Approach
Change how you change.
Jordan helps clients adapt to and embrace the emerging world of continuous change.
Shift into a more agile and sustainable relationship with ongoing evolution.
In a world of exponential change, yesterday’s goals have to be tweaked today or they will be out of date by tomorrow.
This reality requires us to re-evaluate how we collaborate in our teams: working with greater agility, humanity and creative thinking so we can reinvent ourselves as the world around us changes. It also applies to how we conceive of an entire organizational structure. In this world, emotional dynamics like collaboration and resilience will be as important as functional goals and business models.
My work helps clients address both.
As an advisor, consultant, workshop facilitator and coach, I help my clients learn how to work in this more dynamic way. My expertise ranges from effective communication and narrative development to creative thinking and visioning to enacting full-scale organizational transformation. At each step of the way, I bring a facilitator’s mindset, involving everyone in the process of change, rather than steamrolling towards a desirable outcome.
Because, today, every organization is in the business of change: again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again …
Strategic Narrative Consulting
and Business Transformation
Empower new mindsets, skills, narratives and operational interactions for the emerging world of ongoing evolution.
Strategic Narrative Consulting Overview
- A dynamic process that optimizes communications strategy and tactics
- Appropriate for entire organizations or individual teams
- Clients are normally Director level and up.
- Every engagement begins with an insightful process called Discovery.
- Discovery reveals deeper issues, establishes scope and helps clients envision likely outcomes.
About Strategic Narrative Consulting
Whenever things change, business leaders turn to narrative to contextualize what happened and to refocus their team on what’s ahead. In the old world, it was common to use language like mission, vision, values and purpose as a foundational structure for overall alignment. But today, when things are changing so quickly and when the whole world could be different in a day, leaders need new communications strategy, tactics and mindsets to balance operational goals with deeper, more human-centered demands.
Helping clients achieve this sophisticated balance is the essence of Strategic Narrative Consulting.
This insightful and creative process is a step beyond the way we used to think about “telling the story”. It always starts with a Discovery: which digs beneath the layers to examine the team’s particular combination of functional systems and emotional-relationship dynamics. Leaders get a more precise understanding of what’s going on and a richer idea of the strategies necessary to move things forward.
Discovery is a 4-6 week process that helps clients refocus on new outcomes and goals. From there, the goal is to optimize the overall organization for the alignment this new vision requires. We work intensively with leaders to facilitate the change, and then accelerate it with trainings, workshops, integrative tools and all-hands transformation experiences that get the entire ship moving in a new direction.
This challenging and yet deeply rewarding work is designed for the most innovative companies, and for the executives who want to be the creative leaders of the future.
We would love to discuss in more detail whether this is right for your and your team.
In our transformational times, our narratives need to keep up with the pace of change.
Once, everyone in an organization was focused on the bottom line. Today, we need new forms of alignment that balance business and human outcomes—generating authentic motivation and sustaining our culture, while also powering our abilities to evolve.
As the rate of change speeds up, the stories we told yesterday about our purpose, values and goals need to be tweaked today or they will be out of date by tomorrow.
This new way of thinking is much different than what most of us learned in business school. It requires different strategies, skills, mindsets and operational systems—and it is a required foundation for an organization that is in continuous evolution.
Finding the story—refining the story—evolving the story—beginning the process again. This is the essence of our strategic narrative consulting work.
Meet Jordan Bower
Jordan Bower is a systems thinker, a consultant, a facilitator, a coach, an artist and a skilled business storyteller.
After graduating with a business degree, in 2003, Jordan spent the next decade traveling the world on a personal quest to integrate his formal education with his creative instinct and emotional intelligence. In 2013, Jordan founded Transformational Storytelling, and began to deliver innovative communications guidance to small and medium sized businesses.
In 2015, Jordan was a featured presenter at the Future of Storytelling Festival in New York City. Quickly, demand for his unique product grew, and by 2017, Jordan was delivering his leadership storytelling workshop to corporate clients all across North America—and, increasingly, around the world.
When the pandemic hit, Jordan stepped back from his heavy travel schedule to completely redesign his workshop from the bottom up, in order to make it more dynamic and appropriate for leadership communications in the new, more volatile world.
Jordan is based in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives by the ocean with his wife and their dog, Juno.
