The Guide on How to Write a Strategy (Part 3) - The Narrative & The Bridge

TLDR: The narrative and the bridge make the core strategy relatable and applicable, but they also pose a risk of interfering with the operational space negatively if used excessively.

This is the last part of the series on How to Write a Strategy. If you haven’t already I suggest you read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

You’ve nailed the core strategy - now it’s time to drive it home. There are only two more steps to go: the Narrative which provides background and rationale to the choices made in the core strategy and the bridge which puts them into perspective with the business realities at hand.

We are here.

The Narrative

The narrative is where the rationale behind the core strategy gets explained:

-               why is this the right market (though this usually only requires an explanation if the market decision is complicated or if you are changing it),

-               why is this the core revenue driver we must focus on and

-               why is this the right competitive focus (and why it is more important than other things that would also improve the product or the customer experience).

It is worth doing this with a lot of attention because it adds value to the core strategy. Firstly, of course, understanding the why always improves application. But more than only that, understanding the background, and having a narrative, makes the core strategy much more relatable and memorable and thus helps it to adhere to the organization. And last but not least, the why gives the core strategy purpose and purpose is a source of motivation.

I tend to be conservative with the latter though. Purpose - working to achieve something good and meaningful for society - is a wonderful thing, but most work is a mixed bag in this regard. Not a lot of companies do things that have a meaningful positive impact on society. But more importantly: even companies that do something valuable (such as helping everybody with a roof to install a photovoltaic system on it) are out for profit and if push comes to shove would not trade profit for more impact. What I want to say here is: if there is good in your work, it’s worth mentioning, but don’t overinflate it.

By nature, the narrative – as opposed to the bridge – remains on the same abstract plane as the core strategy: it is a fundamental and conceptual view on how your market functions. It does not deal with how you go about addressing it operationally. It explains the world as you see it but not how to react to it. The main goal is still achieving focus: the narrative wants to strengthen the core strategy with reason and not weaken it by making it wider or more opaque.

Your narrative should not be longer than ½ a page. This is not a hard threshold, your strategy document will not be wrong if it is longer than that. But if it is much longer than that you might want to critically review it and probably make it less granular.  

Lets have a look at what the narrative could look like in our example case of a bicycle manufacturer.

Core strategy: We will build the best bicycles for daily commuting

Narrative: High-end bicycles get more complicated, more expensive, and less serviceable every year. What used to be beautifully simple, functional and long-lasting machines are now high-tech consumables that nobody can service anymore and some of whose regular replacement parts cost as much as an entry-level bicycle. But as this unhealthy trend trickles down to mid-range and lower-range bicycles there is a growing disconnect with customers who want sustainability and simplicity back in their lives. This is something that we believe in and that we want to provide to our customers. And we believe that the best market for this is the market for commuting bicycles because it is not dominated by big brands. We think not only due to oversight but also due to an inherent weakness of big brands in this market: they attract bicycle thieves. Accordingly will be able to compete not on marketing budgets, but on product - and we will build the best bicycle for this market! Why the best and not the most affordable? We will never be able to compete on price with the giant bicycle manufacturers. Also, it does not suit our goal to provide sustainability and simplicity. We will therefore compete on value, the value of a bicycle that rides as well after 2 years as on its first day - and that is a pleasure to ride regardless of season or terrain.

And to do this we will always be thinking of 6 values: easy rolling / comfortable to ride / noise free / good on and off a train / low maintenance / good in wet and dark. We will strive to be good at all of them because the sum of all experiences cannot be greater than the quality of their parts, but we know that this will require some compromise. Light is good to ride, particularly on the hills and for train rides but harder to get noise-free and harder to keep maintenance-free. Comfortable to ride is a difficult fit with a fast ride. In order to find the perfect mix - or mixes - we will always listen attentively to what our customers tell us.

Now, what do you make of the second paragraph? It more narrowly defines the USP “best bicycle”. Shouldn’t it then be part of the core strategy? But it also gets into more operational aspects of how the strategy should be applied - so maybe it belongs in the bridge?

It depends on where you are. If you have already gathered market feedback and are fairly confident that this is indeed the right way of addressing customer needs for the foreseeable future I think this belongs in the strategy document. Whether it is part of the core strategy or the narrative is not of great importance. These are not chapters. They don’t require a hard cut in the document. I make the distinction of core strategy - narrative - bridge to encourage structured thinking and writing. But these rules should not be in the way of a good flow of the strategy document. What matters is that this paragraph does not add to, weaken or obscure the core strategy but helps to understand it better and describes it more narrowly. Place it where it serves readability.

But if, on the other hand, you have not yet gathered any market feedback and whether or not you will stick to the concept of “6 values” is dependent on the feedback of your first customers and very well subject to change in the near term, then I believe it should be moved at least to the bridge (because of its higher update-frequency) or maybe even be removed from the strategy document and be part of a tactical or planning artefact.

