75

Transforming a business plan from a listof bullet points into a story tells everyone not only

what the goals are but also how to reach them.

Strategic Stories:How 3M Is Rewriting

Business Planning

by Gordon Shaw, Robert Brown, and Pbilip Bromiley

T 3M, WE TELL STORIES. Everyone knows that, in our earli-est days, a share of 3M stock was worth a shot of whiskey

in a local St. Paul har. We tell stories ahout how we failed withour first abrasive products and stories ahout how we inventedmasking tape and Wetordry sandpaper. More recently, we'vebeen telling the story about one of our scientists who, whilesinging in a choir, wished he had bookmarks that wouldn't fallout of the hymnal-and later created Post-it Notes.

ARTWORK BY JENNIFER RENNINGER41

IDEAS AT WORK STRATEGIC STORIES

THE SCIENCE OF STORIESStories are central to human in-telligence and memory. Cogni-tive scientist WilliarQ Calvin de-scrihes how we gradually acquirethe ability to formulate plansthrough the stories we hear inchildhood. From stories, a childlearns to "imagine a course of ac-tion, imagine its effects on oth-ers, and decide whether or not todo it" {Scientific American, Octo-ber 1994). In a very fundamentalway, then, storytelling and plan-ning are related.

Stories also play an importantrole in learning. Language re-searchers studying how highschool students learn found thatthe story-based style of Time andNewsweek was the best way tolearn and remember. When theresearchers translated Americanhistory textbooks into this for-mat, they found that students re-called up to three times more

We train our sales representativesto paint stories through word pic-tures so that customers will see howusing a 3M product can help themsucceed. At employee award cere-monies, we tell stories ahout theprograms and people being recog-nized to explain what bappened andwhy it's significant.

Maybe our story-intensive cultureis just an accident, but we don'tthink so. We sense that it's centralto our identity-part of the way wesee ourselves and explain ourselvesto one another. Stories are a habit ofmind at 3M, and it's through them-through the way they make us seeourselves and our business opera-tions in complex, multidimensionalforms-tbat we're able to discoveropportunities for strategic cbange.Stories give us ways to form ideasabout winning.

So it's remarkable that we typi-cally discard storytelling when wedo our strategic planning. After all,that's the formal process hy whichwe lay out how we're going to win.

than they did after reading tradi-tional textbooks.

Cognitive psychologists haveestahlished that lists, in contrast,are remarkably hard to rememberhecause of wbat is referred to asthe recency and primacy effects;people mainly remember the firstand the last items on a list but notthe rest of it, and-more danger-ous yet-their memory is guidedby their interests. Tbey rememberwhat they like or find interesting;they do not recall the whole.

A good story (and a good strate-gic plan) defines relationships, asequence of events, cause and ef-fect, and a priority among items-and those elements are likely tobe remembered as a complexwhole. That likelihood, supportedby a substantial amount of cog-nitive science, argues strongly forstrategic planning through story-telling.

At one level it's odd, but at anotherlevel it isn't at all, since virtually allhusinesspeople plan using lists, out-lines, and bullets. In any event, overtbe course of several years oversee-ing strategic planning at 3M, GordonSbaw, tbe lead author of this article,became uncomfortably aware that3M's business plans failed to reflectdeep tbought or to inspire commit-ment. They were usually just lists of"good things to do" that made 3Mfunctionally stronger but failed toexplain the logic or rationale of win-ning in the marketplace.

He began to suspect that the fa-miliar, bullet-list format of the planswas a big part of the problem. Aftercritiquing bundreds of plans, he

started to look for a more coherent,compelling way to present them.With strategic narratives, he foundthat form, (See the insert "The Sci-ence of Stories.") Individuals in partsof 3M now use strategic narrativesin their planning processes, not onlyto clarify the thinking behind theirplans hut also to capture the imagi-nation and the excitement of thepeople in their organizations.

