Coaching CEOs to Craft the Story, Rather than Doing It for Them
The beneficial struggle of building your own narrative
In 2016, the CEO of a New York City tech startup that had raised over $30 million (Flybridge, Accel) called me with what initially sounded like a questionable idea.
By that point, I had been helping leadership teams align around a strategic narrative—the high-level story that guides sales, marketing, fundraising, recruiting, everything—for nearly two years. My model was that of an advertising agency’s creative department: I would gather information about a client’s company and products, research its market, and retreat to my cave to create a draft. It was time-consuming, sure, and as word of my practice spread, my lead time for starting new projects ballooned to four months. But that seemed like a necessary price to pay if I was going to deliver great results.
The New York CEO, however, said he couldn’t wait four months. His company was about to launch a new version of its SaaS platform that would support a dramatically more engaging narrative, and he wanted to get started immediately. So he made this proposal:
Listen, my team and I have read all of your articles about structuring the strategic narrative. How about…
