Story Blocks: A tool to help founders capture their company story

Most successful founders know what problem they’re trying to solve, why it matters, what their approach and solution is and so on. But many of them find it hard to articulate all this simply for others.

Capturing your company story simply is incredibly powerful as it is central to everything your business will go on to do. It helps to crystalise the problem and solution, unite teams and add texture and personality that can help build your brand.

As a specialist with extensive experience working with founders, I’ve developed a straightforward tool to help with this. Mostly, I use this myself when playing founders’ stories back to them, but you can also use it to organise your own thinking. It’s very simple. But simple is probably what you need:

Told you it was simple.

The idea is to write a very short paragraph (30-ish words) in each box, being careful not to accidentally cover topics from the other boxes. This helps you to compartmentalise the key building blocks of your story. And the discipline of the exercise also helps to prioritise what matters.

I call it Story Blocks because, well, naming things is fun. Here’s how to approach each block:

1. Backdrop: Paint a brief picture of what’s happening in the world that’s relevant to the problem you’ve identified. This will likely be behavioural and/or cultural. E.g. More and more people are now doing X, or, technology Y is causing these changes in this industry. This helps set the scene and tone for your story. You can also use this paragraph to identify your relevant audience if appropriate.
2. Problem: Outline the problem you identified in the context of that cultural backdrop. Perhaps the emergence of a trend created a new problem no one seems to have noticed, or that other services in the market have not evolved to keep up with new needs or represent an emerging audience. Maybe an old problem that didn’t use to matter has suddenly become more critical to address. It might even be that a problem has arisen for a particular kind of person (in which case, this is where you bring your chosen audience into the story).
3. Point of view: There is a good reason this block sits at the heart of the diagram above. Your point of view is one of the most important and undervalued ideas at a business. It’s your lens onto the world. It’s the thing that led you to identify this particular problem and describe it in this particular way. Your point of view will also become the beating heart of your brand. Other companies may identify the same problem, or attempt a similar solution, but your point of view is what colours your approach to everything you tackle. It’s hard to copy because it’s hard to pretend one cares about the same things, in the same ways, as someone else. Your point of view is also the bridge between the problem at your solution; the reason you decided this would be the right answer.
4. Solution: Pretty-self explanatory, but what’s important is to write the solution with a sense of how your specific point of view colours and shapes it. For example, if you are frustrated that other services in the market undervalue craft and detail, you would dial these things up in your solution. At least, I hope you would—the solution should be true, so when described it should clearly be the answer to the problem you’ve decided matters.
5. Impact: This block is for describing what positive impact your solution has on your customers. Again, this should be truthful, so a good place to start is interviewing your customers. But it can also be a little aspirational. It’s up to you how far in the future to place this flag. Place it too far and it’s a lie. A good idea is to root it in reality but stretch it a little as a way to stretch your own efforts to make it 100% true. N.b. There is no value in lying to yourself, so get this balance right.

My advice is to keep each paragraph to about 30 words. Start with 50 if you find that too hard and then whittle down. It’s difficult, but it will force you to decide what matters most. You might even surprise yourself and see a disproportionate emphasis on something you didn’t previously think was as important. If nothing else, this exercise will reveal how clear you are about your story, and how aligned you are with your team and partners.

The exercise may look easy, but after your first attempt you’ll probably be frustrated that the emphasis feels off, or that you couldn’t keep the word count down. It will cause debate too. Agreement is relatively easy during a long conversation, but different perspectives are quickly exposed when words are removed. This is partly why this technique is useful. You will find out how clear you are and how aligned you are. You’ll develop a fresh appreciation for digging deep to uncover things that might have been buried along the way. It’s like therapy.

Maybe this exercise will reveal that there is no clear, or rousing point of view. Perhaps your solution was a logical response to a problem and you find it hard to decide what interesting point of view led you there. Now we’re in brand-building territory. Maybe it’s there but it needs to be pulled out from your subconscious. But I don’t have a tool for that. Well, I do, it’s me. But that’s a different conversation.

About the author:
Andy Whitlock is a brand strategist specialising in helping startups.
Here’s what founders say about him.