Two of this week's coaching sessions shone a very bright light on how storylining is about much more than ‘putting words on a page'. It's about surfacing the ideas that we want to convey.
So, this week I will focus on how you can use a storyline rather than how you build one.
Let me give you the high level story first and then explain by way of example.
- As you may know, a storyline is a tool for mapping ideas, which can also be described as a ‘thinking machine'.
- The thinking rules that make the ‘machine' work provide an opportunity to use storylines to develop our strategies not just describe them.
As you may know, a storyline is a tool for mapping your ideas, which can also be described as a thinking machine.
One of my old colleagues went so far as to call it an ‘insight engine'.
This is true if we understand the rules that hold our ideas together and use them to test whether the ideas on a page ‘fit'. If they don't, we can use the rules to work out what is wrong and to strengthen or replace the ‘misfit' ideas.
This both pushes and guides us so we think harder and communicate more impactfully because our ideas are more impactful.
In the classic sense, we can use storylines to prepare our communication so we engage our audiences better.
The thinking rules that make the ‘machine' work provide an opportunity to use storylines to develop our strategies, not just describe them. This can be particularly effective when we collaborate with our colleagues.
This is where this week's coaching comes in.
In both sessions we needed to prepare a story that the participants would deliver to their senior leadership in our final workshop together.
The stories needed to be practical and focus on live problems that were substantive enough to engage their leaders.
The challenge for these two groups was that they were not in the midst of a natural paper cycle, and so didn't have anything big enough to share.
Our solution was to use our storylining session to address a problem that they had not yet thought through fully and come up with a solution.
In one case the team developed a strategy for fine tuning their recent organisational transformation to agile ways of working. In the other, they did two things. They
- developed a new business case template that enabled them to use a storyline to convey their case in two pages rather than the eight that the previous template had required.
- pitched and gained approval for the new template from their Tribe lead and CEO in the final Wrap workshop
It worked a treat, so I wanted to explain how we used the storyline as a tool to help them work out what their strategy was, not just describe it.
It has a deeper purpose which you can take advantage of once you really lean into the storylining rules.
I hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Davina
PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY
I love what I do.
I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.
This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.
I leverage 25+ years' experience including
- learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
- being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
- helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
- seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
- watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue
My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.
Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.
Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com
(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.
