In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, innovation is essential—but it often encounters resistance. A fascinating article I recently explored, "Overcoming Resistance to Innovations: An Approach for the Use of Communication Tools within the Innovation Process," sheds light on strategies to bridge the gap between innovation and adoption.

Key Takeaways:
💡 Resistance isn’t the enemy—it’s a signal. Resistance often stems from a lack of understanding, fear of change, or perceived risks. A proactive communication strategy can transform these barriers into opportunities for alignment.

🛠️ Tailored communication tools are game-changers. Whether it's fostering early stakeholder engagement, leveraging storytelling to create emotional resonance, or providing clear, relatable benefits of the innovation, communication is at the heart of adoption.

🤝 Collaboration is critical. By involving stakeholders early in the process, organizations can co-create solutions, reducing resistance and fostering buy-in.

This research underscores an important lesson: innovation doesn’t end with creation; it flourishes through adoption. For leaders and teams championing change, investing in intentional , internal communication is as vital as the innovation itself.

Link to research article

I probably struggle with clarity more than I should admit. I like to sprinkle fancy adjectives, flowery motifs, and frilly alliteration into my communications to the point of distraction. Poetry is wonderful, but it’s not appropriate for every situation — especially in high-stakes, high-complexity environments. In fields where decisions can literally mean life or death, clarity is crucial.

But clarity is also context-specific. As a narrative strategist, when I’m working with teams to create something new or navigate something unprecedented, we are constantly moving through new contexts.

Clarity starts with identifying the stakeholders and understanding their unique perspectives in a given moment. It means observing body language and noticing how people are processing new information. Are they present in the room with me? Are they distracted? Are they actually able to hear the message I’m sharing?

For me, clarity in narrative strategy means making sure the message resonates with the people it’s meant for. It means not just communicating at people, but communicating with them. It’s listening, orienting, and shaping communication around what’s needed in the moment.

Clarity also means sharing hard, uncomfortable truths. Instead of dressing the truth in euphemisms, flattery, or other roundabout language that makes the messenger feel better while leaving the recipient confused, you have to be direct. Because clarity is respect for your audience and yourself. It’s an acknowledgment that we’re capable of handling tough realities. It’s knowing that truthfulness, in the right moment, is a kindness.

And yet, clarity is not the same thing as simplification. This is where I think people get tripped up. To be clear is not to flatten complexity until it becomes something cheap and shiny and false. It is not reducing reality into a slogan just because slogans are easier to repeat. It is not pretending uncertainty doesn’t exist because certainty sounds more convincing in a room.

Real clarity can hold complexity. It can name competing priorities. It can acknowledge risk, ambiguity, and tension without collapsing under the weight of them. In fact, that’s often the job. Especially in moments of change, people do not need a polished performance of certainty nearly as much as they need a truthful orientation. They need to understand what is happening, why it matters, what is known, what is not yet known, and what comes next.

I think that’s part of why clarity is so difficult. It asks more of us than just better word choice. It demands discernment. It demands honesty. It asks us to separate what is essential from what is ornamental, what is useful from what is self-indulgent, what truly serves the audience from what merely serves our own desire to sound intelligent, nuanced, or profound.

I say this as someone who genuinely loves language. I love words that shimmer a bit. I love writing that makes people feel something in their bodies. I love a metaphor that opens up a whole new way of seeing. But when the stakes are high, clarity has to take precedence over performance. The point is not to impress people with the elegance of your language. The point is to help them see.

And seeing is no small thing.

To help someone see clearly in a moment of change is to help them orient themselves inside uncertainty. It is to reduce unnecessary friction. It is to create the conditions for better judgment, better decisions, better collaboration. Sometimes clarity sounds inspiring. Sometimes it sounds plain. Sometimes it sounds like a firm no, or a difficult truth, or a simple sentence repeated three times because the room still hasn’t absorbed it.

This is also why clarity requires humility. You cannot be clear if you are more attached to your own expression than to your audience’s understanding. You cannot be clear if you refuse feedback from the room. You cannot be clear if you assume that because you said something, it has been understood in the way you intended.

Clarity is relational. It is tested in real time. You see it in people’s faces, in the questions they ask, in the hesitation after you finish speaking, in whether the next action becomes more obvious or more muddled. Clarity is not what we think we delivered. It is what other people are actually able to receive and use.

That means clarity often requires revision. Not because the audience is failing, but because communication is alive. People are bringing different histories, incentives, pressures, fears, and assumptions into the room. A message that lands with one group may create resistance in another. A framing that worked six months ago may be entirely wrong for the present moment. So clarity is not a fixed achievement. It is an ongoing practice of attunement.

