Narrative Strategy and Storytelling for Organisations
Helping organisations solve communication, engagement and change challenges through story
Scratch the surface of any human, and you will find a story that matters. The nurse who became a marathon runner after a breakdown. The accountant who grew up on a cattle station. The team leader whose decision to stay home one afternoon changed the trajectory of her family. These aren't dramatic. They don't need to be. They're real, and real is what connects us.
People working in communications, content, and marketing are thinking about their value. AI can produce copy quickly. Suggest your next strategic move or find holes in your comms plans. It is fast, reliable and never misses a deadline. Where does storytelling training fit into a world where everything that is known about the tricks of the trade of communication is still in an LLM? Why learn about or upskill in storytelling when it is all there for us to explore?
I have facilitated numerous workshops, strategy days, narrative sessions, and conference experiences. Regardless of the setting or participants, a consistent pattern emerges. Typically, the most senior, outspoken, or confident individuals are the first to contribute, filling the room with their perspectives. However, as the session transitions to deeper reflection, it is often a quieter participant who introduces a profound idea, causing everyone to pause and absorb the insight.
What truly separates those who reach mastery from everyone else is not talent, but the ability to keep going when the work feels unremarkable. The consistent effort during ordinary moments is what drives mastery.
Recently, I wrote an article about why I don’t teach the Hero’s Journey; you can read it here. It got people talking. Not because people disagreed, but because people said they had a similar critique of the Hero’s Journey. In particular, as the default of what a story is in terms of point of view, form…
Why I don't teach the hero's journey in business storytelling — and why a framework built around one white male Western perspective was never universal.
Friend and futurist Simon Waller invited me to explore the future of acting on his podcast, The Future with Friends. It led me to a surprising place. The conversation evolved into a discussion about the importance of emotion in navigating life as a human being. It led me to reflect on how emotion shapes communication. Not as something that drives us irrationally as a holdover from our distant past, but as the feature that has allowed humanity to outpace other species and thrive in increasingly complex societies.
In the world of storytelling, we glorify narratives of the extraordinary - epic adventures, heroic feats, and life-altering events that seem to lie outside our everyday existence. However, the true power of storytelling resides in the simplicity of the every day, in the stories of the relatable and familiar. These stories shape our perspectives, influence…
Learn how generative story thinking uses mystery, metaphor and foreshadowing to create meaning and why it's the most important skill in the age of AI.
Narrative Strategy and Storytelling for Organisations 