I have found that narratives are becoming increasingly important to explain ‘things’. I’m re-learning this ‘art’ to tell a compelling story.

Our stories can combine much, communities can identify or reject, we can begin to explain complex stories by presenting a well-designed narrative that presents the arguments. It can explain the connections and outline the issues, both in terms of risk and opportunity.

I think business narratives will become essential for our organizations to use to explain where they are and what they see as their future.

A good business narrative should fill a real knowledge gap

Organizations by making this move to open up, to spend more time explaining their ‘fit’ in the world will gain.  Those that stay closed down, secretive and selective in what they reveal will continue to ebb away and not valued as important for our future.

The business narrative is argued as the way to seek increased identity, allows a broader community to enact, to extract better cues for their sense of identity and offer a better way to draw them into this greater sense of identification.

I wrote about visualizing the innovating future through narrative reporting here and placing the business model as central to this narrative movement here.

We are in a constant state of being adaptive

We live in such a fluid world where we are all being forced constantly to be adaptive. It seems nothing is standing still and if it does it simply gets knocked down. We are all learning this new practice of being nimble and increasingly adaptive. Part of the growing complexity we all are grappling with daily is in the multiple voices that are competing for our attention.

Social platforms and having available the so many easy tools to participate are everywhere.  This has liberated these millions of voices wanting to express themselves. Cutting through these competing voices to sort out those that are relevant to you or the ones that will move you to action are tough. We need to go one step further.

We all feel the effects of this ‘sucking of time’ out of our days. We need to build a greater sense of connection, understanding the broader connectivity to put ‘things’ in context.

The story or narrative will increasing make the final connection and cut through this growing distraction noise. Getting more focused on the context and explaining this through a good narrative or story is becoming essential to go beyond ‘just a connection’ into prompting real identification and even action.

Anchoring ourselves through stories will help us regain that lost middle ground.

What we need to do, is anchor all these seemingly competing voices into our stories to explain where we are, where we believe we should be going and what, as we presently know it, will help us get there.

Learning the art of good narratives is becoming essential to tell our story and its place to help reduce conflicts and misunderstandings and help us all to navigate a little better in this more complex world.

We can tell these organizations stories in so many compelling ways, through the business model, and through sustainability reporting. A well-structured business narrative can offer the organization vision, it can enhance communication, it can highlight where the organization is critically capturing knowledge and putting it to work.

We need to spark more.

Narratives can spark our thinking in how this can encourage innovation and growth, so as to build a growing sense of community and identification, of engagement and identification. As new knowledge comes into us we need to increasingly sort it, to identify the relevant ‘tags’ and assign them in importance to us, our community and to the broader context.

Mastering the business narrative is becoming critical, in helping to connect the innovations we need to build our future and these need to be more connected by the power of the story.

Moving beyond just the sound bite or tweet

Our lives must move beyond the ‘sound bites’, they give us a feeling of engagement but this can be fleeting, lost in microseconds, we need to gain a greater sense of community and that comes from connecting the fragments of a story and piecing them together to give more lasting meaning. We need the ‘greater’ context, not just fleeting moments.

Business leaders need to practice the art (and science) of describing aspects that might be complex, into good narratives so we can identify with these and recognize ways we can contribute and support.

The post Describing the future by using the business narrative first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Does it give us the level of detailed understanding to feel confident?

Let me outline some different thoughts, coming from some detailed research that is swirling around in my mind today. It’s a little complicated, but lets try.

I apologize this is a little longer than ideal so maybe take it in bite seized chunks.

Seeing an organizations business model but through whose eyes?

Is the business model important? Of course it is but how we see its value all depends on who are you, what you are looking for, knowing what provides the real value creation within that specific organization becomes important to appreciate their business model.

Understanding the business model of organizations is important, it can tell us much, if it is well designed and explained.

.Today we are stuck looking into our business organizations through a very selective window, often chosen by the leadership of the organization, designed deliberately  into what they chose to report upon.

It is what they believe they want to tell you about ‘selected’ activities and outcomes that are actually going on. Do you believe these selective opinions?  I certainly do not on many occasions regard them as transparent as I would like.

Firstly, financial numbers alone give a limited guidance, they hid so much to make it difficult for the outside to really gain full confidence in their understanding of what lies underneath.

If organizations rely simply on ‘just’ the numbers, this tend to be a ‘static’ set of figures that reflect something recent and everything in the past. That is not helpful in knowing where organizations are heading or if they are well-equipped to get there.

If financials are no real use for the future – what is?

Numbers alone do not give us confidence to invest in the organizations future; we only blindly invest in a historical position actually. We take better comfort from the forward-looking statement that is positioned to fill this future thinking space.

