The show’s guest in this episode is Guillaume Wiatr. He is the author of Strategic Narrative: A Simple Method That Business Leaders Can Use to Help Everyone Understand Their Business, Get Behind it and Believe In It.

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Strategic Narrative with Guillaume Wiatr

Hello, I’m Melanie Parish, it’s so great to be here with you live today. I’ve been thinking about my own leadership, and today is Valentine’s Day. And I have this lovely box of chocolates that my husband gave me. And I was thinking about relationships and how relationships are kind of like a box of chocolates. And like not to get lost on like Forrest Gump and the box of chocolates, just, you know, I’m just gonna say that, but, um, but it is interesting how, when I open a box of chocolates, I look and I go, Oh, that one looks good. And I don’t know about that one. And, and there’s some, you know, sort of thinking of that’s good, that’s not good. That’s, you know, whatever. And, and I think in relationships, and in business work relationships, we sort of do that, too. We’re drawn to one person over another. And sometimes we’re drawn because of our sameness. And there’s value to the entire box of chocolates, the diversity of the box of chocolates, even if it’s just what each chocolate shares. So, for me, I’m not particularly drawn to the white chocolate, but my son loves them. So I just give them to him, and he gets joy. And, and that makes me think that how we share the value that each team member brings with others, how we illuminate what they share how we amplify what they share, might speak to someone else on our team.

So what might not speak to me might speak to someone else, how we value everyone for who they are, how they’re different, might actually help someone else see something or help someone else, have a new idea or have something different come to mind that can help take our work and our process forward or just have our feelings be important. I do a lot of work with personality profiles. And differences are so powerful in teams, because they help us see our customers and their differences better. They help us come up with different ideas, they help our products have more breadth. So I’ve just been thinking of all of that. And for Valentine’s Day, it’s sort of how do we spread the love? So my challenge to you this week, is how do you look for difference? And then how do you amplify that difference? So that you spread that difference into the world? How do you look for the power of others, and then help amplify that difference so that that difference can impact the world in a better way.

And I am super excited about our guests today. Our guest is Guillaume Wiatr. And he is the author of strategic narrative, a simple method that business leaders can use to help everyone understand their business, get behind it and believe in it. His current company, Mehta, Helm, guides CEOs, founders and business owners of transformative companies to align teams and accelerate innovative adoption. I am super excited to have him here.

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Welcome to my show.

Melanie, how are you? I’m ready to experiment with you.

I’m ready to experiment with you too.

Yeah, thank you so much. And Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your family.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your family too.

I love I love the box of chocolate. I got some this morning too.

I’ve been experimenting with being cranky about my valentine presents. So all right. On the weekend my husband brought me flowers and he gave them to me in bed. And the water spilled all over me and so I hollered and I was like Don’t put me flowers in bed. So I felt like I rejected his flowers. Yeah, today I got more press another president because I think he thought I didn’t like the flowers. So he wasn’t offended. And so I thought well maybe I should be cranky about the chocolates. Maybe I’ll get present later. So no but it’s lovely to get Valentine. So and you got chocolates too.

I got chocolates there right here with a card.

Well, I gave my husband a new bedsheet. I don’t know if he was excited or not? Well, we’re doing book club. And you were kind enough to read my book. I know from our pre show chat. And and we’re talking a little bit about chapter five tools for an experimental culture. And I’d love to hear sort of what came to mind as you were looking at this chapter.

Well, the swing this chapter, you cover three tools, if I remember correctly, and I have, I took some notes on the side here to kind of,

Oh, my gosh, you’re so organized. I love it. Thank you.

Hey, that’s my job to get organized. So I got to walk my own talk here. Yeah, the so so I don’t, they’re not in the right order of your book. But the Kanban the game by walks in the experiment, Kata the first, the last one, the Kanban boards, where the I know this right now, I have known this tool for a very long time. I was very influenced by this type of work visually work visually, in a working visually having a sense also of achievements with those tools. Not necessarily pushing through a to do list. But pulling through intentional, joyful productivity. Maybe that’s not exactly what Kanban is about. But that’s how I interpret it.

I think that’s a great description. And the difference between a push system and a pull system, I think, is the biggest importance of it. And I think you said, Oh, I’ve been using these for a long time, which is true, me too. And, and I didn’t invent this, this is Toyota, you as us. Japanese tool, I just sort of listed it as a useful tool that sort of fits with innovation. And, and the difference I think, between a pull system and a push system, if you if you make it to do list, you have some feeling that you should cross things off in order. And the idea behind a Kanban is that it’s a pull system, meaning that you should pull the most important item at any one time. And you don’t you aren’t governed by the fact that something’s been on your list for a long time, you should always be doing the thing that’s most useful.

