206. Crafting Narratives That Motivate: What’s Your Strategy Story?

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: The glue for ideation, imagination, and even strategy, is communication. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'm excited to speak with Martin Reeves. Martin is chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, which is a think tank dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science. Martin has written many books. One of my favorites is The Imagination Machine, and he's also written a new book along with Bob Goodson called, like The Button That Changed the World. Welcome Martin. I look forward to our conversation.

[00:00:51] Martin Reeves: Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me, Matt.

[00:00:54] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Let's get started. Okay.

[00:00:56] Martin Reeves: Sure.

[00:00:57] Matt Abrahams: The very first article my students read in my GSB Strategic Communication Class is your article called Your Strategy Needs a Story. Your article emphasizes the power of narrative in strategy. How can leaders craft compelling strategic stories that not only inform, but also inspire and mobilize their organizations?

[00:01:19] Martin Reeves: There's a lot here. It, sounds improbable, right? Strategy seems to be a very serious affair. Very analytical affair and, and stories, it sounds like fiction. It sounds like something frivolous. But actually a strategy is a story, if you think about it. A, strategy starts with a reality, the present, and it's about a fiction which is causing a different state of affairs, competitive advantage, favorable outcomes. So it's a special type of story. It's a story which is initially fictional that's converted to a reality. And I think the important thing about the story is not just informing, which generally strategy does a very bad job at. There's this famous statistic that only twenty-seven, that twenty-eight percent of managers actually know any of the top priorities of their company's strategy.

[00:02:03] So informing is a bar, but an even bigger one is inciting action 'cause you want people to actually be motivated to, to execute the strategy. So how do you do that? I think you, you think about the details of the strategy, but then you think about how to tell it in a way which is actually informative and inspiring. And I think a lot of the elements are actually elements that are present in any story. You need to start with a past, how did you get here? A present, your future aspiration. You need some sort of obstacles to overcome to reach your journey. You need some sort of hero, the company, you need some sort of path as to, and philosophy as to how are you gonna achieve that, that result.

[00:02:44] And I think a very good way to think about this is the, the strategy formulation process, which is obviously a, a little bit aristocratic sometimes. It's, uh, only the strategists or the highly analytical types and the corporate center that deal with the strategy. But you think about the process of strategy formulation, an inclusive process, whereby a group of people that are charged eventually with executing the strategy, come up with the strategy, has the additional benefit that the process of formation of the strategy can be motivating and informative in itself. And I think critical there is using the right sequence of questions in that process. To have some degree of control and ability to shape the process, but a lot of openness too. So there's a lot of discovery, a lot of listening, a lot of, uh, creativity. I think these two topics of story and strategy are intertwined. 

[00:03:38] Matt Abrahams: And that's exactly why we use this article to kick up our class on strategic communication is to highlight how important both components are. A strategy that doesn't have a clear articulate story is just shelfware, and a story that isn't informed by strategy isn't really going to help be motivational. And I really like the piece that you'd mentioned, but also the article really talks about, which is the power of using questions to help not only determine your story, but to engage others in that story so they're more likely to follow along. So questions really to me, seem to be a core essence of that. 

[00:04:14] Martin Reeves: It's a great technology in a way because questions can interrogate, they can elicit information. They can be purposeful, but be modest about the state of knowledge or ignorance, so they can be part of an inquiry. They're a shared social process, and also they can shape a process. I'm asking, asking the right question in the right order elicits a certain response and a certain momentum, so it's a lot better than simply letting anyone do everything they want and alternatively telling. So it's a very sophisticated technology. Hard, hard to use. A bit like listening, very important, but hard for people.

[00:04:53] Matt Abrahams: The ability to ask good questions at the appropriate time towards a specific goal is challenging, but can be very fruitful, as you said. I like labeling it a technology. I really enjoyed your book, The Imagination Machine, and in that book you discuss how companies can systematically harness imagination. What strategies can we use to encourage and elicit imaginative thinking in our teams?

[00:05:20] Martin Reeves: For some reason, imagination is seen as being some sort of magical property that's only endowed to a few gifted individuals like Steve Jobs. And it comes to them in special moments where they see clarity and they see the future. But, and we have the idea that you couldn't possibly manage this sort of very frisky capability and process. But that's rather strange in a way because we don't say in the HR department of companies, oh my god, the affairs of people are intrinsically unpredictable. We couldn't possibly manage that. Let's give up, let's just leave it to a few talented individuals using their intuition.