Is this really good enough? I don’t think so and so do plenty of others – that is way there is a serious call for changing this. We do need better knowledge and insights.

Surely we all need to recognize this reporting must change, we live in rapidly changing environments where established organizations are increasingly being caught out.

We need to understand more of the why. We need to know what is making up the present and future thinking of the leadership of organizations. For this the business model is not a bad place to gather around, decide and explore its relationship parts to form an opinion if what the leadership is thinking, is making future sense.

There is a call for a more integrated reporting structure that is forward-looking. This might help.

There is a growing argument for a more integrated reporting framework with one of those pushing for this is the IIRC. IIRC has as its objectives to enhance market and context specific insights, it wants to place a greater emphasis on the longer-term strategy and reveal the behavioral triangle of governance, risk and remuneration.

It is seeking this out through how the business model works expecting a clear linkage of the dynamics and key relationships that it depends. Now that, for me, is good news. They are suggesting this comes through business narratives.

But will this make a real difference to attempt to describe the business model (BM), unless we have a standard way to evaluate and describe this. I don’t think the IIRC is yet there in what this needs to have contained within the BM Narrative but they are moving along a good track, if it is not the best track – more on that another time perhaps.

What is driving this call for reporting change?

There are a set of issue that are driving this move towards a more integrated reporting. The open question is will it make the real difference, restore confidence, and allow stakeholders, the many and varied  investors into the ‘hearts and minds’ of our organizations to show a shared belief. Will it bring back trust within our organizations?

So who wants to see what is made up within any integrated business model?

There are so many interested parties wanting to understand our business organizations. The current proposal is to present the business model through Business Narrative thinking for telling the real story. This clearly raises a greater set of question in my mind:

• Whose context will these narratives be targeted towards, what will form the nature of them and will we see or simply ‘sense the value that lies within these BM Narratives?
• Will we gain that clarity on the leadership objective and ‘decent’ insights into their strategy and the thinking that is making this up?
• Will they be clear, not replace one set of flowery statements with another. A business model should clarify a compelling picture of how, if it is constructed well by identifying those drivers of development and future (sustaining) performance.
• We don’t want it loaded with safe haven or harbour statements with financial positions, but some forward analysis and explanations that provide the context and construct of why this business model can deliver, and what are its risks and critical aspects of the BM.

Of course we need to accept these will still be a partial understanding to retain competitive advantage.

Do our organizations want to talk about their business models or will they feel they are revealing too much? Will they lack that real confidence because sometimes they don’t know what does truly make up their business model in real value points? The business model and its related parts needs significant understanding and opening this up might reveal inherent weakness.

Forget all the present loaded documents that ‘spin’ themes, generalize on priorities and time-frames – do they offer decent explanations of actions, comprehensive and quantified information?  Do they map this back to strategic priorities?

Will organizations leaders be comfortable to put their necks a little more on the chopping block? Can we, should we encourage this? Yes we should, that is why they are there, to be paid to manage risk and opportunities, to navigate and deliver and be well rewarded for these efforts.

It is a different balancing act, needing deeper evaluation of all the implications of revealing the business model, without it turning into simply ‘bland’ statements that will give little fresh value.

You can go on and ask a series of further questions:

• Do we as outsiders really extract useful information today – is what is currently being produced and talked about really insightful or bland statements of possible intent?
• Do we really know if the present BM have a clear integration, the parts in its total design, not just work and fit with each other but actually ‘talk’ to each other.
• How much can we expect on tangible comments on sustainability, risks and impacts to existing strategies? We should.
• Will organization invest enough in decent graphics that help explain their business model or just prettify their reports?
• Can we grasp differences within the different  business units and their business models or do we just accept the top picture?

We need stuff we can relate too, that will help us understand or a narrative has no real value, just more soothing balm. There are real, significant questions any move to pushing organizations towards reporting on their business models. Today this is being explored through present trials and experimentation in a number of our top organizations.

These are the pioneers working through this. This early adopters recognize a more open, forward-looking outlook will attract more positives than keeping present stakeholders and investors in the dark. Informing them of a better business model narrative of the future intent can give greater understanding and confidence.

How would organizations go about this BM narrative task?

Should these be top down or bottom up? The top-level business model is usually made up of multiple business models underneath. The larger and more complex the organization the harder it might be to describe a ‘generic’ business model. How will this be resolved?

We would also want to search for a certain consistency across organizations offering where proirities lie, alongside some clear and measurable KPI’s to help in any assessments

 How will the leadership of organizations deal with failures? It is far more beholden of the leadership today to talk about the  failures but place these within the real learning that came out of this and actions it has taken from this so this becomes an expected rhythm of advancing the knowledge and learning.