Maybe that’s why I keep returning to it. Not because I’ve mastered it, but because I haven’t. Because I know how easy it is to hide behind language. How easy it is to mistake beauty for precision, or sophistication for usefulness. How tempting it is to say something adjacent to the truth instead of saying the truth itself.

But I also know that when clarity is present, you can feel it.

The room changes. People settle. The signal comes through. What felt tangled begins to loosen. The next step becomes visible. Not because everything is suddenly easy or resolved, but because something real has been named, and named in a way that people can actually work with.

That, to me, is part of the deeper work of narrative strategy. Not just crafting messages that sound good, but shaping language that helps people move. Language that creates coherence without denial. Language that makes room for complexity while still giving people a way forward. Language that respects the moment, the audience, and the truth.

So yes, I still love the occasional flourish. I still have a soft spot for language that dances a little. But more and more, I think clarity is its own kind of artistry. Harder, cleaner, less decorative. An art of precision. An art of attention. An art of saying what must be said in a way that can truly be heard.

And in the environments that matter most, that kind of clarity is not just good communication.

It is care.

How do great leaders leverage narrative strategy to achieve their goals?

Each C-suite role brings a unique perspective to shaping and amplifying the organizational story:

🔹 CEO: The visionary storyteller, mobilizing diverse stakeholders through town halls, press conferences, and other platforms to align everyone around a common goal.
🔹 COO: The architect of execution, creating systems, SOPs, and workflows that bring the narrative to life in day-to-day operations.
🔹 CFO: The financial steward, ensuring the narrative’s sustainability by aligning budgets, reports, and capital strategies to the organization's vision.

Narrative strategy blends storytelling with purposeful communication to drive outcomes. When leaders embrace it, their vision becomes not just aspirational but inevitable.

How do you incorporate narrative strategy in your leadership approach?

Narrative Strategy uses storytelling to deliver outcomes. But more than that, it uses storytelling to help individuals and collectives make meaning.

When I'm working with teams, we're often navigating through silos of data. This raw value doesn't necessarily mean anything, it has no context or lacks an orientation. With data, we can start to comb through the raw values and apply a lens -- a way to bring those silos into view and see the pieces as part of the whole. The processed data becomes information, adding a layer of significance to what once random values.

But information isn't always enough. Information is often ignored, not necessarily relevant to the moment at hand. So we create content, a way to contain and contextualize the information for a specific situation.

Yet, we're drowning in content. It's hard to find relevant content that understands your needs in particular. Content may help make sense of raw data and information, but if it doesn't catch your attention in the first 3 seconds, it won't make a difference.

This is where stories become essential. Storytelling is the original meaning making practice. Whether written, recited, watched or listened to, stories take that raw data, information and content and turn into an experience. It activates our senses, allowing us to imagine what's happening. It takes abstract data and gives it purpose.

But there's one more layer of meaning making we often forget.

Relationships.

Relationships are the interactions we have with one another. Our stories are exchanged with one another to create relationships, engendering us with more desire and understanding to be in each other's presence. Relationships are where we find meaning making at its highest form, able to give us grounding when everything seems lost.

I am not a biochemist.

I didn’t study it in school. I don’t have a PhD in it and I definitely don’t have a favorite molecule.*

Yet I’ve spent the last several months consuming everything I can on biochemistry. Reading academic articles, asking AI to explain the basics to me, watching lots of videos on everything from how to use a bunsen burner to newest advances in nanotech…it’s all part of the job as a narrative strategist and my current engagement.

Narrative strategy is really whatever it takes to get the job done.

And by that I mean, research is essential. Understanding the stories of the stakeholders I’m working with is the job. Learning their language, embedding myself into their world, whatever it takes to understand their desires and the obstacles they face — that’s narrative strategy, baby!

A lot of consultants in the strategy space can speak to something similar. They may not be subject matter experts on everything but they know how to do their homework.

For a narrative strategist though, we’re approaching all our work through the framing of story.

Things like: biochemistry, the biochemists I’m engaging with, the developments in the field, the biochemistry research the stakeholders are conducting, the questions they are chasing and the answers that are emerging….

All of it through the lens of storytelling.

And here’s the cool part — because I’m listening, synthesizing, pulling threads together, weaving narratives of meaning and answers to “so what”, I become a bridge between stakeholders — a translator between people, teams, industries. For me, narrative strategy helps connect the dots of seemingly disparate data, seeing opportunities for consensus, unity, and shared meaning. And when those a-ha moments occur, it feels like magic.