[00:05:52] So the idea of the The Imagination Machine was to lay out how we could, obviously not with total predictability, but to some extent, shape this process of imagination. I think we, we tend to think of imagination as just the ideation step, the first step in the process. But actually it's the whole process from spark to reality. 'Cause if you think about it, a company is an imagination machine. It takes an idea and it turns it into a reality. So it's a very special sort of machine. And the six steps or strategies, to answer your question, one of them is embracing anomalies, being curious. We know that the brain science says that imagination is driven by surprise.

[00:06:26] When we see something that doesn't fit the pattern of our existing mental model, we update our mental model. So if you don't expose yourself to that surprise, that anomaly, if you're just entirely introverted looking only inside the company, then that doesn't work. So that's the first step. And the second one is looking differently at assumptions. Often what we think of as a fact is just an assumption. It's just a mental model. So for example, we are in the pharmaceutical business. You could look at your business that way, but actually it's an assumption. And the boundaries of the pharmaceutical business are open to dispute and reinvention. So I think it's about having alternative mental models and understanding the difference between an assumption and a fact.

[00:07:05] The third step is, is colliding things with reality because, uh, most new business models fail, but when they fail they generate anomalous, they generate sparks, which further fuel the imagination process. And so a highly rational affair where you don't do anything when there's a possibility that's a mistake, and you don't do anything until you've done all of your analysis, it's too reliant on the power of rationality. And reality is smarter. It has more surprises in store for us. So collide your idea with reality as soon as possible, and there's a whole discipline of experimentation and so on. The fourth one is quite hard for companies, which is to make sure that ideas spread within a company.

[00:07:43] Silos, functions, special language, tribal jealousy, jargon. There's all sorts of ways which stop ideas, even good ideas spreading within a company. So my favorite example here is the Japanese company Recruit, which I talk about a lot in the book that actually has a, a culture of celebrating the spread of, of ideas. And the idea is that the most fun part of being a member of the company, and everyone's obligation is not just to run the business, but to have ideas about how to evolve the business. And they have vast festivals of ideas where anyone can participate, anyone can propose a new idea. So that's a culture which makes ideas spread.

[00:08:20] And fifth may sound like the opposite of imagination, which is actually codifying ideas start off as being very soft, very ambiguous, and to work predictably, to be industrialized they need playbooks. And often working out which of the thousand ideas are the essential details that need to be communicated to everybody is, there is a subtle exercise. So I have this idea I call evolvable scripts, which is, it's like a script for an actor. It's the things, the essential elements that you need to replicate in order to replicate the effect of an idea. And then the last one is just to repeat the cycle, which means staying humble, essentially being ready to disrupt yourself, no matter how great your previous business model was constantly being paranoid and humble and open to reinvention. And all of those things, of course, are about how leaders exemplify and communicate those ideas. All of these have to do with communication and modeling leadership behaviors. 

[00:09:14] Matt Abrahams: I really appreciate again, how you share the importance of communication in the process of imagination and creativity, just like you did with the notion of strategy. As you were mentioning these things, our listeners know that I love alliteration and, and things that can be easier to remember. So I tracked your six steps to helping organizations and individuals to be more creative and leverage The Imagination Machine as start with curiosity about what's going on around you. Challenge the assumptions that exist. Collide with the reality to generate more sparks. And then I took a little liberty here, but this notion of contaminate, in other words, spread the information around. Codify as step five so that you actually can make these repeatable, and then finally continue the effort. And so I came up with six Cs, which in my mind will help cement those ideas. And all of us can supercharge our organizations, our teams with imagination by following those six steps. And I appreciate not only sharing the six steps, but saying how important communication, the seventh C in there really is for making that happen.

[00:10:25] Martin Reeves: Absolutely. A key concept, right, I think is inspiration because to believe in the fiction of the better company or the better invention, it requires another C, confidence, and, and that requires not just, again, information, it requires inspiration, it requires some sort of emotional energy and belief and confidence in the possibility of a better future.

[00:10:46] Matt Abrahams: So I guess we could say that final ingredient is the catalyst that is inspiration. In your work on imagination, you've highlighted the importance of reframing. How can communicators use reframing as a technique to help organizations see new opportunities or solve complex problems? 