Book a Leadership Storytelling Coaching Consult
Introducing Strategic Narrative Consulting
In business, storytelling has moved beyond expressing a message with a beginning, middle and end. Today’s leadership storytelling must also include a “vibe” of authenticity, innovation and a perspective on the changing world that is expressed as much in words as in feeling. Strategic narrative consulting is a new way of approaching corporate communications to achieve a more significant impact on audiences, enabling the messaging to move as dynamically as the strategy.
Who We Help
- Executive Leaders
- Functional Leaders
- Entrepreneurs & Start-ups
- Thought Leaders
Our Approach to Strategic Narrative Consulting
One of the oldest ideas in storytelling is “form follows function.” It goes back more than 2,000 years to Aristotle—and probably further.
“Form follows function” tells us that a message is always more than it appears on the surface. In a world defined exclusively by form, a flag is just a bunch of colors and stripes, a logo is just a cute picture and everything a leader says can be understood at face value. When we expand our definition of communication to include function, and not just form, we can unearth a more sophisticated understanding of what’s being communicated.
In businesses, strategic messages are based on a bedrock of logic and data. They are also founded on emotional and relational dynamics like trust, perspective and belief. In the new world of business, these dynamics must be integrated in order to achieve the agility, purpose and engagement required for today’s operational goals.
Working at this level requires new skills; it also requires new mindsets and planning processes. Together, these can enable communications teams to break out of the old moulds, infusing their messaging with greater clarity, emotionality, dynamism and impact.
In our strategic narrative consulting practice, we help our clients bring these new functions into their forms. We work with functional teams and organizational leaders. Our work helps them:
- Raise the standard of their comms team, improving their ability to generate more effective and efficient “business storytelling”
- Reveal underlying obstacles to effective business storytelling (e.g. existing systems, legacy habits, biases and perspectives) and find innovative solutions to address these obstacles
- Integrate new foundations, frameworks, systems, etc that will allow the team to sustain the desired transformation
- Work collaboratively and intimately to overcome fears of change
- Adjust their overall direction and strategic narratives as desired and required
How Strategic Narrative Engagements are Typically Structured
Our strategic narrative consulting engagements are by nature a collaborative and dynamic process.
Phase One: Discovery
Engagements always begin with an initial Discovery phase. Discovery begins with:
- An evaluation of skills and goals to assess/reveal underlying obstacles
- Reviews of existing comms and systems, 60 min 1-on-1 “sessions” with team leadership and backgrounding interviews with stakeholders as required.
- Review of underlying emotional and relationship dynamics
Based on what we hear, we create a summary in simple language that highlights commonalities as well as conceptual differences across the leadership.
As an outcome, Discovery generates consensus between us and you about what needs to be changed. It sets expectations about what results those changes are likely to generate.
The results of Discovery also focus key metrics to be improved or optimized, providing data-driven evidence of success.
Discovery culminates with a presentation of key insights to leadership, following which we integrate client feedback.
Phase Two: Instigating Change
Discovery is followed by an instigation phase that is tailored to the scope and circumstances of each strategic narrative consulting project. In larger teams, this typically includes an “Intervention” stage, which allows leadership to discuss and integrate the learnings from Discovery.
Often this phase includes facilitated workshops, design thinking-style sessions and other interactive exercises that enable the senior leadership team to address and overcome fears of change together.
For entrepreneurs, this stage often includes 1-on-1 coaching sessions that peel back the layers, empowering greater confidence and creativity.
Phase Three: Innovation
The Innovation phase interrupts existing systems and generates space to design new solutions:
- With our support, teams begin shifting behaviour, systems and strategy, using our foundations and frameworks
- When new systems are needed, we work collaboratively as a creative partner, guiding clients to innovate as appropriate
- At each step we help clients pause, re-evaluate and course correct. We provide both tactical guidance as well as more intimate coaching that strengthens leadership ability to communicate emotionally and dynamically.
Phase Four: Integration
Our strategic narrative consulting engagements culminate with integrative tools that allow clients to sustain the transformation. These tools include frameworks, foundations and practical systems, as well as the qualitative changes to mindsets, trust and strategic direction.
In this way we help you improve the systems that help your team sustain greater emotionality and impact in your communication, while also helping you and the overall team develop the confidence, mindsets and creative processes that this requires.
This dynamic and ever-evolving process is the essence of our approach to strategic narrative.