What's Wrong with Bullets?In every company we know, plan-ning follows the standard format ofthe bullet outline. It fits the waywe're used to writing and presentinginformation. It's economical. It re-duces complex business situationsto a few, apparently clean points. Itallows for conversation around theissues and gives presenters tbe free-dom to move, modify, clarify, and re-vise on the fly. In a sense, the bulletlist may be an artifact of the waybusiness takes place in the course ofstrategic planning: it mirrors thecharacter of meetings and the high-pressure pace of the manager or plan-ner who must reduce the complex tothe short and clear.

So what's the problem?If the language we use in writing

strategic planning reports were onlya matter of presentation, of the waywe package ideas and offer them toothers, it would not matter muchhow we wrote them. But writing isthinking. Bullets allow us to skipthe thinking step, genially trickingourselves into supposing that wehave planned when, in fact, we'veonly listed some good things to do.

Bullet lists encourage us to be in-tellectually lazy in three specific,and related, ways.

BuUet lists are typically too ge-neric; that is, they offer a series ofthings to do that could apply to anybusiness. They fail to focus an orga-nization on the specifics of how it

Gordon Shaw is executive director of planning and international at 3M in St.Paul, Minnesota, and past president of the Conference Board's Council ofStrategic Planning Executives. Robert Brown is the Morse-Alumni Distin-guished Professor of Cultural Society and Comparative Literature in the Uni-versity of Minnesota's Department of Cultural Studies and ComparativeLiterature. Philip Bromiley holds the Curtis L. Carlson Chair in StrategicManagement at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Manage-ment in Minneapolis.

42 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW May-)unciy98

rOEAS AT WORK STRATEGIC STORIES

will win in its partieular market.Witness this selection from a plan-ning document submitted hy a 3Mhusiness unit. The planners pro-posed three "major strategies":

• Reduce high delivered costs:- Reduce international parent

head count hy three,- Explore sales cost reduetions,- Determine vision for traditional

products and appropriately staff,- Continue to reduce factory

costs,- Refine unit cost management

system,- Reduce process and produet

costs.• Accelerate development and intro-duction of new produets.• Inerease responsiveness.

What's proposed is so general thatit could fit any husiness at any pointin its maturity, and, hy the way, thehullet points are not vague becausewe've disguised proprietary infor-mation. This is a typical level of de-tail for business plans. Basically,these planners propose to keep doinggood things faster, cheaper, and withmore attention to the market.

The prohlem here is not incompe-tenee; good managers drafted thisplan. They know their husiness unitand, if asked, could probably providethe detail to turn an empty phraselike "determine visiori for traditionalproducts" into a story ahout marketanalysis, positioning, and strategieaction. But we can't tell that fromtheir plan.

Neither can their executive re-viewers. And, more eritical, neither

Bullet lists present oniy anillusion of clarity-and it canbe an expensive illusion.

can the people who need to get be-hind the plan and make it happen.

But any of these abstract proposalscould he part of a powerful strategicplan. If "increase responsiveness"means "improve on-time delivery,"for example, it might set a companyapart from its competition-if the

norm in this husiness is to he lateand unpredictable. But we certainlycan't tell that from this plan.

Bullets leave critical relationshipsunspecified. Lists can communicateonly three logical relationships: se-quence (first to last in time); priority(least to most important or vice ver-sa); or simple memhership in a set[these items relate to one another insome way, hut the nature of that re-lationship remains unstated). And alist ean show only one of those rela-tionships at a time. When we pre-sent a list, either orally or in writing,we leave other critical relationshipsunspecified. Our audience can fill inthe blanks from their own view ofthings, or we ean do it, adjustingwhat we say to the responses we re-ceive from them.

Sometimes, this approach can hepolitically savvy, making the listpalatable to a variety of people whomay have different points of view.Lists leave us room to move and, inmoving, to proteet our sense of mas-tery, certainty, and control. However,in the end, lists present only an illu-sion of clarity-and it can he an ex-pensive illusion. If the plan doesn'tspeeify eritical relationships amongissues, it can't demonstrate that wereally know what we're doing orwhere we're going. We can't see thewhole picture.

