A New Vision for Strategic Narrative: Going Far, Far Beyond the Boardroom
// Much like the Bible, with its array of protagonists, antagonists, and behind-the-scenes makers-and-shakers, each one of us has a Strategic Narrative flowing through our veins, our history, and our future.
// Much like Helen of Troy, whose face launched 1,000 ships — the Bible, the book that launched a billion ideas, is the epitome of what a narrative — a collection of stories — can do.
// No, I do not talk of the truth of falsity of any religion. I hold no judgement — I seek only understanding. I see the world as a series of metaphors, each phrase or saying or way of looking at things clicking with one human and not another. All wrapping on similar ideas. But, this takes us beyond the need for truth or falsity.
// Those Biblically-inspired ideas… they have solidified like selective concrete into only a select — say 1,000, for brevity’s sake — respected, followed, interpretations. Roman Catholic, Jesuit, Protestant, Baptist, Eastern Orthodox… the list keeps listing. Yet, I see these all as different dialects of the same language, all stemming, flowing, and fishing from the same source.
In other words, these world-views are different clothes upon flesh upon bones.
// Eucharist: a symbol of flesh, of language, a language we devour — the Word on our tongues… a narrative willingly dripping into our throats, beyond the skin, feeding the skin, bolstering the bones with external ideas.
// Now, this is why a disharmony of:
The external narrative one is a part of
And the internal belief of this narrative
can result in bodily malfunctions — acid reflux, headaches, the sacrilegious shits. If you’ve swallowed the symbols, are playing the part, the role someone else has written for you — yet the belief in the meaning of the greater narrative, the position you’ve been positioned in, is not a fire in your bones, your bones grow brittle, both your bodily humours and sense of humour fall like the wax droplets at Madame Tussaud’s on a sinfully summer-filled day.
It is an automimmunic-esque evacuation… a revolt, to escape… the Gruesome Escape.
One we — yes, even you and I — fill with bread, circuses, or fictionalised narratives of bread and circuses. To fill our days with the stories of imaginary people — movies, TV, books, celebrity news — makes us think far much less of the actual Strategic Narratives revolving around us, digesting us in their orbit, being their playthings.
// Yes, the concept of Narrative has been reduced to the state of ‘fiction’ — an adult’s plaything — the Barbie doll of sophisticated drama.
We are told — yes, again, you and I are not immune — it is a layer on the world, a playful, pensive pause ‘inspired’ by real-life.
No!
Each interpretation… each persective (human, but not just human) is a narrative.
Each flick of the pen either wraps the same story in glossy dialogue and multi-million dollar sets to wrap you up — to have you suspend your disblief, to never take you out of the story.
Sounds like kidnapping of grey matter, of identity. Mini stories to keep you occupied with a love of logical, cleaned-up — solved — plotlines, bows working overtime to wrap themselves up in their own oozing internal logic.
We even grow angry if something doesn’t make sense…
If a movie is unrealistic…
If a character does something out of character…
Angry — disappointed — at our falling out of the story. Immersion is the aim of the game — from scriptwriting to marketing copy to keynote speeches: all aim to cocoon the audience in a coherent, step-by-step bubble.
For, these mini stories we tell are but aspects of Grand Narratives. And these Grand Narratives are Strategic Narratives. They are those that are consciously designed…
choreographed…
branded!
// Alas, these larger, more calculated, long-term Strategic Narratives have no need for logic. Nor coherence. You will not find reason — only rhyme — in these narratives. Why? As they are driven beyond the A to the Z of daily life. Chaos is their bedfellow, driven by nothing but a drive itself — often found in the heads, hearts, and throats of a few individuals.
Such Narratvies can — of course — be placed and ‘given’ an order, but there is no ‘inherent’ order that we must work… dig… break our intellectual backs… to discover. For, the idea of ‘order’ is but another narrative.
And it’s possible to think above and beyond any narrative.
Except the narrative of narrative, which is a narrative in itself. And a challenge for another day — or perhaps never, as we would then cease to be human.
