Strategy is a Story We Tell About the Future
Sometimes, when school leaders contact L+D about helping them develop a strategic plan, what they expect to develop is a detailed set of tasks.
In reality, they’re asking for an operational improvement plan.
But, as Roger Martin explains in an excellent video released by the Harvard Business Review, having a plan is not the same thing as having a strategy. And planning, as a metaphor, implies several things that just aren’t true about strategy: that we can know in advance, for instance, exactly what should happen when.
Strategy can be more or less thoughtfully developed, more or less insightful, and more or less likely to succeed. But it can never offer us certainty.
It can be more useful to think of strategy as a story we tell about the future: we are called on an adventure, and we can’t be entirely certain what challenges may emerge. The journey ahead has the potential for leisurely exposition and joyful side plots – but also for jarring twists. When the unexpected happens, we’ll need to rely on our character, resources, skills, and shared commitment to our destination. Choices are inevitable with strategy, and transformation is one result.
Accordingly, the questions that a good strategy might answer are questions any story should address:
How is our current context shaped by our past? No school is a blank slate; consider your backstory. What aspects of your school’s character are core and key? How have your past decisions set you up for this moment?
Why do our circumstances call us to make a journey, and where do we want to go? What are the possible futures for our school, and which of them do we prefer? Why should we be inspired to work for our preferred future, and what will it mean for us when we get there?
What tradeoffs will the journey entail? What challenges, opportunities, and sacrifices should we anticipate? What will we learn to hold onto, and what might we be forced to let go of?
How could we be transformed? What aspects of the school’s past will be affirmed, and what new characteristics might we be challenged to develop? How can we become even better as a result of the changes we will go through?
Why will we triumph? What core capabilities, attributes, and values will our school rely on to succeed? How will we further level up those strengths to advance our position on the journey ahead?
Strategy-as-story is not only an asset in strategic development. It’s also an asset when you’re rolling out a strategic plan and educating your community about what it will mean.
It’s not enough to launch a strategic plan with a big one-time push. If you’re a leader who works at the level of strategic development, you should be telling the story of your strategy as it unfolds, continually.
Framing your strategy as a story about the future – one where everyone in your community can be a protagonist who advances the plot – can help you make the strategy real and relevant in the life of your school.
This framing clarifies that strategic execution is a choose-your-own-adventure series of decisions, made in the moment with incomplete information.
It makes clear that the path forward means change and growth as a best case scenario. Knowing who you are and where you are trying to go is what enables the school to make better or worse – but never risk-free – decisions.
It emphasizes our collective agency in a VUCA world by putting us in the center of the action.
It helps focus on the things we can control and it challenges us to do our part to make it happen.
Strategy is not something that happens in the abstract; if it is substantive, it will affect your community’s waking moments in concrete, sometimes even disruptive ways. People need an emotionally engaging narrative to help them make meaning of the change they’re experiencing, look forward to reaching the next destination, and see their role in getting there together.
When stories resonate, they can inspire our communities more powerfully than any spreadsheet.
