into something better.

We even do the same ourselves. At Flag & Frontier, we've hired designers, executive coaches, and consultants ourselves. We want to be the best, and so we seek out the people who can help us get there.

Who are some good strategic narrative advisors and consultants?

Some good strategic narrative advisors and consultants are Flag & Frontier, Andy Raskin, and First Person. Each has different focuses, so here is more information about each:

• Flag & Frontier works primarily with mid-market and growth-stage companies, typically between 100-2,000 employees. Its specialty is helping clients who are transforming their business. Flag & Frontier is an advisory: it works as a partner and collaborator alongside its clients, and brings in external partners as needed. It helps clients upstream of strategic narrative work by helping them identify the right category strategy, and downstream by helping them shape beliefs in the market.
• Andy Raskin has worked with many venture-backed tech startups based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with businesses on aligning their leadership teams around the company story and helps them use the narrative in sales presentations. Andy is frequently credited with popularizing the concept of a strategic narrative within B2B tech companies, and his 2016 Medium essay, called “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen", is widely cited.
• First Person includes enterprise-size businesses in its client list, such as GE, Google, and Cisco. It's based in the San Francisco Bay Area and focuses on B2B businesses. While storytelling is a core offering, it also provides additional services that are more akin to a full-service marketing agency, such as brand identity, content and campaign development, experience and product design, and AI integration.

At a Glance: Top Strategic Narrative Advisors & Consultants

What should I look for in a strategic narrative consultant?

Here are five qualities to look for in a good strategic narrative consultant:

1. They listen more than they talk. Strategic narrative work is about understanding a client's situation and finding the story that serves them best. This only happens from listening to a client well. Consultants who want to pitch you on a preconceived idea, have a favorite flavor strategy to pitch you on, or want to convince you of how brilliant they are tend not to be very helpful.
2. They should have a deep understanding of business strategy. You wouldn't hire a knee surgeon who didn't know much about the human body, or a mechanic who only had a passing knowledge of how automobiles work. Strategic narrative work is presented as a story, but getting there requires that you have a good handle on strategy itself.
3. They should have the right chemistry with you. Developing a strategic narrative requires lots of conversations. It requires trust. Transparency. You might be evaluating a consultant who has all the right credentials and testimonials, but if the chemistry is off, you are unlikely to have a good working relationship. Find someone whose vibe is more compatible with yours.
4. They treat it as a business-level effort, not a marketing exercise. While we aren't knocking on marketing agencies, if you are speaking to one claiming to do strategic narrative work, you might want to press into this further before proceeding. When strategic narrative work gets demoted to a marketing project, it will fail to orient the business around the same strategy.
5. They don't compete on price. Why do we say that? Consultants who compete on price often have to outsource their work to AI or a junior employee to remain profitable. That might be OK for downstream work, like generating a messaging guidelines document. But if you are trying to get your leadership team to commit to the same strategy and shape what the market believes about your business, that's critical to get right. Saving a few bucks by going with a "low-cost" option can be a very expensive mistake.

How a Strategic Narrative is Different from Related Disciplines

At a Glance: Strategic Narrative vs. Related Disciplines

A note on "point of view": In everyday usage, a point of view (lowercase) is simply an opinion about how the world is changing or why a problem needs solving. A strategic narrative captures those opinions in one cohesive story. "Point of View" (capitalized) is the term used in the 2016 book Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets – A Silicon Valley Guide to Category Design for Building Legendary Companies for what is essentially a strategic narrative. Flag & Frontier uses "strategic narrative" because "point of view" often carries connotations of category creation.

What is the difference between a business strategy and a strategic narrative?

A business strategy answers the questions, "Where do we play?" and "How will we win?" A strategic narrative is a story version of that strategy.

Furthermore, a strategic narrative addresses what problem the business solves, why it believes that problem must be solved, why other solutions are inadequate, and what the contours of the solution should look like. Businesses don't decide if they need a business strategy or a strategic narrative; they need both, because they have different jobs to do.

What is the difference between strategic narrative and category design?

A strategic narrative is a story version of a company's business strategy, while category design is a specific approach to business strategy.

Category design is a term coined by the authors of the book, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets – A Silicon Valley Guide to Category Design for Building Legendary Companies. It refers to a specific process the book outlines for creating and leading new market categories. Companies pursuing category design will use a strategic narrative to align their teams around this strategy and as the foundation for the story the business shares with the market.

Since strategic narrative is strategy-agnostic, it can be used to help align a team on its strategy and shape beliefs in the market, regardless of whether the business is pursuing category design or any other business strategy.