You know what, it is magic.

And I’ll do whatever it takes to make that magic happen.

*on second thought, I think caffeine is my favorite molecule.

Also, this song won’t get out of my head and I had to make it the title of this article:

One of the hardest tasks when navigating change is how to communicate it effectively to your people. Too often, we focus solely on the message we want to deliver, without pausing to understand the story our team is living in.

What matters to them? What challenges are they navigating? How will these changes impact their world?

Effective communication starts with empathy. Before sharing new information, take the time to synthesize the current state of your people. Ask yourself:

Are we all on the same page?
Are we even in the same story?

Only when we deeply understand the present can we introduce change in a way that feels additive—not disruptive. We normalize the change by acknowledging the past and present as valid and valuable, and then expand the narrative to include the possibilities of a brighter future.

Finally, communication doesn’t end with the introduction of change. Popularize the new way of being by being consistent in messaging and action.

Change is inevitable, but the way we communicate it can make all the difference.

We are drowning in “awareness”. The good, the bad, the ugly. Our screens are polluted with all the things we must be aware of. All the time. Non stop.
And awareness is…important. But it’s not potent. Not anymore. It doesn’t give us the results we want. The outcomes we seek. The changes we need.

Instead, it just becomes a cacophony of overwhelm and distraction. The constant parade of awareness holds us tight in its grip, robbing us of our ability to do what needs to be done.

So when people share stories with intention of increasing awareness, I have to stop and wonder — what comes after the awareness? Now that we “know”, are aware of so-and -so thing/situation/problem….what do we do next?

Perhaps I’m just an impatient individual. Maybe that’s why I sought to use storytelling for something that did more than just increase awareness. I have plenty of information buzzing inside my brain. We all do. And it’s not enough to just be aware. Not anymore.

We need stories that go beyond awareness.

We need stories that change our behaviors.

And that’s what I seek within my work as a narrative strategist.

And to be fair, awareness is still necessary. We need to know what’s happening, but we can’t be left empty handed, stranded in a vortex of information with no idea what to do next.

The call to actions we see in marketing have their place. But we can’t cut and paste marketing tactics into storytelling and hope for the best. It’s too transactional, and we’ve become numb its intent.

We need better. We need to use story as a strategy for behavior change. We need to swim the deep, murky waters of our psyches, environments and all the minutia of being a human being and see what we can come up with that actually turns our intents into actions. What does it really take to go beyond awareness and information shared to become new actions and new ways of being?

For me, narrative strategy exists to craft the world we want. It’s the convergence of collective motivation, belief and behavior change. It’s the use of storytelling to achieve new aims. It requires critical thinking about the messages we share and how they are received. It requires an investigation into how stories are experienced and embodied-a deep commitment to explore how we make meaning and decide what matters.

We must go beyond raising awareness. We are aware. We are aware of the problems, challenges, dread, despair... What we do now, with that awareness, is where the real potential lies. It’s where we create our futures.

What are you doing to move beyond raising awareness in your storytelling? What’s working for you? What’s not?

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Belief, like fire, consumes whatever fuel it finds, transforming the familiar into the unrecognizable. Leaders in innovation strive for their belief in their visions to spread, transforming our reality into something new—hopefully, something better.

But how does a singular spark of belief ignite a new reality? How does one ember turn into a wildfire?

A fire needs oxygen to burn, and belief needs people to sustain its existence. If a fire burns brighter with more oxygen, then belief thrives with more people to uphold and spread it. Innovation demands this kind of engagement—it requires fresh ideas and passionate individuals who don’t just maintain the flame but fan it into a blaze.

Leaders don’t simply start fires; they build communities that feed the flames, allowing the fire of innovation to reshape landscapes and redefine what’s possible. This community becomes the oxygen—nourishing and expanding the belief, turning a spark into a sweeping inferno of change.

Together, belief and innovation have the power to destroy and create, challenging the old and building anew on the ashes of the immutable.

* * *
Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. As we create new products, policies and programs, I encourage you to prepare and be ready for when destruction and disaster occurs. Visit www.ready.gov to start.

First things first - here is my obligatory plug: you can download my Narrative Strategy: Storytelling for Outcomes white paper for free(!!!) AND I have a recorded Intro To Narrative Strategy webinar ($48) that walks through my framework with key models and tools for you to start playing with.

