On Brand with Nick Westergaard Leading Through Strategic Narrative with Guillaume Wiatr
Guillaume Wiatr is the author of Strategic Narrative and the Principal/Founder of MetaHelm, a strategy consulting firm specializing in helping business leaders unlock profit and energize their team with a shared narrative grounded in their organization's purpose. His work teaches leaders how to build a strategic narrative. We discussed all of this and more this week on the On Brand podcast.
About Guillaume Wiatr
Guillaume Wiatr is the author of Strategic Narrative: A Simple Method That Business Leaders Can Use to Make Everyone Understand Their Business, Get Behind it and Believe In It. His company, MetaHelm, guides CEOs, founders, and business owners to align teams and accelerate innovation adoption.
A former big-firm strategy consultant, Guillaume has founded four ventures. He is sought after by senior executives of companies like Alaska Airlines, the Gates Foundation, Generations For Peace, AIG, L'Oréal, Spencer Stuart, GAP, Google, Microsoft, and the US and French governments. Guillaume teaches and mentors entrepreneurs at startup incubators, EMLyon international business school, and the University of Washington Master of Science in Entrepreneurship, ranked #3 in the US.
Episode Highlights
Storytelling vs. Strategic Narrative. We can’t resist definitions here on the On Brand podcast. As Guillaume was quick to note, businesses have many different stories. “Narratives are systems of stories that you intentionally design to bring customers on your journey.”
“Strategic narrative is an act of leadership.” Of course, this work should involve the usual suspects from branding and marketing but for your narrative to shape your organization’s culture the CEO has to be “holding the pencil” as you facilitate these important conversations. Guillaume reinforced this with a story from his work with Horizon Airlines.
“Leadership is not a title,” notes Guillaume. “It’s who shows up to participate in a conversation that has an impact on the brand.”
What brand has made Guillaume smile recently? In keeping with the idea of bringing about transformation, Guillaume cited the work of Girl’s Garage.
To learn more, check out the Metahelm website and connect with Guillaume on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!
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