Right?

I’m curious to hear like sort of what are the downsides to a kanban that you’ve seen as a consultant.

So I’ll talk about my downsides. I tend to create a lot of cards, you know, Kanban. So let’s make sure that everybody understand because I know we’re alive here and make sure we understand Kanban is a very simple system with columns. And the most traditional way is you have a To Do in progress. And then you have a third column of it’s done. But you can have different variation of this.

And people use, like Trello, or Atlassian, or they use Asana is one that you can use Asana different ways, you can have a list system, but you can also have a board, and you can set up your board to be a kanban if you want to.

And I’m from a generation that and I started with a metal slotted board with blue cards. So very, very, very tactile, very, you know, very old school. But now Yes, I do use Trello on a weekly, weekly, even daily basis to get organized. And so it’s so so the downsides are I can create so many cards because you know, I want to do all of these things. Now I have this this board to play with. And it’s easy to split hair, like to break down your projects to in a too granular fashion. And so you get a little bit overwhelmed sometimes. And another Another downside is, if I’ve seen cards and especially Trello now, you know on the digital form, measures the time that a card has not been touched. So it tells you how this card has been here for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And in your mind you go Well, shouldn’t I be working on this? So you start maybe developing a little bit of the guilt narrative or the so you may you may be careful with these downsides. That’s about it. I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about Kanban. They, they’re really a good easy tool that is has been really popularized, I think thanks to the digital, all the digital apps and platform that we use now, it’s it’s none. It’s not. It’s not rare now these days to find a kanban functionality in a new piece of software that is not not specifically designed for that. But it’s an added benefit.

That the downsides, I would say that you haven’t mentioned our adoption, like if an organization starts to adopt it, it’s hard to get a team to all adopt it. So then they run around trying to police each other about oh, well, you didn’t look at the Kanban or you didn’t. Hard. And then the other is just like people will put all their cards on there and then not update it or not look at it. Yeah. Which, which always has me go back to wanting organizations to put that board on the wall with the wooden cards. Really, they’re visible all the time, I always have this dream of that. Even though it doesn’t make sense in a digital world, but it does that functioned differently because it was so visible in the workspace.

Right. Right. Right. I think I think these are Yeah, I’ve seen those downfalls to typically a digital one anyway, set up reminders, you can communicate, but my experience was also very much in the, you know, in the pen and paper world where, you know, I used to run a design studio, where we had a we had a kanban you know, on the on the whiteboard, very, very scrappy method, but very effective. Everybody could see it, everybody could see what what was moving what had been Yeah, whilst or digital. So, back to your question. You know, we were three tools here. So the Canada was very, I was very used to it now, one that I, I thought was like, aha moment for me was the game by walks. Because I didn’t know there was a term for the practice of standing up. Literally, or, or not so literally, but standing, I’m going into somebody’s world to observe and be the direct witness of what’s going on. on the dance floor, you know, the famous metaphor of the dance floor versus the balcony. But the dance floor refers to where the where the work happens, where things are happening, whether you are in a factory or in a software development shop, or, or a retail space or a consulting office or architecture office, I focus on my focus is with professional services firms. So I tend to think about those type of businesses first. But Gemba walks where I was so refreshing to read about these in your book, because I thought that I don’t know. Well, I believe it’s because the way we structure our companies and organization, we very easily put barriers, metaphorical barriers, and our narrative around how a company is structured, leads us to forget that the best way to, to fix a problem to look at a challenge and experiment with something is to just get into doing things and taking a walk to where things happen. I thought this was a very, very powerful concept to me. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you had a name.

But I it’s one of my favorite Japanese concepts is like and it comes from the the gimble walk is coming down from the factory onto the factory floor. But it’s incredibly powerful for knowledge work as well. Yeah. And I find now that we have zoom, it’s so easy to see knowledge work. Show me what you’re working on. Yes. Show me the marketing campaign. Yeah. Oh, that is so easy to look at now.