— ok back to our regular schedule programming

It’s finally happened. “Narrative Strategy” and ‘Narrative Strategist” has entered the mainstream vernacular. We’re seeing people talk about, write about, post jobs about it — all types of activities to signal that yes, narrative strategy is a thing! A real thing! Not one of those fluffy made up marketing terms that make us feel a little less ordinary. I mean, it can also be that…

And I’ve been meeting many people interested in learning about my practice, how I came to this strange and beautiful work and what advice I have for them - so I thought I’d share some of the recurring ideas and bodies of work I use. This post is less “Ari’s origin story” and more, “what informs my approach”.

So let’s begin.

Behavior Change

Behavior change is a funny thing. We know it’s important, a huge lever for achieving new results, but it’s not a simple and straightforward science. There’s a lot of theories on what makes behavior change stick, everything from incentives and nudging to deep psychological work like hypnotherapy or EMDR . I found two main theory of behavior change that resonate with my work: Self-Determination Theory and the role of self-belief.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT), developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan beginning in the 1970s, identifies three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these needs are supported, people tend to show stronger intrinsic motivation and more self-directed forms of motivation, making it easier to sustain meaningful behavior change.

I apply SDT in narrative strategy, using stories that fulfill an individual or group’s psychological needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness. In fact, story is an exceptional mechanism for SDT to be experienced. When we tell stories of competent protagonists, who find their able to act on their own accord (autonomy) and feel they are a part of something greater (relatedness), we invite listeners to imagine themselves in these stories, and start living these stories as their own. (More on SDT and storytelling here and here. )

For narrative strategy to be effective, it must translate an idea into reality - a tangible outcome. This requires motivation and behavior change, something which we struggle to apply repeatable processes to. Blending SDT with storytelling is one method to translate thoughts into things and craft the futures we want.

Additionally, I’ve taken my own experience with EMDR therapy and the role of self-belief and applied to it narrative strategy. EMDR uses eye movement to reprocess old memories that created negative self beliefs. Experiences like being a child who was taunted by classmates can result in negative beliefs about one self, contributing to behaviors that get in the way of what an individual wants or doesn’t want. It’s been the most effective treatment I’ve received for my own mental health and has given me greater appreciation for the role of belief.

Narrative strategy shares some overlaps with belief systems and the psychological complexities our species possess. Whenever I’m engaged with a client, I’m paying special attention to what beliefs are shared and how they show up in the stories in their environment.

Yet these approaches don’t always guarantee the desired outcomes. Behavior change is not an computer program you can simply press a button and run. Like most human activities, it’s messy and interdependent on many factors. Yet SDT and self-belief in the context of narrative strategy has proven useful to me, and perhaps it can help you.

Participatory Design

I’ve had an interesting experience with design work. I honestly thought all design was relegated to the world of fashion, art and home interiors. But thanks to some influential books and good design mentors, I know that design is more than just pretty things. It’s a method for creating with intention, an approach to problem solving that is thoughtful and thorough.

This is especially true when we use narrative strategy. Strategy and Design are siblings, each informing the other in order for us to achieve what we desire. So when I work with my clients on narrative strategy, I’m not just talking in “what ifs” and hypothetical scenarios that typically live in strategy decks and documents — no we are designing for results. Because participatory design is where the strategy takes form, an ebb and flow of insights from the stakeholders as we stretch the strategy approach into new forms of reality. I use participatory design when we craft our narratives . This looks like a series of participatory design sessions, where our stakeholders each get to write, edit, question and discuss the narrative we’re building. The narrative itself is an artifact, and we iterate upon it until we’ve created a North Star Narrative that resonates with all stakeholders. What I deliver to my client is a Narrative Bible, one that’s been designed by participants.

I’ve found that participatory design enables stakeholder buy in and ownership, reducing the friction of traditional strategy execution for more effective results.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking gets lots of attention. And I’m glad it does. It’s super useful. But I do think we can get lost in the maps of systems and abstract ideas that come with an eagerness to solve complexity. This is where storytelling comes in handy.

For me, any story is about “what you want and what gets in your way”. Stories are driven by desire. And when we start looking at systems as many parts driven by desire, I think we gain steadier footing. What does each part or participant in the system want? What’s in their way?

This makes systems thinking more relatable. It’s less of a stationary, mechanical artifact and more of a living context, one that we can better relate to. When we orient systems thinking around stories and desires, I find that we are bolder in our efforts to create new narratives and better functioning systems that go with it.

To be a Narrative Strategist

I can’t prescribe you one dogma or singular “right” approach to narrative strategy. But I hope that by sharing what informs my work, you find some direction in building your own narrative strategy practice.

