Crafting the Narrative

The Golden Thread and context of Your Organisation - We don’t just tell stories; we craft your narrative. A narrative is more than just a collection of stories—it’s the full context of your organisation. It weaves together your history, your present, and your future hopes and aspirations. This narrative becomes the foundation for every story told within your business. Whether it’s a process or an objective, there must be a golden thread that connects it back to the overarching narrative.

The narrative we help you craft is sticky, it’s the glue that keeps the people invested in your direction and strategic intent, your purpose, it must permeate every internal communication channel so that people begin to see themselves, others, and the organisation through this shared lens. It’s the glue that holds together everything from the facilitation work, where we build your future direction, to the coaching and mentoring we provide to individuals. It’s this narrative that drives the mindset shifts needed to enable meaningful transitions.

Our approach is to first understand your current narratives—those that serve you well, and those that don’t. We then adjust and integrate these into an overall narrative that includes the full context of your organisation. Over time, this results in a compelling ethos that not only motivates but engages everyone on a deeper, more connected level.

Through this process, we create meaning for your organization. We develop a unique language that resonates and inspires, turning your goals into a compelling narrative that engages and motivates. This narrative becomes a living part of your culture, fostering alignment, connection, and purpose within your teams.

Narrative and Internal Communication

Our work in narrative development and internal communication helps organisations achieve stakeholder engagement and participation through the creation of compelling narratives aligned to business goals. Recent projects include managing restructuring initiatives with grand narratives, creating internal narratives for new CEOs during transformation, and developing inspiring employer brand narratives to attract talent and enhance cross-functional collaboration.

The work we deliver to achieve stakeholder transition, involvement, and participation:

Development of narrative archetypes to meet business needs:

Polaris (North Star) Narrative Archetype – Your ‘raisond'étre’ Reason for being:
- As the actual North Star, Polaris is renowned for its steadfastness and reliability. It remains nearly fixed in our sky, serving as a reliable point of orientation. This could underscore the unwavering mission and foundational principles that guide your organisation's ethos and purpose.

Constellation Narrative Archetype - Who We Are (Employer Brand):
- Just as a constellation is a group of stars forming a recognisable pattern, this narrative represents the core identity and values that shape how you present yourselves, how you behave, and the guiding principles that unify the organisation.
Solar Flare Narrative Archetype - What We Do (Services and Products):
- Solar flares are bursts of energy from the sun that impact the solar system, symbolising the powerful and transformative effect your services and products have on your customers' lives. This narrative reflects the tangible impact and the alignment of customer expectations with their experiences.
Celestial Ascent Narrative Archetype – Where we're going (Future Direction and Growth):
- Celestial ascent signifies a journey towards the stars, embodying your future direction, growth, and the aspirations driving your organisation forward. It captures the continuous quest for improvement, innovation, and reaching new heights.

Elevate Leadership's ‘Story telling’ skills - providing them with the skills to tell the story so that people:

Think - how to interpret and align organisational narratives to your relevant work area. Understanding their communication style and preferences and how their message may impact their audience.
Feel - How to deliver authentic compelling messages with confidence and conviction, using personal analogies that add credibility to the message and build trust.
Do - Ensuring people have a clear call to action – understanding what is required of them to take heed of the message and take the necessary action is the essence of a message that has landed successfully.

Distribution and measurement of internal communication:

Provisioning of Channels and delivery mechanisms that are aligned to consumption preferences and provide insight into communication efficacy and audience participation.
Measurement of Internal Communication efficacy. Output, Recall and Impact.

Some of the projects we’ve recently undertaken:

Provisioning of a grand narrative around which an organisation managed their restructuring initiative. The Narrative was used to tell and, take themselves to market externally, to redefine their service offering, aligned to the futuristic Narrative and provide interest and increased customer engagement. The narrative provided a rallying cry for their people to unite behind to enable delivery to the increase in customer interest. They have delivered excellent returns on the JSE since their restructure and have elevated their levels of brand awareness, within their market, 10-fold.
Creating the internal narrative for the new CEO of an organisation during a time of transforming the business at every level. The many moving parts in this transition included – positioning of the CEO and his expectations. A turnaround strategy for the organisation HC’s division to adopt a human-centric approach whilst maintaining their administrative function. The engagement results were improved, and the communications tactics deployed still yield excellent results in keeping their people involved to this date.
Hosting a future ready initiative, promoting personal transitioning, using the narrative that inspires, activates, and elevates leadership teams to embrace individual growth. In close collaboration with our AI team, we prepared online information packs to enable leaders to take key messages out of the room to elevate the entire business to manage the change required.
Creation of an employer brand narrative that is inspiring and easy to articulate across the business. In collaboration with our AI team, we developed a brand ambassador programme using LinkedIn to build brand authenticity which has attracted the required talent.
Development of divisional ‘what we do’ narratives, joining the dots for the people, improving cross functional collaboration, and breaking down siloed thinking.
Building out narratives that are focused in helping divisions understand how and where their contributions build and deliver on the overall strategic and organisational outcomes.
Coaching leaders to model the way through story-telling that is authentic and lands with conviction and discernment.

What Our Clients Say

CFO

"Their coaching in storytelling skills for our leadership team has made a remarkable difference. Leaders now deliver messages with confidence and authenticity, driving better engagement and alignment across the organisation."