Bullets leave critical assumptionsabout how the business works un-stated. Consider these major oh-jectives from a standard five-yearstrategie plan:• Increase market share by 2 5 %.• Increase profits by 30%.• Increase new-produet introduc-

tions to ten a year.Implicit in this plan is a

complex hut unexplainedvision of the organization,the market, and the cus-tomer. However, we can-not extrapolate that vi-sion from the hullet list.

The plan does not tell us how theseobjectives tie together and, in fact,many radically different strategieseould he represented by these threesimple points.

Does improved marketing (forexample) increase market share,which results in increased profits

(perhaps from eeonomies of scale),thus providing funds for increasednew-produet development?

MarketShare

Profits New-ProduetDevelopment

Or maybe new-product develop-ment will result in hoth increasedprofits and market share at once:

New-ProduetDevelopment

MarketShare

Profits

Alternatively, perhaps windfallprofits will let us just huy marketshare by stepping up advertising andnew-product development:

Profits New-Product MarketDevelopment Share

These different models make radi-cally different assumptions ahouthow the world works. Indeed, thesethree simple items-profit, marketshare, and new-produet develop-m e n t - c a n relate in many otherplausible ways as well. Without be-ing clear about whieh set of assump-tions they favor, planners cannot se-riously think through their plans.Without knowing which assump-tions the planners are making,senior managers cannot seriouslyevaluate or modify the plans. Andwithout understanding the husinessassumptions, subordinates face justanother list of ohjectives withoutany confidence that those goals canbe reached-and without an essen-tial sense of exeitement.

The Narrative LogicOf Strategic StoriesPlanning hy narrative is a lot liketraditional storytelling. Like a goodstoryteller, the strategie plannerneeds to set the stage-define thecurrent situation in an insightful,coherent manner. That involves an-alyzing the industry's economics, itskey success faetors, and the forcesthat drive change. It also involvesdefining basic tensions and relation-ships: Which capabilities and ohjec-tives do we have and which do theother players have? What do we be-lieve the other players intend to do?How do our key success faetors com-pare with those of our eompetitors?

44 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW May-June 1998

IDEAS AT WORK STRATEGIC STORIES

BUILDING A STORY THAT WORKSRobert BrullO; a 23-year 3M vet-eran, needed to figure out what todo about his division's relation-ship with Hoechst, the Germanchemical company. Since theearly 1980s, his fluoropolymergroup had enjoyed a cordial,arm's-length relationship withHoechst, which had been first asupplier, then a manufacturer,for 3M. That arrangement hadworked well for a long time, but itwas no longer enough.

Hoechst had recently devel-oped a new resin, called THV,that remained flexible at very lowtemperatures. It was a productwith huge potential. Hoechst,however, did not have the skillsnecessary to develop or marketapplications. 3M did. Simply ac-quiring THV did not make sensefor 3M; the cost was too high, andHoechst already had a manufac-turing facility, which 3M wouldnot want to duplicate. A jointventure between the two organi-zations might ultimately havemade the most sense, but BruUoknew that 3M does not enter intosuch agreements easily or often.

BruUo thought about how to re-solve the business issue facing hisdivision. Whatever he decided,getting senior management be-hind him would be a challenge.He realized that a bullet-styleplan could not elicit, or reflect,the serious thinking he neededto do. He decided to write a nar-rative-style plan instead.

I said to myself, I'm going towrite this like a book-make itlike a story-so that anybody canpick up the plan, read it, and un-derstand our situation.

BruUo talked with subordi-nates and read related businessplans. He wrote the plan on hisown, though. His description ofwriting that first draft captures

the painful, exhilarating processof thinking through a difficultprohlem:

I'd sit there knowing it wasn'tcoming, and then all of a suddenI'd have a flash of brilliance. Ispent two days at home Just get-ting my thoughts down on paper.I had sheets and sheets full ofideas. Finally, I started writingout the actual story.

Brullo spent two weeks work-ing on his plan. Once he'd writtena 30-page draft, his subordinatescritiqued it, and he rewrote itmore than once, preparing topresent the plan to the company'ssenior management.