For me, I’m committed to learning and embracing what emerges in my work. I find guidance and inspiration from many fields and practitioners, and I encourage you to follow your curiosity. Whatever you desire, may it lead you to strange and wonderful things.

Share Narrative Strategy with Ari Mostov

Innovation is a team sport, and every player has a vital role.

From the Innovator's desire to the Champion's enthusiasm, the Sponsor's commitment, and the Stakeholders' collective buy-in—each step is crucial.

Let’s break down each role:

Innovator: Innovators are the creators of new ideas. Their belief in these ideas is foundational, driving their desire to see them realized.

Champion: Champions are the advocates. They promote the innovator's ideas within the organization, igniting excitement and garnering support from team members and stakeholders.

Sponsor: Sponsors are the enablers. Typically high-level executives, they provide the necessary resources and make strategic decisions to support the project’s objectives.

Stakeholders: These are the validators. A diverse group that includes team members, other departments, and external partners, whose collective buy-in is essential for moving any project forward.

At the core of all these roles is Belief. It’s more than a part of the process; it’s the backbone that supports and propels each role toward achieving groundbreaking results.

Innovation requires more than just great ideas, processes, and resources. It demands engagement, alignment, and mobilization of people to achieve tangible outcomes. Belief is the driving force that powers decision-making and consensus, turning innovative visions into reality.

I’ve been really lucky to be working with a team of super smart people for the last 6 months. The type of people who worked on solutions for our planet and even in space. A collection of engineers and scientists who cultivated their skills in the oasis of research institutes, (mostly) inoculated against market forces and other typical commercial constraints. And don’t get me wrong, there’s been challenges too, but I find that my work in narrative strategy is taking on a greater significance as we navigate the audacious terrain of a research-driven start up.

In my role as narrative strategist to this young company, I’m helping them reverse engineer reality. Not our current reality, but our future one. The one we want. The new reality that we believe is possible.

Here’s how I’m going about it.

Identify the Future We’re Building

This may be considered the same as “vision” but I find “vision” lacks the strength of storytelling, and is usually just a collection of fluffy adjectives in front of trendy nouns. Instead, when we identify the future we’re building, we’re looking at signals of what’s happening right now as well as stories from our past and present that give us some indication of what’s possible. For instance, I’ll track the language and stories of relevant cultures and industries, seeing what terms are emerging, and what’s top of mind. This includes mainstream headlines and the comment sections of articles, as well as digging deeper into the stories that are being shared at the fringes of cultures. What themes are relevant right now? What tone is being dialed in? How are people framing their experiences? I’ll start to thread these stories together, seeing it as the momentum that we can either harness or repel to build the future we want. From a deliverable perspective this can look like a Narrative Bible, pitch decks, strategy sessions, team meetings, sales calls — any interaction that can capture buy in from stakeholders and evangelizes the future possible as irresistible.

Believe in the Future Possible, but Stay Flexible with How You Get There

Belief is probably the trickiest part of narrative strategy. It’s not a reliable science and more of an art form that I’m not sure can really be perfected. Belief is the mechanism that makes our efforts to build and create something that doesn’t exist actually transform into results. Maybe not the results we wanted, but something tangible. I first must believe in the image-feeling-sensation-story of the future that I can only see in my imagination. I believe in it so much that it propels me to take action, to start and continue even when I struggle. When obstacles emerge, my belief embraces me with a steadfast certainty, engendering the type of perseverance we only here about in great myths. Belief is a force. Don’t underestimate it.

Yet belief demands flexibility. The future possible, our new reality that we are building, has many variables and unknowns. There are too many details for us to know and not know, too many mysteries that remain. Yet that doesn’t stop our belief in the future we hold tenderly in our imagination. It just requires an openness to ambiguity and an unusual style of patience that I can only identify as intuition.

As new data becomes available, new information arises, and new stories emerge, we make decisions. Decisions that may seem foolish or impossible. Decisions dependent on forces outside our control. Decisions that must be made if we want our new future to arrive.

This could be decisions in response to new policies that impact our business model. Global catastrophes that force us to pivot. A team member leaving. A scientific discovery that changes everything. The details of possibility emerge, and we must decide how to proceed with the new information.

Reverse Engineering Works for Things, Why Not Our Reality?

I started to embrace this idea of reverse engineering while working with this start up. They approached their work through the lens of reverse engineering. They would start with a non-functional thing, something that would give form to the thoughts swirling in their minds, and then work backwards to figure out what needed to be done. From electric configurations, bench top science, to the experiments with new materials, they used the non-functional thing as their guide.

