Using Narrative Strategy to tame Complexity

And to provide such clarification and business reasoning you do need a solution that makes logical sense, but will also be bullet proof at a later date when someone inevitably asks "why did you do that?"

Clarification turns out to be a non-trivial skill.

What the above means is that consultants try to make decisions that are legible (understandable to everyone, within their own context), and defensible (one that's highly internally coherent, and if there's any fault it's not in the logic but rather some extrinsic dataset).

And that's really where consulting shines. It creates a clear storyline that is both data backed and internally coherent that management can use to do things. Not necessarily evil or stupid or premeditated things. Just regular normal business things that otherwise would've been shrouded in confusion.

Complexity taming is thus a big part of the value proposition.

Narrative Strategy

Creating decisions out of complexity

Strategic Narratives

Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders¹ Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders Telling a story for all stakeholders

What this looks like in practice

Sparring. Making sense.

Example from Richard Hughes

Testing links

2019-04-04-the-strategic-independent

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681318300600?via%3Dihub

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