[00:11:04] Martin Reeves: My business, the consulting business, is to a first approximation it's problem solving. And there's a lot of complexity in the process of solving a problem. There's a lot of analysis to be done and data to be gathered, but the first question is always, what is the question? Because obviously doing all of these technical operations on the wrong question would be a waste of time, and that's where framing and reframing come ins. You know, throughout my career, I've just accidentally, probably just by dint of my personality, focused on that framing step. When everybody thinks that the question is clear, let's go reduce cost by fourteen percent and I think it's important to say, how do we know that's the right question? Could we just pause a little and explore other ways of framing the question?

[00:11:42] Why do we think that's the right question? So asking the word why repeatedly is one way of getting a reframing, asking what's an assumption and what's a fact? Analogies can be very useful in this respect. If we say, what is this? It opens up the possibility of seeing things differently. Boundaries is important. If we say, well, okay, we're a pharmaceutical company, but look, to have more broadly, we're actually a health company. And looked at even more broadly, we're a wellbeing company. So often broadening the boundaries of a problem permits us to see it differently. I often use constraints. I add a constraint and say, how do we think about that if we, for instance, couldn't use that particular buzzword.

[00:12:18] Or I remove a constraint, if I say, if there were no economic constraints on this, what would be the ideal way of doing this? And it reframes by removing or making assumptions variable. What it all boils down to, I think, is having multiple mental models, the ability to see things in different ways, and seeing that there are really two types of choice, at least two types of choice. One of them is choices within a given mental model within this particular construct. We are a pharmaceutical company. How do we make this better or that better? But then the bigger question of are we really a pharmaceutical company? What do we mean by that? 

[00:12:49] Matt Abrahams: This notion of reframing as you use it is really shaking up how we see reality. It's what's our mental model for this particular endeavor that we're working on. In the class I teach, we do a mini case where we take an auto company and walk through how reframing it is not about selling cars and trucks, but it's really about selling mobility and movement of people. And when you do that, it opens things up tremendously. So this idea of framing and reframing to uncover possible inspirations for creative solutions, and I see how these all relate, can really help. I'd like to turn our attention to your new book, Like: The Button That Changed the World. In the book you provide a history of the like button and discuss the consequences of it. What sparked your interest in the button? 

[00:13:40] Martin Reeves: In a way, the story of the book is related to the content of the book, so I was getting to know somebody, I often try to make myself familiar with new people, new ideas, and I was getting to know somebody in a coffee shop who was a CEO of a tech company, and he was an avid hoarder. He was moving. So I said to him, you must be coming across all sorts of things in your cardboard boxes. And he said, yes. And he pulled out a notebook and it flipped open at a page where there was a sketch of a thumbs up symbol. And I looked at the date on it and it far predated Facebook's use of the like button.

[00:14:11] So I said, I said, Bob, you're telling me you invented the like button? And he said, no, of course not, maybe. And so this thirty minute conversation turned into a whole day conversation where we said, who did invent the like button? And what we found is that this incredible detective story of did this person invent it, did this company invent it, turned into a sort of quest and it unfolded in front of us. And it was a really interesting detective story. So we thought we must share this with the reader and we must write a book about this. And so this expanded because of course you can ask the question, who invented the like button? You can ask why the thumbs up? You can ask what were the consequences of the like button? You can ask what's next? And so we put all of that into a book. 

[00:14:51] Matt Abrahams: Can you share the impact of that like button in terms of what happens in our brains and in our bodies? 

[00:14:58] Martin Reeves: Liking, it turns out the digital liking, which was invented. It's a piece of code in JavaScript, which signals to somebody like a reviewer that you like their review, that was invented, but it actually triggers something called the nucleus accumbens in the brain to release dopamine. And liking online is the same impact as liking in reality, and it involves the same brain chemistry and the same brain centers as being liked. So liking and being liked turns out it's the same thing. That's the same thing as pleasurable activities like sex. It's the same thing as drug addiction. It's the same thing which triggers teenage mental health and self-esteem problems with online addiction and so on. So it really has an enormous impact on the way that we, we communicate. 

[00:15:43] Matt Abrahams: This idea that a simple act of liking, and as you said, liking means not just revealing a preference, but being like something, has really impacted everything. And business leaders, working professionals need to think about it. And it's influencing how we communicate and what we communicate because we now have insight and information we didn't before.

