Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less

Chapter 10

Putting Brevity to Work: Grainger and the Al and Betty Story

Long story, short. W. W. Grainger dared to be different by deciding to map, tell, talk, and show its five-year vision as a strategic narrative all employees could embrace.

One of the most compelling cases that combines mapping, telling, talking, and showing is how W. W. Grainger, a Fortune 500 industrial distributor headquartered in suburban Chicago, turned a complicated strategy into a simple story.

When I met with Grainger's head of strategic planning, John Borta, over coffee, I told him his company could use a narrative to simplify its complex business strategies.

“A lightbulb immediately went off for me when we started talking about how our senior leadership team could use Narrative Mapping to synthesize our five-year strategic vision,” John said. “The thought of a strategic narrative was appealing, because it might help us speak to a broader base of managers and employees.”

Grainger had spent the two prior years extensively studying market dynamics, key customer considerations, and how the company could tackle a much larger opportunity.

“We had literally mounds of research, insights, data, and recommendations that were rolled into lengthy presentations and detailed documentation,” Borta told me. “It was the right plan, but we were really struggling to find a simpler way of talking about the vision without losing everyone in the process. The stakes were high.”

So John had me come to a senior leadership ...