On the day of his presentation,he began by turning off the over-head projector and saying, "I'mgoing to have fun today." Topmanagers started whispering thatthey could see a disaster coining.The business unit involved highlycomplex science, and it competedin a highly complex industry, sofollowing a detailed plan wouldhave been challenging for the au-dience had they been listening toa less talented storyteller, How-ever, Brullo walked them easilythrough descriptions of the play-ers, the critical issues, and theproposed resolution. He knewthe material cold; his carefullycrafted stories had become partof him.

By the end of the presentation,top management was on board.BruUo's presentation becamethe foundation for a joint venturebetween 3M and Hoechst. Anobserver at the presentation re-ported later:

When Bob got up and pre-sented, I could see the strategiesto win. I could see these strate-gies changing the basis of compe-tition. I could see the critical is-

sues being identified, and I couldsee the key success factors forthat part of the business. Peoplecould see the connections as hewent from one section of his pre-sentation to the next. They couldsee how the business was evolv-ing, and they could see, ulti-mately, how the business wasgoing to win.

Brullo says:

To me, the point is to commu-nicate an insight, not simply abunch of numbers or a bunch ofbullet points. It keeps comingdown to the same thing-youhave to be able to show that theinsight is there.

Dyneon, the new joint venture,was formed in August 1996. Man-agers developing the new organi-zation over the coming monthsmet with far less mistrust andmisunderstanding than mostinternational joint ventures in-volve. The narrative allowedthem to identify potential prob-lems. For example, the strategicstory highlighted the importanceof addressing specific needs ofusers in the automotive andsemiconductor industries. Fromits inception, Dyneon jumped onthose issues, establishing teamsthat included people from bothcompanies.

Today Brullo leads Dyneon asits first president. The 600-employee, $350 million businessis almost two years into the joint-venture agreement. 3M is themajority owner. Thus far, Dy-neon's financial and operationalperformance has surpassed ex-pectations. Brullo has used thenarrative format in subsequentstrategic plaris as the basis for twoother joint-venture proposals.One of those joint ventures hasjust been completed.

46 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW May-Junt 1998

STRATEGIC STORIES IDEAS AT WORK

Some of these factors are straightfor-ward, but others involve complexanalysis.

Next, the strategic planner mustintroduce the dramatic conflict.What challenges does the companyface in this situation? What criticalissues stand as obstacles to success?hi some cases, the main challengewill he exploiting new technologicalopportunities. In other cases, it willbe coping with high costs in a com-modity market.

Finally, the story must reach reso-lution in a satisfying, convincingmanner. The plan must tell us howthe company can overcome obsta-cles and win. The conclusion re-quires a logical, concise argumentthat is specific to the situation andleads to the desired outcomes.

Requiring that a plan have a narra-tive logic forces to the surface thewriter's huried assumptions aboutcause and effect. Tbe act of writinga full, logical statement encouragesclear tbinking and brings out thesubtlety and complexity of ideas.

Indeed, sometimes we sit down towrite believing we have a clear idea,but our difficulty in getting it downon paper exposes the flaws in ourthinking.

Presenting a plan in narrative cre-ates a richer picture of strategy notonly for the plan's authors but alsofor its intended audience. Readersare made privy to the author 'sthought processes, so they know farmore than they would if they reada bullet list. Wben assumptions aremade explicit, they can be discussedand held up against senior managers'own mental models. Executives arein a better position to evaluate tbeplan critically, ask more penetratingand insightful questions, and offermore useful advice. As one 3M man-ager said, "If you read just bulletpoints, you may not get it, but if youread a narrative plan, you will. Ifthere's a flaw in the logic, it glaresright out at you. With bullets, youdon't know if the insight is reallythere or if the planner has merelygiven you a shopping list."

A word of caution. For this ap-proach to work, the story can't hejust a list of bullets connected hy"and then, and then, and then..."Rather, it must he a recasting and re-thinking of the parts of the plan andtheir relationships with one another.It must tell a story of a struggle be-tween opponents in which the goodguy triumphs hy doing a series ofsmart things in the right order.