So why not do the same with our future reality?

This requires the same steadfast commitment to transforming intention into action, a flexibility to respond to new information, and a belief that the new reality we’re building is possible.

Practically, it looks like discussions with our team, integrating new data into our approach, saying ‘yes’ and then changing our mind when new information appears. Patience for the threads of our future to reveal themselves, and believing that if we just hold tight, we can create the reality we want.

Narrative strategy is not an unchanging dogma. It’s an approach that uses stories to deliver outcomes. Outcomes that include new realities. It undulates with what exists around us, what’s happening and coming, what’s being experienced and being avoided. For me, narrative strategy is the approach I take to make thoughts into things, desires into tangibilities and craft our future. I encourage anyone eager to experiment with narrative strategy to experiment with reverse engineering. What can we do when we know our desired future is already real?

At the seed stage, investors don’t just fund traction — they invest in belief.

Your narrative needs to do four things:

Ground the Problem: What pain are you solving, and why does it matter?
Highlight the Solution: Show your product or service as the right answer.
Share the Founder Story: Why are you the person to fix this?
Paint the Vision: Investors need to see the future — and believe in it.

Seed-stage startups don’t need perfect numbers. They need a perfect story.

The problem is real.
The solution is clear.
The founder cares deeply.
The vision? Unstoppable.

Complexity dominates our world. Many ideas, needs, entities and relationships are interacting with each other in ways we can barely wrap our heads around. We can't force complexity to fit into our simple models. That's no longer serving us.
Instead, we need to embrace it. We need to make complexity compelling.

Through my work as a narrative strategist, I work with stakeholders in complex contexts. I use storytelling to orient ourselves, identifying the desires, challenges and languages of these complex systems. When we start to ground the complexity in narrative, we no longer lose the plot. In fact, we become more engaged in the possibilities, waiting to see what's next.

Narrative strategy makes complexity compelling, giving us an adaptive tool kit that responds to the needs of the moment. Understanding what we desire, what challenges we face, and the language we use allows us to hold the multiplicity and dimensions of complexity. It reminds me of the work of Wolf Willow Institute on complexity consciousness . We are too often submerged in stories of fragmentation, othering and antagonism. By making complexity compelling, we can recognize there's another way of being and engaging with one another.

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser

In the realm of both atoms and stories, the core elements define the structure and outcomes.

Consider the nucleus of an atom as the main desire in a story. This is not just any part—it's the central, driving force of our story, the primary goal or aspiration that propels all action. It's dense, significant, and fundamentally shapes the story's trajectory.

Protons, with their positive charge, symbolize our protagonists—individuals or ideas charged with the energy to pursue this main desire. They are the active forces working tirelessly to achieve the central goals, facing obstacles and overcoming challenges.

Neutrons, neutral yet vital, can be seen as the context or environment that supports the narrative. They add stability and depth, influencing how the protagonists move and interact, shaping the story without directly driving it.

Electrons, circling the nucleus with their dynamic energy, represent the obstacles and antagonistic forces. Their interactions with the protons create the drama and tension in our story, providing the resistance that makes the pursuit of the main desire compelling and meaningful.

Our strategies, projects, and initiatives are more than just plans and data—they are narratives with desires, characters, and conflicts that engage and inspire.

Atoms are the building blocks of our universe. But so are stories. See what happens when you start thinking of our structures in terms of stories. What outcomes will you achieve?

You’ve done it. You’ve rescued your brain from the sinking quicksand of the status quo, moving beyond the current context of what’s around you and seizing something better: a dream, a vision — a future you want.

Your imagination is not just a passing thought. It’s grounded in possibility. It feels real — even for a moment.

But how in the world do you take that image in your head and make it tangible? How does it become your new normal?

I think about this a lot in narrative strategy. It’s no easy task to shift our minds (and bodies) into a different experience and then create a new normal — but as humans we are uniquely capable of this. We can create new narratives. We can transform thoughts into things.

But how?

How do we transform those images in our head into the future we want?

This is the question I’ve been sitting with for over 8 years. Here’s what I’ve learned so far as a narrative strategist.

Identify the current narrative (Story-listening)

David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech featuring a story about fish. The fish asks a fellow fish, “how’s the water?” to which the second fish responds, “what the hell is water?”

Narratives are like the water the fish are swimming in. It’s hard to identify the water we’re in, and even harder to recognize it as something that we can talk about — and even change.