So I want I want to share a couple of stories because I’m really excited about this concept. The first one that I started sharing with you before the show is the so I grew up in a family of entrepreneur. And I was literally raised in a pastry and Chocolate Factory. On my dad’s side. My aunt, my aunt and uncle had a fine, fine chocolate and pastry shop in the northern of Paris. And on my mom’s side side, my grandparents were manufacturing buttons for the garment industry. And so as a little kid, you know, three, five year olds, you know, remember I was riding my little tricycle in the middle of those two, two businesses. So I was having my gimble walks, I guess, but I was too maybe too little to really understand the depth of what was going on. However, I could notice at the time that the game by walks was probably the innate way my relatives would run their businesses and solve problems. Like, you know, my grandpa, my grandfather, would you know, he’s he’s little button factory had had the floor with machines and a storage area and then an office area. And he would, he would kind of move around between those three, four areas based on the need. So. So that was that was striking the way you describe this was really like, you know what this is now, today in my business. I have an app called Voxer. And I let my clients contact me tweet pretty much 24/7 I don’t give them a limit, because I want them to feel that what we’re doing is very experimental. And so when an when an insight or a question pops up, they should feel free to have a conversation with me and experiment with, you know, feedback or something like that. So my version of this, you know, 50 years later, is digital, and it’s through an app that lets them, you know, lets people just ask me question anytime.

I also use Voxer, or you do both, I use it with my one on one clients, we also use it in our leadership Essentials program. And I I love it, because it’s so fast, it’s so topical, it’s so immediate. And also I’m able to respond, you know, when I can, that it’s it’s such a powerful tool, I love it.

It’s fun to has this little funny sound. Just like a walkie talkie.

Yes, it is very fun. And then the third thing, and I’ll just say, is the experiment kata. And if anybody wants to get a copy of our experiment credit card, you can just send an email to melanie@experimentalleader.com. And we will send you a copy of that. And that’s just a way to run continuous improvement on anything you want to run. And you can just follow the questions on the card. And it’ll help you do that. And I want to get to you get home. And I want to learn more about you. How are you experimenting in your life and your business right now?

Well, my business, by definition is an experiment. That’s how I started it. Literally, that’s how I started it. And now it’s it has this. So it’s my fourth venture and this particular one is now a six year old. And it looks a little more formal than you see when it started. But it’s it’s I’m constantly experimenting with new launches new offer. So I offer strategic narrative consulting, through courses. So Well, let’s talk about this courses I’ve experimented with with courses started in 2021, and then moved to another format in 2022. And now I’m expanding with with the platform in 2023. So this business being a very much No, I’m a solopreneur with a few people in the back end. You know, I experiment a lot with myself, I test my boundaries, too. But with my clients also. Experimentation is front and center. This is how you build a strategic narrative. Most people think that is strategic narrative is a piece of formal content, whether it’s video or presentation or, you know, a story that you write, and I turn them to the fight, I evolve them to the fact that it’s a constant practice. It’s something you experiment with constantly. A narrative is a is a living system. It’s a living entity, it’s open ended, versus a story. So I so just for you and for everyone here. To me stories and narrative are two different things. People go well, great, wait, they’re they’re similar, right? Well, in some fashion. But stories are closed ended, they have a beginning, a middle and an end. They’re like, you know, unique entities. You know, I told the story about something happened in the past. A narrative is this ongoing conversation that you have with yourself or your team or your market or your clients. So it’s really a practice. So that’s how I help my clients experiment, exploring their own narrative, and shaping it so that they can be a bit better businesses.

Yeah, I read your e-book. And I think as I was reading your e-book, and I loved it, by the way, I loved as I was reading about the difference between story and narrative. I really, I really saw the value of narrative because it’s like what a brand is made up of is narrative because there’s a future in it. Is that is that kind of the difference is the future.

A Simple Method that Business Leaders Can Use to Help Everyone Understand Their Business, Get Behind It, and Believe In It.

