An excerpt from
Aji Notes, Volume 3, written by Toby Hecht.
Aji Notes, Volume 3
(pages 280-288)
The Design of a Business Narrative
Knowing how to design business narratives is the senior, or most powerful, practice
… when working in a rapidly changing, intensely competitive, increasingly complex and technologically advanced global marketplace.
Designing their own business narratives increases businesspeople’s power. It enables them to constitute interpretations, commitments and actions to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.
It makes it possible to produce transactions needed to make money.
It increases their competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes.
Knowing how to design business narratives so that they are effective, tactical, strategic and competitive in IR#4
… is required to double productivity, value and income.
Because time moves in only one direction, forward,
… people have evolved to tell narratives with a beginning, middle and end, and in that sequence.
No one knows why time only moves forward, including physicists, but it is a fact no one disputes.
To design a business narrative that is effective, or that produces outcomes that fulfill businesspeople’s intentions, it must be complete.
It cannot be missing any of its five parts, or commitments.
This means when businesspeople design, speak and execute a business narrative (explanation, commitment, interpretation, offer, practice or strategy), every part must exist.
It must be spoken,
… or it must already exist in the listener’s backgrounds of obviousness.
When the parts of an explanation, commitment, interpretation, offer, practice or strategy are missing, the business narrative:
Isn’t practical.
It won’t “work” in the marketplace.
Triggers distrust with customers, employers, employees, colleagues and vendors.
Leaves openings for prospective Buyers to fill in the blanks with their own incomplete, distrustful or incompetent interpretations and conclusions about “what businesspeople probably mean”.
Effective business narratives contain five fundamental parts:
1. The exposition
The frame of intentions, actors and circumstances for thought and action
2. The conflict
The unsatisfactory situation that is worth the cost to fix
3. The rising action
The action to produce the resolution, or satisfactory situation
4. The resolution
The promised new and satisfactory situation that ends reasons to act and invest
5. The denouement
The new space of possibilities for thought and action to take care of CSCS, or to fulfill intentions, produced by the resolution,
… which is always the real purpose of accepting OPNS
Each part has its own description, meanings, relevance, value and purposes.
To be a “Source of Power”, a business narrative must contain all five.
To “work” in the marketplace, be practiced and trusted, business narratives must be:
1. Complete
All five parts exist,
… i.e., the exposition, conflict, rising action, resolution and denouement.
2. Coherent with reality’s operations
All five parts operate, or work, consistently with reality’s laws, mechanisms and principles.
3. Effective
All five parts are arranged, or organized, to produce the intended outcomes.
4. Strategic so it executes The Strategy
All five parts change situations — interpretations, commitments and actions — so they execute The Strategy,
… or produce:
#5 – OPNS with marginal utilities
#6 – Networks of Capabilities
#7 – Increased autonomies
#8 – Highly valued accomplishments
#9 – Identities of superior TVAL&D
#10 – Highly compensated leadership roles
#11 – Competitive business organizations
#12 – Anticipations of future competitive situations
5. Competitive because its marginal utilities are:
a. Fresh
b. New
c. Highly valued
d. Scarce relative to demand
The 5 Fundamental Parts of Every Business Narrative
Exposition
Explains, exposes or orients the listener to the purposes and intended objectives of the narrative, and contains complete interpretations of:
1. The Speaker
2. The Champion
3. The Major Actor
4. Minor Actors
5. The Adversary
6. The Current Situation
7. The Situation that Starts Action
8. The Conflict and its denouements
9. The Resolution
10. The Denouement
Conflict
The unsatisfactory situation that is the reason for action
… and the cascade of future unsatisfactory situations
… that will result if the conflict is not resolved satisfactorily.
Rising Action
Explains the sequence of actions to be performed
… to produce a sequence of situations
… that progress to resolve the conflict.
The rising action must be a “plot” that answers all relevant questions about who, what, where, when, why and how
… the action will produce the intended objectives.
It must not be a “high concept” or “good idea” without respect for realty’s operations.
Resolution
The situation that ends reasons to think and act any further, or to incur further costs,
… to resolve the conflict
… because it ends competitive returns on further time, energy, money and lost opportunities
… and maximizes returns on thought and action.
Denouement
The new space of possibilities for effective, strategic and competitive thought and action
… produced by the resolution
… to produce competitive advantages, superior value and top 1% annual incomes needed to fulfill ambitions
… that is always the real reason people act, invest or accept OPNS.
This is the time and place to make new offers or propose new offers, practices, narratives and strategies.
When the resolution of a transaction or strategy is to buy a new tool, for example, that is never the real purpose of the action. It’s never what the Buyer really wants.
The real purpose is the new possibilities for thought and action to produce outcomes that having the tool creates to fulfill Buyers’ intentions. (The denouement.)