Revolutionizing Business Planning: How Strategic Stories are Driving 3M’s Success
Business planning has been a core aspect of every organization’s success strategy. It is not only about making numbers work in favor of the organization, but it also requires careful planning, market analysis, and effective execution. However, planning is often considered a mundane and formulaic task that provides missed opportunities for inspiration and innovation. But what if I told you there was a new way to approach business planning? A way that enables organizations to take advantage of a new dimension that has the power to revolutionize the planning process.
Strategic storytelling is a new technique that organizations are using to transform their planning and execution processes. Used effectively, strategic stories weave together available financial and operational data with compelling narratives. This approach infuses data with meaning, inspiration, and purpose.
3M, a US technology company, was one of the first organizations to adopt this approach to planning. It is known for its innovation in adhesives, abrasives, and productivity tools. However, despite being a large and successful organization, it faced challenges in creating a cohesive vision for its business units. The challenge was that their strategic planning process often generated such complex reports that the readership lost interest, or worse, they stopped reading it altogether.
To overcome these challenges, 3M introduced the strategic storytelling approach. It created a new planning process that uniquely combined a financial and operational analysis with human emotion and empathy, delivered through storytelling.
Stories help stakeholders and employees understand the why behind the financial and operational numbers. They build excitement around the organizational vision by conveying why it matters, which inspires greater creativity, commitment, and engagement.
One of 3M’s most compelling strategic stories is about its Scotch tape product. In the 1970s, a group of scientists at 3M were working on a new, stronger adhesive. One of the scientists, Spencer Silver, created an adhesive that stuck lightly to surfaces but didn’t bind to them, failing in its intended use. A colleague of Silver’s, Arthur Fry, was struggling to keep his place-markers in his hymnal, until he remembered Silver’s adhesive. The product was later marketed as Post-it notes, becoming the bestselling adhesive tape worldwide.
Strategic stories like this give the business’s stakeholders a clear understanding of the company’s values. They also bring personality to a company’s vision and enable employees to own it and to understand how they fit into it.
In conclusion, the strategic storytelling approach allows for a more collaborative and collective approach to business planning. It provides an alternative and compelling way to convey financial and market data, and it connects employees, customers, investors, and suppliers with the organization’s values and goals. Moreover, by basing growth on storytelling, organizations open up a world of possibilities to better engage teams and partners, creating a shared sense of purpose and direction. In an increasingly analytical and data-driven world, effective storytelling can truly be a game-changer.
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