Bullets Versus StrategicStories: an ExampleA good story has a point that be-comes clear through the telling.Likewise, a good plan lays out a vi-sion-not just a generic platitude,biit a fully enunciated statement ofhow the business creates value.Ratber tban reflecting an inwardfocus (for example, "to be the lead-ing supplier of widgets"), the visionsays how we will make a significantcontribution to the customer.

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piece of the 1992 business plan forthe division might have lookedsomething like this:• Increase our market share from40% to 50%.• Regain product-development lead-ership position.• Increase sales closings by 50%.

Today we would craft the plan inthe form of a narrative. Altboughwhat follows is bigbly condensed,and it is partly disguised (all thenumbers have been cbanged, forexample), it illustrates tbe value oftelling a strategic story:

(Setting the Stage] Global FleetGraphics makes premium, dura-ble graphic-marking systems forbuildings, signs, vehicles, andheavy equipment. The corporatelogos and graphics we see on fleetsof package delivery trucks, tractortrailers, and airplanes are typicalexamples.

Fleet Graphics now faces moredemanding customers and moreaggressive competitors than it has

in previous years. Customerswant design flexibility and largergraphics without higher cost.Some customers want easy-to-remove products, while otherswant durable ones. Bus operatorswant grapbics that cover the win-dows yet still allow passengers tosee out. Total sales of graphie ma-terials have increased, but sales oftraditional, painted graphics havedeclined due to their high cost.3M has 40% of the market and forsome years has been the techno-logical leader.

Fleet Graphics faces three majorcompet i tors : AmeriGraphics,GrapliDesign, and FleetGlobal.AmeriGraphies has begun to ex-pand its product line by using ourolder technologies as the patentsexpire. Its global share has grownfrom 10% in 1982 to 16% today.GraphDesign uses direct distribu-tion and new manufacturing capa-bility to compete on price but hasexperienced quality problems. Itsmarket share has dropped from

18% to 15% in the last ten years.The quality of FleetClobal's prod-ucts is comparable to ours, buttbey sell at a lower price. Its sharehas grown from 24% in 1982 to28% today.

In short, we are losing ourpatent advantages at the sametime that we face three strongcompetitors that are using low-cost strategies.

[Dramatic Conflict] Withoutradical changes. Fleet Graphicswill not be profitable in the nearfuture. We ean expect rapid prieeerosion once all competitors bringvery similar products to market.Given 3M's higher overhead, wecannot compete in a price-com-petitive business witbout a tecb-nological advantage.

Our vision: Incremental prod-uct or process improvements willnot solve this problem. We plan totransform the industry tbroughseveral technological advances. Atthe heart of this transformationwill be a move from analog to digi-

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STRATEGIC STORIES IDEAS AT WORK

tal printing-and-storage technol-ogy. In addition, the quality andeeonomies of the final productwill he improved using new filmand adhesive teehnologies. Thestrategy we propose draws on di-verse areas of 3M.

First, we propose a quantumchange in Global Fleet Graphics'production system that will allowus to deliver products much morequickly and at a competitive price.Rather than focus on eost reduc-tion through incremental processchanges, we have tried to rethinkthe entire way we produee fleetgraphics. We have contacted nu-merous R&D areas at both thecorporate and divisional levels tolocate appropriate and adaptableteehnologies. The search has re-sulted in a radical plan for a new,more flexible, lower cost graphics-production system.

Many graphics will he producedand stored digitally. We will con-vert manual, analog, silk-screenprinting into digital form hy sean-

ning the art and cleaning it up on acomputer screen. We will then heable to send it tiigitally anywherein the world. Global Fleet Graph-ics will create a central repositoryof images that can be electronicallytransmitted to production facili-ties worldwide. IT estimates thatthe system will cost $3 millionand he operational in 24 months.

The repository dramaticallydecreases product delivery timefrom as much as four weeks to aslittle as three hours. It also drasti-cally reduces inventory.

