Finding the Path Forward
June 15, 2025
Shared Understanding is the Goal
The leadership disconnect we just discussed is exactly why my narrative work begins and ends with leadership alignment. While most teams share the same goals, they often bring slightly different versions of the story to the table, with differences in focus, phrasing, or priority of importance.
Weaving these perspectives into a single strategic narrative is the real work.
Because building your narrative isn't about wordsmithing. It's about creating a shared understanding of:
Why your company exists
The problem you’re solving
How you uniquely approach that problem
The commitments you make to your stakeholders
The strategic priorities that drive all you do
The Diagnostic Question
Here's a question I ask every healthcare leadership team:
"If I interviewed each of you separately about your company's story, would I get the same answer?"
The honest answer is usually no. That’s been my experience time and again in one-on-one leadership interviews. And that's where the work begins.
As I talk with leaders individually about the story, I look for what I call the creative tensions. These aren’t usually outright disagreements (though those happen), but differences in emphasis, interpretation, and priority. Most teams are aligned on the destination. Where they diverge is in how they describe the journey: which activities feel most critical, which ideas deserve focus, and how the pieces connect.
Building a strategic narrative means surfacing those creative tensions, playing them back to the team, and solving for a framing that everyone supports. In other words: getting to shared understanding.
Once that happens, everything downstream gets sharper:
Investor presentations connect the business logic to the clinical story.
Media coverage reflects a clearer, more coherent narrative.
Employee communications tie individual roles to the bigger picture.
Website copy shows consistent strategic thinking.
Sales conversations become clearer and more differentiated.
And stakeholders no longer have to put the puzzle together themselves.
But this happens only when leaders do the work to align, refine and to own the narrative together.