One of the first things I do to identify a narrative is look at the language being used and stories being told within a community. What are people saying? How do they talk about their problems? Are they sharing stories of success? Defeat? Fear? Love? Is the water they’re swimming in murky? Poisoned? Pristine? Do they know there are other bodies of water to swim in?

I am listening for the current stories being shared. Each story is a piece of the larger narrative we’re currently swimming in. By identifying those pieces, I can see the narrative and start finding opportunities for change.

Externalize your imagination (Storytelling)

It’s not enough to have an idea locked in your head. You need to tell it to others. This can be done in a variety of mediums, but I prefer the good old-fashioned written word as a starting point.

Yet there’s something we often forget about capturing our imagination into an artifact — it needs to activate our senses. When we just hear or see something, it’s not always enough for us to believe in it. Experience requires full sensory engagement, with the added support of meaning-making. This is where storytelling becomes crucial.

Sometimes this looks like a beautiful piece of poetry, or an immersive art exhibit. But we have to be considerate of our bodies and the state and story they’re in. If your body is in fight-or-flight mode, no amount of fancy words and pretty pictures will make a better narrative available to you. Feeling safe is crucial for imagination to seed itself in reality, allowing the new stories we tell to be readily embraced.

Coordinate and take action (Story-stewardship)

With a new narrative available to us, we can coordinate ourselves and others to start acting and behaving differently. Our motivations are realigned around a new future made possible, making the friction of change a little more bearable.

Rather than resisting change or resigning to the status quo, we have the story artifacts of what we’ve imagined guiding us into the new narrative. This is where strategy becomes implementation, or a goal becomes milestones and tasks.

Once we’ve identified the old narrative and crafted a new one, we start taking the actions toward our desired future. The images in our head have been translated into artifacts, and those artifacts become tasks. Each task is ushered in with the momentum of something we fully embrace.

And when we get lost or find ourselves stuck again in the old narrative, we simply ground ourselves in the new narrative, feel our desired future in our senses, sharing the stories of the world we want, and finding the motivation we need to make our vision a reality.

Transforming imagination into reality can sound like magic. But nearly everything we live inside was once an idea: a tool, a policy, a norm, an institution, a right.

Imagination becomes reality when we:

• name the old narrative (story-listening),

• craft a new one (storytelling), and

• steward it into the world through coordinated action (story-stewardship).

If you want to begin right now, start here:

Write the current narrative in one sentence — then write the new one you want to live inside.

The rest is stewardship.

Want to try narrative strategy on your own? Start with my intro to narrative strategy webinar

The term "story" and "narrative" are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts.

A story, like history, has a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's a series of events that have already occurred, and while there can be stories happening in the present, the essence of "storytelling" lies in sharing events with identifiable timelines.

Narrative, on the other hand, lacks a predetermined ending. It encompasses both the present and the future, with the future yet to unfold. Narratives are continually evolving and perpetuated, shaped by the stories we tell.

A narrative is a system of stories. Imagine a forest composed of many trees. Each story is a tree, a unit, playing its part to build the larger narrative that is the forest. When you're within the forest of narrative, you're surrounded by countless stories, each playing a unique role. Stepping outside, you gain perspective on the overarching narrative that encompasses them all, like viewing the entire forest from a distance.

Distinguishing between stories and narratives can help us use storytelling to achieve our objectives. Are you planting a tree or are you cultivating a forest?

In the realm of futures thinking, narrative is essential. Stories don’t just reflect reality—they actively shape it. The stories we choose to emphasize can expand or limit the possibilities we imagine, influence, and ultimately pursue.

This compelling illustration, inspired by the “Cone of Futures,” shows how the stories we tell today influence the spectrum of futures we encounter tomorrow. It maps how our present narratives unfold into multiple layers of potential futures—possible, plausible, probable, and preferable.

As a narrative strategist, I see stories as essential tools for navigating the unknown, especially when established norms are being questioned and systems are in flux. By framing emerging possibilities, storytelling provides a way to embrace uncertainty and orient ourselves toward what we want to see in the world. A well-crafted narrative strategy gives us language, direction, and inspiration in times of profound change, making the future not only imaginable but actionable.

What stories are you telling?

How are you leveraging storytelling to navigate the future?

Diagram adapted from Whitespace Ltd

I’ll be the first to admit it — navigating different psycho-social terms can get confusing. Words like “beliefs” and “attitudes” feel intangible, unlike the 3-D objects we interact with daily. And I’ve definitely mixed up “intentions” and “actions” more times than I care to admit...