Yeah, a narrative is so let me give you an example of a narrative. A narrative is something that we follow because we don’t pay attention to it. Like, what’s the narrative about say? Let’s talk about the you know, we say, Oh, the narrative about society and the narrative about politics or education or leadership, or Yo, you know, and you, you talk in your in your book. Now you you point out very specific narrative things that are kind of normalized, we don’t pay attention to like, a leader should know. That’s a narrative, right? We say, Yeah, of course, the leader shouldn’t well wait a minute, like when you start challenging it, that’s when you start evolving it. So that’s when it’s future focus to your point. So if you’re reading that mindset, a narrative becomes a really powerful tool for change. Right? So stories have happened already. I if I’m, if I say I’m a storyteller, I told the story in probably I rehearsed a few times, right? I manufactured it, I shaped it to her specific objective, right? Maybe Maybe it’s about sales or about motivation, something a narrative is is is happening now. Like what we’re doing right now, we’re fueling the narrative about leadership to evolve it. Right. We are we are adding to the conversation, we’re also fueling the narrative that it should be good to do that on social media and turn it into partners. Right? It’s very recent, and really booming narrative that people have in their mind, oh, yeah, I’m a professional, I should have my own podcast, I should be on LinkedIn, I should, I should write articles there, you know, but, so all of that is really, really good. It can help you propel what you’re doing into the future and change thing. And until, until the narrative now becomes outdated and toxic. Became it becomes irrelevant, it becomes not adapted to what we’re trying to do. For instance, on planet Earth, we’re, we’re obviously, seeing climate problems, climate issues. And the narrative that we that I grew up with, which was, you know, consume, consume, consume energy is unlimited, you know, you can fill up your gas tank as much as you want. That narrative is being challenged. Right? We’re evolving it, we’re like, Okay, what do we do, then? We don’t know. And that’s when experimentation comes in, to change the narrative. So, you know, that’s the difference I make between those two concepts. It’s, it’s a different ways to, to look at this. But when you really enter that mindset becomes a super powerful tool for change.

When should someone when when do you work with someone? If somebody was thinking, well, this is interesting. I wonder if I should reach out to you when when should someone be talking to you? Any day, but they’d be experiencing that they were a good fit for you as a client.

Right? Right. Right. They would probably be experiencing something like, Okay, I mean, my role whether you’re inside an organization, or were is you have your own, you know, consulting company, you’re thinking, Okay, I feel like I am growing either in a direction that makes my business very successful, but he’s not necessarily aligned to my mission. And I’m feeling that it takes is it’s an it’s take a lot of energy, you know, I’m not, I’m not in love exactly, with what I do. Or the opposite. I have this grandiose idea. And I’m going to change how, say how women are. Our help are supported in positions of leadership, for instance, I’m just giving you a real real life example. But I don’t have a business that helps me get there the way I would like to. So it’s either one or there so that your business can be successful. And you’re not alone. You feel you’re on line with it, or read in line with this idea, but it’s not successful yet. So these would be kind of the two, two ways to look at this. Another thing is, I feel okay. I feel like I should talk about what I do more, but I am not confident to do it. That’s a really important place to start. I haven’t defined what I call my vision. And you talk extensively in your book about this, and I love how you shaped the first chapter of your book is all about the you know, the current state of innovation and why, why it’s inevitable. You can’t resist it, basically. And so when I read this, and I Oh, Milania has an opportunity story. She has framed the opportunity that she sees and that she is inviting other people to seize with her through her work. And most professional in professional businesses have not done this job effectively. They’re kind of doing their work and they feel like there is a purpose to it. They feel like yep, there is something out there but I can’t articulate it very well. And if I try It’s going to be very self centered. I feel like, naturally I’m going to start talking about my business, and why my company is great. And and actually, I don’t want to do this because I don’t want to sound like a brag. So I think it’s, it’s hard, right? So I hope these are pointers that can help you identify that you need to work on your strategic narrative.

And what size companies do you work with?

So three kinds, large professional services organizations, large consulting firms, executive search firms. And you can look at the you know, I put all my clients on my website. So there’s no secret here, Spencer Stewart divisions of product companies like Microsoft has professional services, through advertising, consulting, things like that. So these organizations typically bring me bring me on because they feel like they’re very established, their processes are getting are getting a little heavy, they need a refresher in how they do business in a more authentic way, a lot of time, more meaningful marketing, because they have all those marketing processes that kind of gets them stuck into the corporate speak. And internally, also, a lot of leaders in at that stage companies tend to second guess, their own leadership vision, it’s hard for them to, you know, deal and manage the difference between their vision and the corporate vision. Then I also help what I would call boutique consulting firms do teams of, say, five, three to five people up to maybe 50 people, they’re very rapidly changing. And as they grow, their narrative is going to be become very disparate, because they don’t have the resources or the discipline or the know how to really stay focused and align. It’s actually the nature of these businesses to be very innovative. So they throw things left and right, which is great. But at some point, you have to prune, you have to say, here are all the things we do all the things we believe, and oh my gosh, it’s a mess. So we don’t differentiate anymore in our market. And internally, people are losing steam, because the work is not so exciting anymore. It’s not so focused and easy to do, it’s not a repetitive enough. The third categories of clients I help are solopreneurs. And I have a program that I call expert on a mission, where I help them really connect their mission with the way they operate their business so that their business is a business that is not only successful, but a business that they also love.

