What Gareth Southgate could teach CEOs who've forgotten what the goal is

A winning storytelling strategy is about focusing on two things: what you DO want to be known for and what you DON'T need to talk about

What do you want to be known for? I mean really known for. It’s the essence of B2B storytelling for both leaders and their brands, and in his wonderful new play, Dear England, James Graham hands football manager Gareth Southgate that same existential question. Do you want to be known for failure – penalty misses, timidity, almost-greatness – or do you see a different path to success, both personal and professional, in terms of both values and trophies?

To get there, James suggests, you need to have a story. In the play - rightly receiving rave reviews at the National Theatre - Joseph Fiennes as Southgate writes the word ‘Story’ on a flipchart to inspire his team of unfulfilled talents. What is the story you want to tell, to be known for, to own?

To be, or not to be.

Storytelling then becomes the secret empowering ingredient in the England team’s subsequent resurgence, just as it is for so many brands and business leaders. A great story provides a foundation to build on and the magnet around which everyone coalesces. The trouble comes – as the play highlights – when you veer away from that structured and purposeful storytelling strategy.

It’s almost the first question I ask leaders who want to collaborate in creating narratives or thought leadership, because it guides our work together. ‘What do you want to be known for?’ provides widly different answers.

One client, the CMO of a global tech company, said: ‘Grant, make me famous.’ He now is, with a swollen ego to match. Good luck to him, it worked. Another told me he wanted the top job at another company and felt he needed some intellectual hinterland to get there. He’s now got both. The stories we told had a single ambition, a purpose. When you set a firm storytelling direction, it becomes easier to get where you want to go and harder to be distracted by the inevitable chaff.

Which is what happened to the client I just lost – but I hope I did the right thing in standing up for what I believe. This person and his too-large PR team, based in the US, wanted thought leadership about everything in the news from Juneteenth to LBGTQ+ issues, from commenting on humanitarian tragedies to Congress’s political machinations. All worthy and important topics but not in any way what the business – or this leader’s personality - is about. What began as a successful exercise in creating a clearly defined thought leadership persona ended up jumping on every bandwagon going. We abandoned the plan and lost focus. Exactly as Southgate did (at least according to James’s brilliant script).

With so many issues vying for attention, so many stories that leaders can piggy-back on to in order to burnish their own thought leadership credentials, it’s even more important to have that kind of strategic focus. At least that’s what I argued with my US leader. I lost but at least I was honest.

If businesses and their leaders want to become storytellers in whatever format, they need to stop themselves from telling every story. You end up diluting your brand. The best stories, thought leadership, narratives have a theme: ‘In 12 months’ time, this is what we want to be known for, how we want to be seen’…etc.

Stick to the story, don’t get diverted, resist being the child in a sweetshop wanting to gorge on everything. After all, if you don’t know what you want, how will you know when you get it?

Or, if you want to win, have a goal.

WATCH THIS

Apple always has a knack of making the most uplifting ads for even the most challenging subject matter. The company has picked up a prestigious Cannes Lion for its latest, The Greatest, released a few months ago. It’s an inventive mash-up of Muhammad Ali quotes, real-life issues and joyful singing, created by the London-born Australian director Kim Gehrig. You can watch it here. It’s about differently-abled individuals using accessibility features on Apple products as they go about their daily lives. Most of us don’t even know these tools exist and yet what we hold in our hands is truly transformative to people who have difficulty hearing, seeing, moving and thinking. Two minutes that will move you to tears – and fantastic storytelling.

LISTEN TO THIS

Even if you’re not a news junkie like me, you should still subscribe to the New York Times. Not necessarily for the news (which can frequently be dull) but its pioneering multi-platform offerings. The NYT’s innovative digital team is one of the best there is and I particularly love its new podcast channel, New York Times Audio. There’s so much to savour but if you want to understand journalistic storytelling a little better, listen to The Headlines which is a 10-minute show looking at how and why stories are chosen to lead the agenda; whilst Reporter Reads has journalists talk about the process of finding, making and telling stories. You’ll pick up plenty of brand storytelling tips.

READ THIS

I’m a huge fan of Gillian Tett’s columns in the FT. An anthropologist by background, she has a unique take on current affairs and this article is all about the inability of storytelling to unite as it once did because it’s so easy to personalise content, closing rather than opening our minds. As she says: ‘It’s become harder to create collective conversations or memories in society as a whole…The dark side of customisation is the erosion of a common base of knowledge, experience and dialogue within and between generations. It is tough to compete with the hyper-personalised content found on social media platforms such as TikTok. Far from uniting the nation, US television channels such as Fox News and MSNBC appear to exist in entirely parallel cognitive universes.’ Thank heavens for the BBC!