Second, we propose develop-ment of a new generation ofpatented technologies and prod-ucts to differentiate our offeringsfrom competitors'. Three suchproducts are already in the works.We are in the late stages of devel-oping adhesives and films that caneover windows but allow peopleto see out. Only tbe final product-definition and design work stillneed to be done; design should becompleted in five months. Manu-

facturing has hegun to work onproduction facilities to ensure ad-equate capacity worldwide.

In addition, we are now close toanswering our customers' need forgraphics that can he applied tomany nontraditional surfaces (suchas corrugated truck sidings) andflexing surfaces (such as Europeantrucks with canvas sides). Filmsfor tbese applications already existin our lahs.

Last but not least, new adhe-sives will make graphics easier toinstall. The Adhesives Divisionhas a product that remains tackyfor a time so that graphics can bepositioned and repositioned. Whenthe placement is correct, a secondadhesive system is activated tobond the graphics in place. Therepositioning capacity decreasesinstallation time hy 30%/ result-ing in substantial cost savings.

Third, we need to upgrade oursales and marketing staffs' skillsto match their capabilities withthe technology-driven strategy.

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We will put substantial effort intofield testing and marketing. Tech-nical, marketing, and sales per-sonnel will field-test tbe newproducts both domestically andoverseas. Simultaneously, we willdevelop and test modifications tothe product as well as producesales and other supporting docu-mentation.

Before we launch the new prod-ucts, sales, marketing, and tech-nical-service personnel will trainall sales reps in how to use and sellthe new technology. Training willinclude both technical and com-munication skills related to call-ing on top-level executives: repswill receive intensive training inhow to talk those customers' lan-guage, and they will also be ahleto handle technical questions ontheir own. Training will hegin oneyear from now, and we expect it totake six months.

[Resolution: How We Winl Tosummarize. Global Fleet Graphicshas drawn on diverse technolog-ical skills at 3M to create a pro-posal for transforming its busi-ness. What has heen a hard-copy,analog, design-materials businesswill become a more fully global,digital, electronic-imaging andrepository business. Combiningnew films witb new adbesiveswill create substantial value andreduce overall cost in both tbe

manufacturing and application ofgrapbics. By these means. GlobalFleet Graphics will maintain andenhance its prof itahility and its in-dustry leadership.

We believe tbat tbis new graph-ics system will radically trans-form the industry in a mannerconsistent with 3M's overall cor-porate strategy-regaining techno-logical advantage on both theproduct and process fronts. Thecompetition may duplicate someparts of this strategy (for example,the electronic storage of graphicimages), but that will take time.We sbould have an advantage forseveral years even in those areas.Other areas have patent protec-tion, and our advantages can besustained for a decade or more.

Even such A condensed narrativedemonstrates the relative complex-ity that a strategic story reveals.When readers finish the eoinpletenarrative, they will know how 3Mintends to increase its market sharefrom 40% to 50%. They will knowwhieh product and process develop-ments should, when combined,launch a new generation of fleetgraphics. And they will be able toimagine that, given those new prod-ucts and processes, as well as newtraining opportunities, sales repre-sentatives might well improve theirperformance by 50%. Just as impor-

tant, readers will understand thathundreds and hundreds of playersmust contribute in order for the planto succeed.

In a recent 3M survey, employeesasked management to "allow us toget excited about where we are go-ing" and to provide evidence of man-agement's confidence and excite-ment about 3M's future. We believetbat casting our plans for the futureas compelling stories can help us dojust that. The ultimate success ofour plans depends on how effectivelywe inspire the people who makethose plans happen.

This final role of narrative plans -generating excitement and commit-ment in hoth superiors and subordi-nates-may be the most important.A well-written narrative strategythat shows a difficult situation andan innovative solution leading toimproved market share can be gal-vanizing-and it is certainly moreengaging than a bulleted mandateto "increase market share by 5%."When people ean locate themselvesin the story, their sense of commit-ment and involvement is enhanced.By conveying a powerful impressionof the process of winning, narrativeplans can motivate and mobilize anentire organization. ^

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50 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW May-|une 1998

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