It’s easy to lose that thread, isn’t it?

Yes, yes. It was my case, you know, all those three things, those three, those three segments, I would say, come from my own experience. I work, you know, I was I was an employee in large firms. I was you know, I started as a as a solopreneur. A couple of times I created design studios. And every time I could see the same pattern, like, where are we headed? Exactly. Right. Like what’s what’s really our narrative here in this firm? And what are we trying to say outside?

It’s so interesting to think and and, you know, I hear all the time. Well, you should tell more stories. Yeah, yeah, I hear that, too.

I hear that too many. And I think it’s great. But I think it’s also outdated. And in fact, it’s also confusing…

Like, what story should I tell? I should tell…

It’s like, yeah, like, do you want to talk about me about you, but what am I say? So that whole storytelling bandwagon is great. But we need to evolve the conversation. We need to change the narrative about storytelling and say, okay, that let’s be a little more strategic and intentional. Why are we exactly doing this? And when I saw I teach a course at the University of Washington, to entrepreneurial students, and I start my course by asking them Okay, guys, what is the story for you in business? And you’d be surprised what what people tell me like they’re, they think it’s the thing is exciting. I think it’s interesting, but they also, many of them in the in the room tell me Well, it’s a little bit like you’re manipulating people, you’re trying to fabricate the truth. I’m not sure I want to do this. I just want to be authentic and and say, in a normal way, what is it I’m trying to pursue and why think is going to have an impact. So many people are very lost with storytelling, pretty much. I’m going to well, you can see all these books behind me. That’s my research that these are all pretty much storytelling books. And they all tell pretty much the same thing. You know, it’s all derived from the Joseph Campbell arc of, you know, storytelling art, which is awesome, brilliant. But how do we apply it in our context in professional services in a meaningful, authentic way? I think there is still, you know, there’s still a lot of things to be experimented here.

Where can people find you?

So I’m on LinkedIn. Very often. If you have my Voxer account, you can refer me please do. But you can find me at my most simple is my company website, https://www.metahelm.com/ And you will find my e-book available for free. I have an assessment, you can find out if you’re building narrative power for your business in four minutes. And I am a pretty prolific writer and content creator, I publish a video almost every day, and an article several times a week on this topic.

That’s amazing. Well, it has been such a pleasure to have you on my show today. And I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Well, thank you, Melanie, I think your your podcast is one of the rare places where we can really have candid conversations, and I loved your book, I think you’re you’ve done such a great work at saying things humbly and with no bullshit, and just just relate your experience in a way that that is very valuable. So thanks.

Thank you so much. And I really enjoyed your I really enjoyed your e-book. And I really enjoy this. This thought of the idea that narrative isn’t storytelling, I think it’s it’s really powerful. And, and I think it really lines up with lots of things like branding and personal branding, and, and so many things that are like, we all know, we should be doing them. But we don’t know why. And we don’t know how so I think it’s really practical. So I really love the work that you’re doing as well. So it’s really nice to meet you.

Thank you for having me.

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It has been great to be here with Guillaume Wiatr. I think our story is so important to who we are as authentic leaders. It’s important to share our stories as we lead others because it’s important for them to know who we are. It’s important in our mentorship of others that we know that they know who we are and how we think. I also want to take a minute and invite you to check out my free webinar. It’s at impostersyndromewebinar.experimentalleader.com It’s a it’s a workshop on impostor syndrome and how you can overcome it. I’d love to invite you to check that out. I can’t wait to see you there. And I hope that all of this has been interesting as you consider your own leadership. Go experiment!

Important Links: 

• Guillaume Wiatr – LinkedIn
• Metahelm – Website

Guillaume Wiatr

Guillaume is the author of Strategic Narrative: A Simple Method That Business Leaders Can Use to Help Everyone Understand Their Business, Get Behind it and Believe In It.

His company, MetaHelm, guides CEOs, founders, and business owners of transformative companies to align teams and accelerate innovation adoption.

A former big-firm strategy consultant, Guillaume
has founded four ventures.

He is sought after by senior executives of companies like Alaska Airlines, the Gates Foundation, Generations For Peace, AIG, L’Oréal, Spencer Stuart, GAP, Google, Microsoft, and the US and French governments.

Guillaume teaches and mentors entrepreneurs at startup incubators, EMLyon international business school, and the University of Washington Master of Science in Entrepreneurship, ranked #3 in the US.

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