Questions that usually come upbefore the first conversation

Usually not when “nothing works”. On the contrary, they are often businesses with a strong product, capable people and genuine growth.

The problem emerges when growing complexity begins to carry a disproportionate cost: after rapid scaling, entry into a new market, an acquisition, a reorganisation, a change in business model, or when sales, product and operations are each making rational decisions that add up to the wrong result.

Another signal is a company with real value that different audiences — customers, investors, candidates or partners — cannot see clearly, or assess in a way that reflects the organisation’s actual capabilities.

Strong teams do not automatically create a coherent organisation.

Sales may be optimising its goals well, product its own, operations another set, and marketing yet another. Each decision may be entirely reasonable from one function’s point of view. The problem begins when the sum of those decisions no longer advances the company’s shared direction.

As an organisation grows, it becomes harder to coordinate through personal proximity, founder intuition or informal information flows alone. What worked with 30 people may not work with 150.

Our work is designed to prevent the number of competing interpretations of the company’s direction from growing as quickly as the company itself. That divergence has tangible consequences: slower decisions, higher coordination costs, and frustration among capable, committed people who can no longer operate effectively.

One signal is that the company has tried repeatedly to “improve communication”, yet the same problems keep returning.

It may revise sales presentations, internal communication, messaging or campaigns, while teams still understand priorities, product value or executive decisions differently. In that situation, communication is often revealing the problem rather than causing it.

Our diagnosis therefore looks not only at what the company says, but at the assumptions different teams are using, the information they rely on to make decisions, and where their goals begin to compete.

We are not a communications agency. We do not begin with campaigns, channels, content or visual identity. If the need is limited to the delivery of marketing or PR activity, we are usually not the right partner.

Nor do we replace a conventional strategy consultancy. We do not design a business strategy in isolation from the organisation expected to implement it.

We work between those fields: where a strategic decision must be understood correctly, translated into priorities across functions, and then made consistently visible in how the company sells, operates and communicates with the market.

No, although technology companies and complex B2B businesses are our natural area of specialism.

We know environments where the product is difficult to simplify, sales cycles are long, buying decisions involve several people, and success depends on technical experts, sales, marketing, operations and the executive team working together.

The same patterns also appear in manufacturing businesses, professional B2B services, organisations undergoing complex transformation, and family-owned companies navigating succession. The nature of the problem matters more to us than the sector.

It depends on the situation, but a Narrative House engagement cannot be delegated effectively to communications or marketing alone.

We usually need an executive who understands the problem, can influence the relevant decisions and can give the work a clear mandate. We also involve representatives of the functions directly affected — for example sales, product, operations, marketing or HR.

This does not mean involving the whole organisation in a series of workshops. It means seeing the issue from several perspectives and reaching the points where different interpretations are actually being created.

No. The scope should reflect where the problem is being created, not the size of the company.

Sometimes that means working across the organisation. In other cases, the engagement may focus on one large function, several functions that must work closely together, or the management layer alone.

For example, operational teams may collaborate reasonably well while their managers work to different priorities, interpret executive decisions differently or cannot agree where accountability sits. The problem then is not “communication between teams”, but how decisions are agreed and translated into day-to-day work.

Part of the diagnosis is to define the right scope. We do not involve the whole company when the problem can be addressed within one area or in the working relationship between a small number of leaders.

We begin with diagnosis. We speak with key people, review materials and processes, and examine how decisions are made and where functions meet each other and the market.

We then separate visible symptoms from the mechanisms producing them. If three teams describe the same product differently, standardising the presentation may not solve the issue. First, we need to understand why each team defines its value differently.

The next stage is to agree the critical assumptions and translate them into the areas where divergence creates a real cost. Depending on the engagement, this may involve changes to the sales process, cross-functional working practices, materials, decision standards, internal communication or market presence.

We do not stop at a recommendations deck. We can lead implementation directly, work alongside the client team, or support the leaders accountable for the change. The aim is not to create a permanent dependency on consultants; the organisation should ultimately be able to sustain the new way of working itself.

Where necessary, the work also extends beyond the executive team. We support managers responsible for turning agreements into day-to-day decisions, as well as teams directly affected by the change. We can also work one-to-one with selected leaders as mentors or strategic sparring partners during the change.

For new principles to work in practice, they must be understood and applied wherever day-to-day decisions are made. Implementation may therefore involve not only the executive team, but also the management layer and specific teams.

Yes. In some situations, the organisational issue does not require work with an entire team, but focused support for a leader responsible for a change, cross-functional cooperation or decisions in a particularly complex area.

We can work one-to-one as mentors or strategic sparring partners: helping the leader structure the situation, prepare decisions, examine the issue from several perspectives, and translate executive agreements into the way their team operates.

This may be a focused standalone engagement or part of a broader Narrative House project. It does not replace the manager’s accountability for decisions. It provides an external perspective and a partner with whom they can work through issues that are not always easy to discuss openly inside the organisation.

It depends on the situation, which is why we do not sell a single standard package of documents.

The output may include agreed decision principles, clarified positioning, process changes, a cross-functional operating model, sales or market materials, recommendations on roles and accountability, or standards for internal communication.

Documentation matters, but it is not the purpose of the engagement. We want the change to be visible in how the organisation operates: decisions are made more effectively, teams do not return to the same conflicts, and key functions work from agreed principles rather than separate interpretations.

The duration depends on the scope of the problem and the scale of the organisation. Sometimes a short, focused intervention in one area, between several functions or at a specific management level is enough. Engagements involving several parts of the organisation and implementation support require more time. We agree the scope and working rhythm after the initial conversation and diagnosis of the situation.

Not every organisational change can be reduced honestly to a single KPI, so we agree how impact will be assessed at the beginning of the engagement.

Depending on the situation, this may include the progress of the sales process, fewer unnecessary iterations and repeated debates, decision time, inventory levels or the quality of cross-functional cooperation, as well as qualitative evidence of changes in how leaders and teams operate.

We do not attribute to Narrative House outcomes that were materially shaped by other factors. We are interested in demonstrating a credible link between the work and a specific change, not in manufacturing an attractive case study at any cost.

We begin with a 30-minute diagnostic conversation with someone who understands the issue and can influence how it is addressed. This is not a services presentation or a compressed audit carried out in the first meeting. We want to understand the situation, establish whether the issue genuinely sits within our field of work, and assess what kind of engagement might make sense.

If there is a sound basis for further work, we propose the next step and the scope of diagnosis. If the issue requires a different kind of expertise, we say so directly.

If the primary need is content production, an advertising campaign, social media management, a brand redesign or ongoing PR support, there are partners better suited to that work.

We are also unlikely to be the right choice when the problem has already been clearly diagnosed and fully worked through, and the remaining need is purely technical implementation of a new process or tool.

Our work is most valuable when the issue cuts across several functions, its cause is not obvious, or repeated point solutions have failed to produce a lasting change.