The Bridge

Finally, the last element of a strategy document: the bridge, aptly named so because it bridges the abstract thinking of the core strategy and the narrative with the operational reality and the planning artefacts. Accordingly, this is where the perspective and nature of the strategy document shift a bit from digital/abstract to analogue/concrete.

As both the operational realities and the planning frequently change/are being updated, it makes sense for the bridge to also have a limited time-scope. Half a year seems like a good compromise between continuity and actuality and has worked well in my experience. Practically I think updating the bridge should precede planning updates (every second one if they happen quarterly) because the bridge is the perfect basis for aligned planning.

Think of the bridge as a high-level manual for the application of the strategy over the next 6 months.

The bridge goes about this mostly by concretizing or limiting the scope of the strategy, e.g. by

• - prioritizing or excluding particular aspects of the competitive focus or by concentrating on a particular subset of the target group/market (e.g. “we will only target return customers”, “we will concentrate most our efforts on feature X”),

• - or by defining particular current internal or external conditions of success or setting out that the strategy must be applied in a certain way due to internal or external conditions (e.g. “we will improve our product in this area using only parts from European suppliers as we see a threat to the international supply chain that might materialize later this quarter”)

In rare instances, the bridge can also stipulate a rebalancing in the allocation of resources - either from strategy work to operational work or vice versa or within operational workstreams. This crosses the line between strategy and execution and it interferes with the autonomy and responsibilities of people in the organization. To repeat from the previous parts of this series: strategy only sets out what the most important focus of the company is. It does not try to govern day-to-day work nor does it normally govern how resources are split between operational work and work on the focus set by the strategy. For this there needs to be an understanding (in the form of a working principle of necessity) that resources are used for operational work to the extent that this is necessary not to lose against the competition (e.g. because you undercut service levels for items that your customers consider hygiene factors) while all remaining energy is focussed on what is most impactful for winning over the customers as is set out by the strategy. And the application of this principle, the day-by-day decision of what it exactly means to do what “is necessary not to lose” is a management responsibility and not a strategic prerogative.

Interfering with this order has the potential to disturb work and negatively affect motivation. That does not mean that you cannot do it. But it means that you must be aware of the potential consequences and use the directive power of the strategy document sparingly in this way. That said, if you believe it is necessary to address the whole organisation and that a shifting of gears cannot be efficiently achieved any other way, you can use the bridge to

• - set out that less energy will be on the strategy in order to focus on improving (specific) operational activities (e.g. “before we can start improving on X we must ensure that we have a high and consistent level of quality in doing Y”)

• - explain that it is acceptable to go below the level of the current understanding of what is operationally necessary in order to focus more energy on the strategy (“We accept that service levels for Y go down because we believe it is more important to bring feature X to the market as soon as possible”)

• - define that work on two or more specific operational items is rebalanced/reprioritised.

It can make sense to make the exceptional nature of such directives clear by adding wording along the lines of: “Here’s something that we normally don’t set out in the strategy, but we have a particular situation at hand that requires an extraordinary shift of focus for the whole company…”

In any case, writing the bridge is a balancing act. You want to provide tangibility to the core strategy without making it ambiguous. You want to take into account that life is analogue without losing focus. And you want to guide people in the application of the strategy without telling them how to do it. Let these be your guiding principles:

• - Do not explain more than is absolutely necessary. In particular, restrict yourself to contributions to the customer experience. Strategy is about what to do in order to win the customer. It’s not about how your organisation works or feels while doing it. Because the customer does not care. Culture and organisational artefacts and changes are incredibly important to the success of your company but on a different scale. They can’t be properly balanced here and they don’t belong here.

• - Do not set out more than is absolutely necessary. In particular, don’t tell your company how to prioritise its operations (this is a job for your management – as explained above). Try not to take away from the operational decision space.

• - The bridge is not a plan! It’s an instrument of guidance. It’s fine to set a goal in order to illustrate ambition or speed requirements. But please refrain from including KPIs.

The bridge should not be longer than 1 page.

The distinctive nature of the bridge, its proximity to planning and the fact that it requires regular updates begs the question of whether it really is in the right place in the strategy document. Wouldn’t it be better to make it a document of its own or maybe even part of your planning package? I think it belongs in the strategy document. It addresses the company as a whole and it is closer to the core strategy than to planning. And the way that the core strategy, the narrative and the bridge work together is that they relate and contribute to each other. And even if the core strategy changes less frequently than the bridge it makes a lot of sense to read it once every half year and refresh one’s memory.

This concludes the series on how to write a strategy. If you take anything away from it, let it be this:

The value of the strategy is to tell your organization what matters the most. This focus always competes with the many demands that business and people make on the organization. Where resources are deployed is not for the strategy to decide. It’s an operational management decision. The only way for the strategy to influence these decisions is to be very clear on what the focus is (core strategy), explain well why it is the right focus (narrative) and provide clarity as to how it should be applied in the current circumstances (bridge).

I hope you have enjoyed the ride and that I was able to give you some inspiration for crafting your strategy.