Do we expect to understand what are the external drivers prompting discussion and informing relevant decisions? Do we get the relevant joining of the dots to provide a more integrated picture? Explicit linkages that give context to strategy to direction

The questions are many and complex.

Can this be achieved, or are we perhaps raising our expectancies way to high. I expect the way to high would be the winner here, sadly. Will the business narrative follow a prescribed format or be allowed to evolve and through a set of emerging practices become the accepted leading practice that will eventually be broadly adopted? Most probably.

We know the Business Model is made up of key resources and relationships that enable the real engagement and point towards a distinctive value proposition. What is needed in all business model narratives is the coverage of all the basic building blocks that frame the discussion as a universal starting point.

What to integrate within this business narrative might be tough:

• Provide distinctive understanding of what our brand strives to be?
• What would transmit real values and clarity to the reader?
• Provide future stories and scenarios that paint that BM canvas for what we are doing in the ‘here and know’, that gives it the ‘richness and vibrancy’ people want to here.
• Put the people side into the BM equation – to discuss the learning behaviors and intentions that will underpin the BM – our people and where they really fit within the business model design to make it work through knowledge and innovation contribution.
• Explain the make-up of the critical intellectual capitals that will generate the future value creation
• Clarify the value propositions and their key building blocks

We do need to evoke a powerful narrative as the journey that others would want to be on

The really challenging part of any move towards building and communicating the BM narrative resolve around some perhaps “hairy” internal challenges

• A cohesive team that can stay on-message
• Meets investors needs
• Offer a picture of sustainable value- actions that drive
• Offer information that is used to manage the business, not all but enough!
• It is structured and coherent
• Has alignment and consistency between actions and rhetoric
• Showing the places and activities where an organization is managing for value.

There is a really strong case to look more towards the future

Organizations by making this move to having good, helpful and well-structured constructs of their business model is a step towards being more open, more willing to engage. These moves will help the stakeholders to want to become a better knowledgeable partner wanting to get involved. Ones that by being clearer on what is making up an organizations business models today and by discussing these can reduce conflicts, help navigate in this more complex world.

What will happen if organizations start adopting a business narrative around their business models?

I am excited in what I read about what the integrated reporting is presenting as potential results. Equally I am troubled. Adopting the business model, even in just a narrative reporting form can offer really value but it needs designing well, to be a substantial advancement in our understanding of organizations view of the future.

I do hope the central change aspect of reporting, based on the business model suggested by the IIRC, is managed well, otherwise we miss a further opportunity to change a rather broken down, out of date reporting mechanism that is “not fit for today’s or tomorrows purpose.” We do need to be more forward looking and understand the relationships that make up the value within our organizations, the business model helps in this.

What do you think? Any thoughts on this? We are arriving a different point on reporting and the business model and its understanding will become even more important to our future.

Main References here:

Steve Denning- Mastering the discipline of business narratives.

PwC- Trust through Transparency

Integrated Reporting (IIRC)

* This article was extensively revised on 15th February from the original.

The post Seeing a business model through whose eyes? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

One of the most central discussion points was around jobs- creation, partly from bringing them back to America, and unleashing the Entrepreneurs from all that ‘crushing’ burden of bureaucratic ‘red’ tape but lacking in real specifics.

Innovation I noticed came to the rescue as that ‘certain’ word needed to be played, like a cloak you can hid behind, so the person waving its potential in magic dust will make us all feel happy,  that it will solve most of our problems. Apple was raised in the questions asked and how can the jobs overseas be brought back to the USA?

President Obama stated some of the jobs lost will not come back, those that are low skill, low wages and he wants to achieve high skill, higher earning jobs. I’m sure both candidates would want that and both know certain jobs will never come back.

Will Apple invest back in the United States in manufacturing unless there is a fundamental change in policy or consumer sentiment? They are more likely to invest on consumer sentiment than just policy alone, if it changed and suddenly there was demanded “I want home-made products, made within the US 100%” stamped upon them.

Customers voting with their feet and wallets can deliver more than policy incentives alone. Pride of ownership might even replace status in ownership.
We need to turn the economic tide
The question for me as ‘top of mind’ is we still seem powerless to stop the economic flow away from US and Europe, unless we offer a really compelling message and put into place the structures, policies and incentive to achieve this, so people want to unite and then respond, otherwise we continue in ‘grid lock’, division and self-interest.

We need a real call to arms- a rallying term used by proponents of a cause – and innovation needs to be at its centre. The smart building block based on knowledge acquisition, technology and entrepreneurs who see innovation as the new economic model.

In all I read and hear is that the very opposite is happening, the knowledge worker is either retiring, being marginalized by being placed in greater silos than ever and the influx of skilled workers or those that have potential, are hampered by not having the right skills to meet the roles being looked for.