We hear phrases like, “well, that’s what you believe,” or “those weren’t my intentions,” all the time. But how do these concepts relate to one another?

For me, I like to think of it as a journey:

Beliefs are like the map for your trip. They’re the facts or ideas you trust to be true, helping you understand the world around you and where you want to go.

Attitudes are your feelings about the destination. If you’re excited or dreading the trip, that emotional response shapes your overall experience.

Intentions are like planning your itinerary. You choose the routes, make decisions, and get ready to take action—but you haven’t started the journey yet.

Actions are the journey itself. This is where you actually set out and take the steps toward your goal, whether you stick to your plan or hit some detours along the way.

In this metaphor:

Beliefs guide you like a map.
Attitudes shape how you feel about the trip.
Intentions are your plans and decisions.
Actions are the actual steps you take to move forward.
Even if you have a clear map (beliefs), excitement about the destination (attitude), and a solid itinerary (intentions), nothing happens without setting out on the journey (actions).

This is where behavioral science gets fascinating—it explores the gap between what we think, feel, plan, and actually do. Often, there’s a disconnect between what we intend and how we behave. We’re not always rational, but if we approach life like a journey, we might just find a more practical path toward the things that matter most to us.

This weekend I completed an all day women’s self-defense course.

It was a day of dualities.

Sweat and shivers. Focus and disorientation. Comforts and triggers.

My mind and body moved between extremes, trying to find equilibrium. And in the midst of kicks to our instructor’s (well-protected) groin and swapping survival stories with the other women, something dislodged inside me. An effect more potent that sore muscles.

A new personal narrative emerged. One that I didn’t know I was missing.

Out with the Old, In with the New

It’s been 13 years since I was raped on campus. I’ve been a public survivor-activist, spending the early part of my career in social impact entertainment to share the stories of survivors of sexual violence, including my own. From filing a Title IX complaint to performing at the 2016 Oscars, it’s been…eventful.

I tried pursuing justice through the legal system, but that didn’t give me the healing I needed. Instead I found the right therapist, the right therapy modality and some incredible people who helped me get to the point where I was no longer just surviving…I was living.

I thought I had just about integrated/resolved/healed all my issues related to the rape. The trauma and pain had been composted into meaning and purpose. I had my personal narrative and I was doing my part to create a world free of violence.

That was until this new shift arrived, in the middle of jabbing and kicking my self-defense instructor.

Because, to be perfectly honest, I was never really interested in self-defense classes. A lot of people recommended it to me after I was raped. But I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t have any desire or interest. But once I was gifted a class, I had no good excuse to keep avoiding it.

While kicking my instructor, screaming at him as he pushed his full body weight on me during a training exercise, I felt something flash bright.

A hot and precious joy. The heft of my muscles moving with pride. A desire to win. A love for myself that I didn’t realize I had lost.

This revelatory sensation caused my internal narrative to shift completely. My sense of self expanded, revealing the parts of my self-esteem I lost to trauma, and helping me sense a new future. Helping me craft a new personal narrative.

I’m still processing the thoughts and feelings. The victim blaming and codependency negative self talk is still there but it’s not as loud. I recognize them for what they are: noise. New thoughts take their place. Perhaps new identities and new beliefs too.

I’m finding myself move from traumatized rape survivor to self-actualizing human.

From blaming myself for the attack to feeling competent and powerful.

From holding a deep belief that I am worthless, to embracing a more powerful belief that I am worthy.

A new personal narrative is emerging. And I’m grateful it is here.

At the tip of the iceberg, what breaks through the surface is messaging—the dominant beliefs that surround us daily. Think of phrases like “fat is ugly, thin is beautiful,” “women are bossy,” or “boys don’t wear skirts.” These ideas are reinforced by media and ads, establishing the “status quo.”

Beneath that, we have content. If messaging is like commercials, content is the news show between them. It’s information framed in a way that makes it easy to digest, reinforcing the repeatable messages we see in our lives.

Deeper still are the stories. These are real events, rich in perspective and nuance, but often filtered to fit certain expectations, making them less dimensional.

At the very base lies narrative—the underlying structure that shapes everything else. It’s so ingrained, we don’t often question it. Take for instance the narrative “humans are hierarchical”—a belief we rarely challenge because it feels universally true.

When we discuss narrative, we’re seeking to address the core beliefs that shape the stories, content, and messaging we encounter every day.

What’s a message you’re tired of hearing? Can you trace it to a narrative and core belief?