This is not a sales pitch! But it is a good snapshot of how I help startup & scaleup leaders build their strategic narrative — your strategy, told as a story that people can get behind.

What’s the problem?

Kudos! You’ve already built a company that is both valuable and meaningful. That’s a huge achievement!

But now, there’s something about the story you’re telling, in your company deck, on your website, that doesn’t quite land.

You feel it in your bones.

Maybe it doesn’t really capture your intent or ambition. Maybe prospects struggle to grasp your value, or you feel like you’re starting to lose customers.

Inside your company, teams tell slightly different versions of what you do and why it matters. Maybe the decks inside your company are starting to contradict each other.

Message creep is kicking in: multiple versions of missions, visions, and value propositions — in your decks, website and collateral.

Often, the more you try to explain your story, the more you realise it really doesn’t connect.

When there’s a disconnect between your strategy and your story, people feel it.

Growth stalls often not because your service or product is weak, but because the narrative thread that connects everything is frayed.

We have work to do.

You need a (truly) strategic narrative

“A company’s strategic narrative defines its vision, communicates the strategy, and embodies the culture.”

— Mark Boncheck, Shift Thinking

More than just a marketing story, your strategic narrative is the single most important vehicle through which you, as a leader, can align and articulate your company strategy — for all your stakeholders.

A strategic narrative is the red thread that links your value with the present, and the future.

This is first about ensuring “continuïteit,” as we say in Holland.

Your strategic narrative should set out where you’re heading, the challenges you’ll tackle along the way — and why people should follow you on that journey.

It lays out why people should buy, subscribe, follow and believe.

A strategic narrative focuses on the connective logic of your actual strategy — in story form.

Defined well, it makes your strategy, value, and direction tangible for everyone.

Internally, it makes it crystal clear how everyone should contribute to that strategy.

What’s not to like?

Narrative Coaching & Consulting

“If you take the time to make your story better, you make the strategy better.”

— Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz

Narrative coaching and consulting is how we build your strategic narrative together.

This is a guided, pragmatic process of sense-making, decision-making, and alignment on what matters most for your business.

I am not the decision maker. You are.

We start with where you already are: we work from your website, deck, strategic docs, some briefing and discovery sessions.

Together, we look for where your strategy and story are strong and connected.

We also look for dissonance and disconnects.

And we check where your story isn’t in line with the reality in the market.

Then, we start re-threading these disconnects.

Throughout the process, I help you maintain a scout mindset: to stay in truth-seeking mode, adaptive, and thinking in possibilities and probabilities, not absolutes.

Then, I support you in your decision making.

I bring both my own experience in threading relationships, strategy and story throughout my career, as well as a full toolkit of frameworks and methods from our Principal’s 25+ years of narrative practice.

From Strategy to Story Systems

In the course of our work, we’ll remove growth barriers by sharpening and aligning all sorts of messaging.

We help you gain clarity not only on your strategy, but also on your purpose, vision, mission and value proposition. These are the essentials.

We’ll probably discuss positioning, identify your story systems, key strategic issues, maybe even touch on your operating model.

And we help you operationalise all of this narrative work by delivering and continuously updating a working deck — your living reference document through which you can align strategy and story.

If needed, we can embed it in your company and train your team, so you can manage it for yourself.

Either way, the outcome is a living, breathing strategic narrative — captured in a working deck that gives you and your team clarity, alignment, and momentum.

What are the Outcomes?

Once your strategic narrative is clear and written up, and once you have updated your messaging across your collateral, things really start to flow.

Prospects understand your value without needing long explanations. You convert better.

The people around you stop debating what things mean and start acting with confidence.

Your team aligns naturally because they have a common understanding, logic — and a story to tell.

Markets and investors gain confidence.

A strong strategic narrative creates a shared language for sense-making and decision-making — to keep your strategy alive and evolving in line with reality.

It becomes a navigational tool for all your stakeholders: helping leadership, employees, and investors see where you’re heading, how and why.

Now, strategy and story are aligned.

Strategy stops being a document and becomes something people believe in — and can act on.

From there, we recommend regular check-ins to keep strategic narrative and reality aligned.

Because if there’s one thing for sure nowadays, change really is the only constant.

About Me

“If you don’t give the market the story to talk about, they will define your brand story for you.”

— David Brier, DBD International

Hi, I’m Michiel — Partner and Practice Lead at The House of Narratology.

As well as being chief evangelist, my work here is all about helping leaders and teams find coherence, direction, and momentum, both in their work and their world.

My career began in the music industry — working with artists such as Radiohead, Coldplay, and Foo Fighters.

My job was to speak many languages: to connect and align artists, marketing, sales, promoters, money guys, and keep everything flowing nicely at the right time and place across campaigns and programs. Being in my 20s in the ‘90s was incredible, as you can imagine!

Bringing people together around a meaningful mission was also foundational for my work as Global Brand Director, where I helped rebuild the iconic Commodore brand.

Later, I co-founded an agency with Steve, our Principal here at The House of Narratology, at the dawn of content and social marketing.

After that, I co-led a SaaS start-up from scratch to acquisition, and went on to serve as Evangelist and strategic advisor at CM.com.

Now, back with Steve at The House of Narratology, I put all this experience into our practice to help CEOs, founders and senior leaders craft and deliver their strategic narrative — the foundation for all your storytelling.

I’m at my happiest helping forward-looking leaders and teams see more clearly, decide more coherently — and most importantly, move together as one.

To do that, a strategic narrative is what you need.

This is my work. I can help.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,
Michiel