At a Glance: Business Strategy vs. Category Strategy vs. Category Design vs. Strategic Narrative

What is the difference between category strategy and strategic narrative?

Category strategy is a framework used for developing business strategy, while a strategic narrative is how that strategy gets presented in a narrative format.

At Flag & Frontier, we view category strategy as a way to define the competitive territory in which a business will operate. From our research, we have developed six generic category strategies that a business can pursue.

At a Glance: The Six Category Strategies

In fact, we often begin a client engagement by exploring the right category strategy before we think about the strategic narrative itself. That's because the chosen category strategy will have significant implications for who the company's customers are, what problem it solves, what it plans to build, and how it expects to differentiate itself. These are all choices that must be made before the strategic narrative itself can be written.

How does a strategic narrative differ from a value proposition, an elevator pitch, a company story, and a manifesto?

A strategic narrative is a foundational business document that's designed to capture the core elements of strategy into a cohesive story. Value propositions, elevator pitches, company stories, and manifestos are all marketing assets.

At a Glance: Strategic Narrative vs. Value Proposition vs. Elevator Pitch vs. Company Story vs. Manifesto

Is a strategic narrative the same thing as messaging?

No, strategic narrative and messaging are very different things. A strategic narrative is a business's core strategy, captured in a narrative format. Messaging is the downstream, tactical application of that narrative in mediums like websites, sales presentations, and advertising campaigns.

In fact, a strategic narrative influences a lot more than messaging. At Flag & Frontier, this is why we insist that strategic narrative work always be done with the leadership team. A strategic narrative will influence the product roadmap, because it defines what problem a business is setting out to solve, why it needs to be solved, and what the contours of the solution should look like. For similar reasons, a strategic narrative can help a business develop confidence around other strategic choices, like mergers and acquisitions, what technology to develop, and which partnerships to secure. And naturally, a strategic narrative also provides a strong foundation for marketing campaigns, pitch decks, product copy, and other GTM content.

Is a strategic narrative the same thing as a sales deck?

No, a strategic narrative is not the same thing as a sales deck. A strategic narrative is a business's core strategy, captured in a narrative format. A sales deck is a tool that sales teams use to educate prospects on a solution.

That being said, the story that's laid out in a strategic narrative may sometimes be repurposed for use as part of a sales deck, especially early in the buying journey. That's because the kernel of a strategic narrative often captures a shift that's happening in the world: a new game vs. an old game; a different point of view; a novel approach to creating a solution to a problem. It's often helpful to share that shift with buyers because it helps them gain context as to why a seller's solution is needed.

What's the difference between positioning and strategic narrative?

A strategic narrative and positioning have different jobs to do. A strategic narrative works initially as a way of building internal commitment to a company's strategy, and to clarify that strategy for the rest of the business. The same strategic narrative is often also used as the foundation for external storytelling.

Positioning, on the other hand, deals mainly with how a specific product is different from other products a prospect may be considering. Positioning clarifies what those differences are so that they are clear in the mind of the buyer. For example, positioning might establish that a product is designed for a specific type of buyer, addresses a specific problem that other products do not, or appeals to a different set of values.

At Flag & Frontier, sometimes we work with clients on both strategic narrative and positioning, but positioning always follows strategic narrative. In fact, in our experience, we've found that positioning work is often quite straightforward once a strategic narrative is in place. That's because we've gone through the process of uncovering the raw materials that would go into positioning anyway; what remains is simply a further distillation of what we've already landed on.

What is the difference between a strategic narrative and a brand story?

A strategic narrative and a brand story have a lot in common, but they serve different purposes.

A strategic narrative captures a company's strategy in a narrative format. It deals with ideas around the problem the company solves, its point of view about what's changed in the world, and why the solution to that problem should be designed a certain way. In other words, a strategic narrative centers on "what's true in the world." It lays out what the company believes about those truths, and creates the foundation for external storytelling around those beliefs.

A brand narrative, on the other hand, concerns itself with the values a product or business wants to embody and the emotions it wants to evoke. While there are always exceptions, a brand story tends to live upstream of a strategic narrative. A strategic narrative may evolve every few years as a company's competitive situation changes and its strategy evolves, but the values and emotions it associates with might remain unchanged.

We've collaborated with clients who needed work done on both. For example, one of our B2C clients at Flag & Frontier needed a strategic narrative to capture how its core product was different from similar offerings. At the same time, the client was evolving from a single-product business to a multi-product business, and it needed a brand story to capture the values and emotions that every product in its portfolio needed to foster.