Equally they are being let down by the education system not positioning them to have these skills or to be prepared enough to satisfy potential employers.. Many people are simply in the wrong location, either within the country or where the jobs are within the world that might come, if the skills were available.

Both the USA and Europe are powers that are seemingly in decline and from what I see just simply don’t have even a half decent plan around innovation to pull us out of this deteriorating mess.

Meanwhile in Asia and Latin America there is this ‘demand’ to move up the ‘food chain’, Governments are investing in education, in infrastructure, in offering modern facilities, a mobile work force and dangling powerful incentives to attract in the foreign investor.

People across Asia and Latin America are hungry to progress while we in the West digress, distracted by hanging onto what we have in increasingly desperate ways.

Are we really tackling legacy?

The current system here in the West is largely a legacy one. Politicians, business leaders continue to defend, support and protect it. For a host of reasons, a legacy system continues to be supported in our Western societies and many are well past their really productive supported lifetime, resulting in growing support in maintenance challenges, huge lay-offs when reality finally hits home and little offered to replace it.

Those within this current system still ‘extract’ from it, they need it because they either can’t see alternatives or simply can’t relate to the alternative.

We need a grander plan and innovation vision to unite behind and move beyond supporting uncompetitive positions.

We are actually ‘locked-in’, dependent on legacies and creating the very barriers to make significant changes and alter this tide of the loss of jobs, wealth creation opportunities and this ‘dream’ sitting under the general ‘innovation’ banner.

The ’emerging’ are being choked off by the structures that surround them, like weeds holding back their growth. It is little wonder they thrive but seem to when re-potted in a more conducive climate overseas.

We are all becoming increasingly unhappy and disenchanted with our politicians

What is happening we are all getting that uncomfortable feeling that perhaps we are not facing up to reality, maybe what we hang onto for far too long, is not relevant and will not get us back to the ways we had before. We get more confused.

We get increasingly angry. We are not really being told the realities, as this might unleash forces difficult to control. We do need a debate on the future, not the past, not the present but the future. “I will create X jobs or I have a X point plan” is just not good enough, perhaps President Obama just can’t tell us the future as it is not what we want to hear.

So we stay stuck in the present deluding ourselves. How about if we all jump together?

How about a burning platform?
To achieve in innovation, there is this wisdom you need a “burning platform”- a place where we are forced to jump from to save ourselves. In a recent blog written by Shideh Sedgh Bina, shew comments on the dangers of this approach in this blog.

“One wrong approach to innovation is called “burning platform,” a concept that is taken, literally, from oil platforms out in the ocean that had caught on fire. How do you survive a burning platform? You jump off it into the ocean. And you jump fast….

..That creates a sense of urgency, which can be effective. You can certainly burn up business as usual with this approach. But how do you sustain momentum once your people have jumped off the burning oil rig? You don’t.”

The article does sums up what was missing in the debate when the innovation card is played- where is sustaining?

Where Shideh’s article ends is what was missing from the debates, by both candidates for the Presidency, and that sums up where we are definitely NOT having a vision and action plan to move us forward.

Until we hear from either of the candidates, in their policies or solutions, as well as in their understanding of what future we can have by simply offering “innovation” as the bland answer does not make anything compelling. It just is rhetoric.

“People have a deep desire to be a part of something that makes a difference. Something that is meaningful. Something that is great. And leaders have to tap into that to inspire their people to make things better, to innovate, and to stop operating in business-as-usual mode, because that will create a better environment for everyone..”

Let’s stop offering up “innovation” as our magic elixir unless we have clarity on what needs to be different and going to allow for a return to a more meaningful live.

We can’t live with much more of our legacies, they are dragging us down. We will not recover much of our past infrastructure prowess, we need a far, far bolder “innovation machine” as the key to the future.

We do need a real awakening I feel not just being kept awake.

Those that can offer a future in vision and intent will achieve a real awakening and this will come from innovation, if it is well understood and well structured.

Ok, a little ‘reaction’ of mine
I reacted after from hearing innovation being used in the debate last night, simply lacking any real coherence on its value or meaning and what it can give to us for a belief in the future. I’m sorry, sometimes you have to start talking more on your  “top of mind” that keeps you awake at night.

I do claim innovation is 100% of my focus so I should expect a few restless nights thinking about where it can help and often feeling powerless that those in power simple don’t get it. They can certainly talk about it only when it is politically expedient for them to do so.

Innovation gets my vote but it has to be linked to a clear plan of its place and value in our future and we need to have leadership in this, not waffle.

By the way that is not the square crisp pancake type, but that vague way, left to us all to feel vaguely happy but left unclear.

Lets get a real all-embracing innovation plan that ‘projects’ forward so we can all identify with a more promising future….please.

The post What is top of your mind? Mine’s innovation and value creation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.