# Pillar 1 — Strategic narrative (and why it gives you goosebumps)

- **Episode:** [02](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/02.md) (2022-07-12)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** strategic-narrative, leadership
- **Time:** 11:41–18:40 (start 701s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/02?t=701](https://truthliesandwork.com/02?t=701)

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[11:41] Leanne Elliott: Yes. So, strategic narrative— that's a difficult word— strategic narrative is really about leadership. It's about vision. It's about empowering people. It's about creating a vision that people can buy into, that believe in, that provides them with purpose, provides them with meaning. They understand the organization, where it's come from, where it is right now, and where it wants to go. Um, and I think there's a really great— and we've talked about this a lot before in terms of vision, right? Is it though? Is it not just something like a mission statement you write down? Does anyone really look at it? The reality is when it's done well, that translates to all levels within the organization, and there's a great Great story that's been used, you know, across, across, um, research and business when it comes to explaining the impact of vision. Um, it's about JFK when he visited NASA, um, when they were trying to put a man on the moon. And he spoke to various different people and various different employees, different levels. And he spoke to the janitor, the person who cleans around, scrubs the toilets. And he said to him, What's, what's your, what's your role here? And the janitor turned around and replied, I'm here to put a man on the moon, sir
[12:54] Al Elliott: That's so cool. Gives you goosebumps, doesn't it?
[12:57] Leanne Elliott: It does, because there's such a clear vision and mission and such great leaders that are making sure this is translating to all levels of the organization that even somebody who isn't in a technical role, they're not literally going to be the person that enables that, But their role within that organization is still so critical, and they understand that. They bring that purpose into themselves, that what's my role? To put a man on the moon
[13:23] Al Elliott: So let's just translate that then. So, um, let's just say that you are a web design agency, you own a web design agency, and there is someone in there whose job it is to do the accounts. So if I understood this correct, that what they're saying is if you're— if the idea of the web design agency is to create the most effective lead generation websites that they can possibly do, possibly create for clients, then the person who just literally counts the numbers at the end of the day is ensuring— perhaps you might say, what's your vision? What's your— sorry, what's your role? My role is to ensure there's enough cash in the business so that the amazing designers can go and create amazing websites. Is that— have I got that right?
[15:51] Al Elliott: It can
[15:59] Leanne Elliott: But come back
[16:00] Al Elliott: Yeah, come back
[16:01] Leanne Elliott: We'll see you next week
[16:01] Al Elliott: Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Wow. Yeah, that's cool
[16:12] Leanne Elliott: Really cool, because, because that person understood that whilst they may be in a very technical role and too removed from the customer, which is the business owner, everything they do is fundamentally contributing to the mission of that organization. And the mission of that organization was to help business owners sleep at night because they know they've got the finances to achieve what they want to achieve with their business
[16:32] Al Elliott: So I'm taking from this as an owner of a few businesses before, and I've embarrassingly written a few, a few mission statements, and they've just been a bit bullshitty. They haven't really had any kind of practical application. So I'm taking from this that if you have a very clear mission statement, that can be summed up and replicated and what's the word when you vocalize? That's the word. And vocalized by every member of staff in the, or every member of the team, then you all have this shared vision and you, and this is what do you fancy psychologists call this bit?
[17:09] Leanne Elliott: Strategic narrative
[17:11] Al Elliott: Strategic narrative. So that's number 1. What about number 2?
[17:15] Leanne Elliott: And I think just to mention one thing on that strategic narrative as well, is that it goes beyond just having a, a good vision or mission statement. It's then about how the, the changes you make, either operationally or process, or even just in terms of the terminology that you use in your business, can impact this. So for example, I worked for a very progressive organization in welfare to work that was founded simply through frustration of seeing, um, people who were benefit claimants not being treated with— as a customer, not having that customer experience. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to make sure you're ticking the boxes you need to, to claim your benefits. And one of the simple things that the MD did and insisted upon is that we'd never ever call the people we work with clients, ever. And that was standard in the industry to call them clients. No, absolutely no. And if she heard it She would come down on you so hard. The people we worked with were customers. They were our customers. When she was talking to managers, she'd say to us, how many customers do you have? And we didn't work directly with customers, but the point she was making was that if you're a manager of a team, however many customers each member of your team has on their caseload, add that together and that's the number of customers that you're responsible for