How is a strategic narrative different from a mission statement and vision statement?

A mission statement explains why a company exists. A vision statement explains what a company hopes to accomplish. The time horizon for these statements is often measured in decades, and they can span multiple products or even business units.

A strategic narrative captures a company's strategy at that point in time, and for a specific product or business unit, in a narrative format. A strategic narrative may be updated every few years, or sometimes much sooner.

Neither competes with the other, but a strategic narrative must always be compatible with the mission and vision a company has established.

What is the difference between a strategic narrative and a point of view?

A strategic narrative is a business's strategy captured in a story format, while a point of view is simply the set of opinions that drove that strategy in the first place.

Here's a bit more about how we think about that at Flag & Frontier.

The common phrase "point of view" (lowercase spelling) is just another way of saying an opinion. In a commercial context, a business might have a point of view about how the world is changing, why a particular problem needs to be solved, how a product should be built, or why it should be built in the first place. These opinions inevitably affect the decisions a company makes about its strategy. A strategic narrative simply captures these points of view in a single, cohesive story.

However, this is a second definition of point of view, spelled as a proper noun: Point of View. This definition comes from the book Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets – A Silicon Valley Guide to Category Design for Building Legendary Companies, published in 2016. This term is essentially the author's own term for a strategic narrative. You'll also see it abbreviated as "POV".

At Flag & Frontier, we use the term strategic narrative instead of point of view because the latter often carries connotations of category creation. In our view, category creation is a very specific business strategy that is only appropriate for certain situations. While we do work with some clients on category creation (and only when it's the right fit), we have found that the term strategic narrative better describes the work at hand.

What is the difference between a strategic narrative advisor, a brand agency, and a positioning consultant?

A strategic narrative consultant, a brand agency, and a positioning consultant often have some overlap, but have different areas of focus.

A strategic narrative consultant is typically someone whose primary strengths are working with leadership teams and understanding business strategy. A brand agency will focus on visual identity and brand storytelling. A positioning consultant deals more with describing a product's "job to be done" to the external market.

However, you will find consultancies or agencies that claim to do all three. And there's a good reason for that; ideally, your strategic narrative, brand identity, and positioning should all work together. At Flag & Frontier, our primary focus is strategic narrative, but clients sometimes ask for our help with brand storytelling and positioning. We also have partners we will bring in to help with areas outside our expertise, such as visual identity, to ensure that the client doesn't end up with a fragmented result.

At a Glance: Strategic Narrative Advisor, Brand Agency, and Positioning Consultant Comparison

What are some good examples of a strategic narrative?

Examples of good strategic narratives are difficult to find because strategic narratives are primarily written as internal documents that are not shared publicly. That being said, a strategic narrative often serves as the kernel for external storytelling.

One of our favorites at Flag & Frontier comes from Apple, but it’s not for the product you might expect. It’s for the iMac, which Steve Jobs introduced on stage in 1998.

Steve Jobs centers his story by talking about what’s changed in the world of personal computing. It’s the late 90s, and this thing called the “Internet” is suddenly a real thing that everyday households are interested in. They don’t just want to get online; they want to experience everything that the web has to offer.

The problem, though, as Steve Jobs continues, is that most PCs were never designed for the Internet era. They have slow processors, small displays with low color resolution, and adding Internet connectivity requires extra add-ons and configuration. The world doesn’t need an incrementally better computer; it needs a different kind of computer, he claims.

The solution is the “Internet Macintosh” or iMac for short. Unlike previous PCs, it has a processor that can handle all the demands of multimedia websites, built-in connectivity, a rich, high-resolution display, and speakers. Plus, it looks beautiful.

With the iMac, you no longer have to deal with clunky upgrades; you can simply get everything you need to enjoy the Internet in one simple, clean package.

At a Glance: The iMac Strategic Narrative

We love this story not just because of its structure, but because of the situation Apple was in at the time. The company had struggled for most of the 90s with a bloated, expensive product lineup. It was near bankruptcy. The previous CEO had recently been ousted. In other words, it was one of the most precarious moments in the company’s history. Jobs didn’t just introduce an innovative product; he created a story that showed the market why it mattered.

The iMac would go on to be one of the company’s most successful products. You can watch Steve Jobs introduce it here.

Where to next? 

Thanks for reading this guide we put together about strategic narrative. It was a true labor of love. If you'd like help with building one yourself, or are just curious about what that might look like, schedule a conversation with John Rougeux by visiting our Contact page.