Storylining for first-year consultants

Storylining is a confusing skill for first-year consultants. Different managers interpret it differently. But it's quite common feedback, and consultants don't know how to fix it.

Chris, a first-year consultant, recently received feedback on his storylining skills.

He asked me how to create a storyline for the project kick-off document.

"What storyline?" I asked. "You can't use storylining on a process document. You just need a simple, logical flow of pages that makes sense."

Often, managers misuse the term storylining and confuse consultants.

For example, storylining was an advanced skill for senior consultants in my time. Now, the term is used frivolously.

First, let's clarify the confusion and then discuss the right application of storylining.

Dummy Decks

Often, we see the following sequence of events.

A manager asks to create a dummy deck for a process document (a proposal or a kick-off).

Consultants often reuse library pages. For missing pages, they create blank pages with titles and stickers. Then, they bring this 'Frankenstein' deck to the manager.

The manager reacts negatively.

Objectively, the document is messy. It's hard to see any thinking behind all this visual noise. The manager is frustrated and generates dozens of comments.

The consultant is confused and feels treated unfairly, having done exactly what was requested.

The consultant starts off on the wrong foot with the manager, and the relationship then becomes sour and deteriorates further.

Then, the consultant receives feedback on storylining skills and many others.

Confusing Feedback

It is likely that, in this situation, the manager just needs a clear document structure.

Most likely, the consultant had that structure in mind. But the manager couldn't see it behind all the visual noise.

When managers see messy, unstructured documents, they call it a lack of storylining. I don't know why they do it. Maybe to sound fancy.

But it confuses consultants.

They learned about strategic storylining in onboarding training. But they have no idea how to apply it in this situation.

Then, they stare at the blank page, contemplating and doubting what storyline to create. They get stressed and feel stupid.

One-Pager Structure

The simple solution here is to create a one-pager outlining the document structure. You can organize it as an agenda or a simple bucket list.

Each point represents a separate page describing what you plan to show on each page. This helps readers imagine what they would see.

Make this page clean and professional so your manager can understand your ideas. They will not get distracted by visual noise or random dummy pages.

If you have a few deep-dive pages, you can add them to the document. Use the one-pager as a tracker and highlight which points you deep-dive into. Ideally, they should be important 'killer' pages.

Don't show pages that are not in good shape or don't exist. There is no value in doing it. It will only trigger the manager and hurt you.

Instead, you create a well-structured and clean 3-5 pages document as a final output.

Your manager can see the whole structure at once and provide meaningful feedback. Then, you can discuss any insights and inputs on deep-dive pages.

As a result, you will have a smart and positive conversation, and your manager will think you are a genius.

Storylining Application

Let's discuss real storylining applications once we have clarified the fake ones.

Storylining is required when you have complex information you need to communicate effectively.

Consider a scenario where you are a few weeks into a strategy project. You have done many analyses and discovered unique insights. Now, you need to communicate this to senior clients.

As an MBB consultant, you want to impress clients and make them remember your key messages. That's where you employ the proper storytelling techniques and frameworks.

Usually, First-year consultants rarely get access to this level of storylining. Usually, this is the job of a manager or a senior consultant. But, they might be asked to write the storyline for their workstream as part of the bigger document.

Leadership Alignment

Another useful application of storylining is alignment with senior leadership.

You want to avoid senior partners tearing down the document the day before the SteerCo. Otherwise, the team will go into a frenzy mode, pulling all-nighters and doing weekend work. Nothing great will come out of this.

This also creates a sense of comfort among leaders, reinforcing their confidence that the team has everything under control.

How to Write a Storyline

In this situation, Dot-Dash is a powerful tool. Dots represent pages, with action titles as bullet points. Under each dot, dashes indicate key facts and insights.

The main mistake is when consultants write a generic dot-dash. They fail to activate leaders' imaginations, triggering a storm of random comments.

You want your leaders to understand your ideas. The best way for them to do this is to read it offline so they can focus and see the whole thing end-to-end.

This is why I recommend writing your strategy storylines like a mini-essay. Go beyond simple bullet points and help readers to understand your ideas better. Use plain language to help readers visualize what they will see on each slide.

Assume your readers know little or nothing about the context. Write concisely but communicate critical facts and insights.

Each paragraph should correspond to a page in your future document, and the first sentence should serve as the slide's title. The following text explains the slide's key messages and how they will be represented.

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Example of Storyline

Here is an example illustrating storylines for a strategy project.

1. Intro: The company strategy should help to ‘beat the market’ and answer two main questions:
What? What we want to achieve, who we want to be, and in what areas we want to be the best in the market.
How? What practical actions and investments will enable us to achieve our strategic objectives?

2. Most companies struggle to ‘beat the market’ and need extraordinary efforts to ‘change a league.’
Graph: 78% of companies remain in the middle class, and only 8% succeed in moving up to one or more levels.

3. A 5.5% loss of customer base annually is the fundamental problem of our Client mostly driven by low-quality acquisition
Graph: Overall, the customer base is decreasing at 5.5% a year. The churn of old customers is decreasing, while the churn of new customers is increasing.

…

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Storytelling Frameworks

Often, consultants ask what storytelling frameworks to use for writing storylines.

I am not a big fan of frameworks. They require significant adjustments to the specific context.

Sometimes, I use the classic SCR (Situation, Complication, and Resolution) framework as a starting point.

Moreover, recently, I noticed that no one has the patience or time to read long documents.

So, I started creating very short documents. The first page synthesizes the main messages, followed by a few 'killer' deep dives to support them.

The fewer pages, the better.

Closing

The other day, Chris told me he had successfully created, aligned, and sent that kick-off document to clients.

It was the first time this process hadn't become a circus of endless comments and iterations. The manager and partners were quite happy with his work.

It was great to feel that he had done something right. It was quite refreshing after many months of misery and failure.

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Walking it alone is extremely difficult. It’s helpful to have the support of someone experienced who has gone through this journey and helped many others.

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