[00:16:06] Martin Reeves: I think in good ways and ways we should watch out for. It obviously compresses the attention span as we're in an age of, if Aristotle was in the world of polished long form rhetoric, we're now playing ping pong with Tweets and likes, and that's useful actually. But I think it's also useful not to become the airline pilot that can't fly the computer controlled plane anymore. I think it's useful to maintain balance in our communication skills. So I personally try to communicate fractally. When I think about something I want to write, I think about the white paper that's a bit long for most people to read. I think about the HBR article that is nice and punchy that probably a lot more people will read. I also think about the LinkedIn post and I think about the Tweets at the same time. And I regard them all as legitimate and complimentary forms of communication.

[00:16:50] Matt Abrahams: And I think that's important. And that notion of the fractal, I think is a really interesting analogy for how to look at that. So Martin, before we end, I like to ask three questions of my guests. One I create just for you and the others are similar across all my guests. Are you ready for that?

[00:17:04] Martin Reeves: Sure.

[00:17:05] Matt Abrahams: So in your role as the head of BCGs Henderson Institute, you spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Is there a particular trend or idea that has you excited for what's coming that you can share with us? 

[00:17:20] Martin Reeves: The reason this question is difficult for me to answer is I'm naturally interested in everything, but if I were to focus just on one of them, I would say that in a short space of time, everything in business has become intensely political. Or to put it another way we used to think about the company as a sort of an economic island where we could think about the company just as its customers, its investors, its products, and its financials, not about the social and political context, which we assumed was basically a constant and benevolent. We can't do that anymore. So that creates ideas about strategists for context, including politics and strategy. Which is something business is trying to figure out, and I'm trying to figure it out. So I'm very excited about that. Political strategy, geopolitical strategy, strategies of context, things like that. So I'm writing a lot about that and thinking a lot about that. 

[00:18:07] Matt Abrahams: Context is critical. In the study of communication we have long known that context is absolutely essential to consider and thinking about its implications for business more broadly, I think, is exciting. And, and I'm glad people like you are doing that, and I look forward to learning from you as you explore further. Let's move to question two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:18:30] Martin Reeves: I do admire Aristotle simply because he wrote so much with so much clarity about communication in rhetoric. He wrote about ethos and pathos and logos, and the thirteen fallacies of communication. It's hard to add anything to that. And I think in business, we're often also in the business of communication, so we have to give presentations, we have to communicate things to people. And is dead relevant stuff. Am I appealing to ethos, pathos or logos? And am I deploying any of the fallacies and am I deploying them effectively? Very important stuff. So he's one favorite let's say, communication theorist.

[00:19:05] Matt Abrahams: You have quoted many times today, Aristotle, and certainly a foundational figure in effective communication. Logos being facts and statistics, pathos being emotion and ethos, being credibility, and how those all come together, very important for communication today, I would argue perhaps critically important. My third and final question, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:19:33] Martin Reeves: I think I would start with listening. What do we say when we listen? Nothing. I think communication is often confused with outputting information. I think inputting information is important too. I'm not a particularly good listener, but I'm a student of listening. So I think deep listening, really understanding your audience is very important. I think landing your point is important, so listening and landing your point. So to think about what is the person is trying to solve for, that you're talking to, and how do they process information and what appears to excite them and, and making choices about how you communicate. So I don't just communicate your messages and the way that you always communicate them using your favorite language and devices, but tailor it to the situation so that your points actually land. And that's often about less, right? That's often about saying of the hundred things you could have said and choose this one. And then I think in case we get too serious in the pursuit of listening and landing, I think levity plays a great role too. I think the emotional plane of communication, I think humor. I think the sizzle of a story, I think these sort of lighter elements are part of the communication process and can greatly enhance it. So I think about those three things a lot, listening, landing, and levity. 

[00:20:47] Matt Abrahams: You know, from earlier, I love alliteration, not unnoticed, that the person who wrote a book called Like, came up with three characteristics based on the letter L. Listening, landing, really making sure it's relevant to the people you're talking to, levity, bringing some humor, and you actually had a bonus in there, which is say less. We tend to say more than we need to. Martin, this has been a fantastic conversation. We covered a wide range of topics from the role of communication and story and strategy to how we can use inspiration to blend inspiration and imagination, and then ultimately talked about the like economy and what the like button has meant for us in the past, what it means now and where it's taking us. Thank you so much for your time and best of luck on the book.

[00:21:32] Martin Reeves: Thanks very much. It was a fun conversation, Matt. Fun to be here. 

[00:21:37] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about strategy and communication, please listen to episode 71 with Jesper Sorensen. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, AMAs, Ask Matt Anything and much more at FasterSmarter.io/premium.