Crafting Impactful Narratives for Leadership and Growth: Insights from Guillaume Wiatr

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:00

So a narrative is a choice.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:01

A narrative is a point of view.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:03

It's the way you look at reality, it's the way you, understand

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:07

what is happening around you.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:08

A narrative is a system of stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:10

And when you start connecting those stories together, like connecting your

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:14

origin story with what you do now, then incredible things can happen.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:00:20

Um, uh,

Tim Winders: 00:00:32

In the ever evolving world of professional services.

Tim Winders: 00:00:34

How do leaders cut through the noise, align their teams

Tim Winders: 00:00:39

and drive genuine innovation.

Tim Winders: 00:00:42

Welcome to today's episode of seek, go create, where we delve into

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the art and science of creating compelling business narratives.

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With Guillaume Viat, the mastermind behind the strategic narrative methodology.

Tim Winders: 00:00:57

Guillaume, the founder of MetaHelm has revolutionized how CEOs, founders,

Tim Winders: 00:01:02

and leadership teams of professional services firms clarify their vision,

Tim Winders: 00:01:07

differentiate their business, and inspire both their teams and the market.

Tim Winders: 00:01:13

Through his unique approach, he has guided prominent organizations and leaders,

Tim Winders: 00:01:16

including those from Alaska airlines, the Gates foundation, and Google towards

Tim Winders: 00:01:21

greater focus, traction, and innovation.

Tim Winders: 00:01:25

Guillaume, welcome to SeatGoCreate.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:01:29

Hello team.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:01:30

It's so good to be here with you.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:01:32

It's

Tim Winders: 00:01:33

It is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:01:33

having,

Tim Winders: 00:01:34

I'm glad you're here too.

Tim Winders: 00:01:35

We had a great little conversation before we clicked record.

Tim Winders: 00:01:37

And I even said, stop, I've got to get the recorder going.

Tim Winders: 00:01:40

This is, this is some good information.

Tim Winders: 00:01:43

And I'm, I'm going to start with like my little, I call it a little

Tim Winders: 00:01:46

wimpy icebreaker thing, but I think it's an important question.

Tim Winders: 00:01:50

And that is if someone asks you with the breadth that you've got, the background,

Tim Winders: 00:01:55

you've got all that you do, if you just bump into someone, let's say outside of a.

Tim Winders: 00:02:01

Business environment, and they ask you what you do, what do you tell them?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:10

I'll tell them and I'm an explorer and I explore the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:13

meaning of life through business.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:17

That's really, this really, it's been, it's been my narrative since I was a kid.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:21

I wanted to be an expert in the literal sense of things, you know, like

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:25

packing everything in your backpack and going to places you don't know.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:29

Exotic.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:31

unknown territories, uncharted territories, which I did

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:34

for, for a while in my life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:36

I was lucky enough to travel to many countries.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:39

but I think now, and I, interestingly, I'm very sedentary now.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:42

I'm, I'm French, but I'm established in Seattle since 2008.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:46

And, I, I don't travel very much, but I do explore a lot more.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:52

I like, you know, I explore the meaning of life for me, for my clients, for

Guillaume Waitr: 00:02:57

my family through business because that's kind of how I, I, I spend most

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:04

of my time doing business things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:05

But for me, business is a very multifaceted.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:11

Concept, and I am an artist as well.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:14

I am, obviously, a French native speaker, but an exo, what's called an

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:19

exophonic writer, somebody who writes in their, second or third language.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:23

So I write in English, you know, and I explore, what I do through all

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:28

sorts of practices, like creative practices, spiritual practices.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:32

practices, all sorts of things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:34

So, people say, Oh, I mean, you're, you're such a Renaissance man.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:37

You Jack, you're a Jack of all trade.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:39

You, you can, you're, you're talented at so many things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:41

And it's because from the get go, I've always had this idea that life

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:45

is so rich, so abundant that it would be, it would be a shame not

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:50

to try a bunch of things, but my.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:53

My red thread, you know, my direction is, is really that idea of alignment

Guillaume Waitr: 00:03:58

between what you do as a professional and, and the impact you want to have.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:04:07

did I answer the question?

Tim Winders: 00:04:09

I, you did, you, you gave me a lot of information that could move us in

Tim Winders: 00:04:15

different directions than the, you know, three questions that I wrote down that

Tim Winders: 00:04:18

I might want to ask, but the word that.

Tim Winders: 00:04:22

The word that jumped out at me is curiosity and I have, I've found that

Tim Winders: 00:04:31

the age that I'm at, I think as I prep for this question, that's going

Tim Winders: 00:04:36

to be around curiosity, I have kind of been similar from a young age.

Tim Winders: 00:04:43

There were a lot of things.

Tim Winders: 00:04:44

I never have called myself an artist, but yet I've recently written a novel.

Tim Winders: 00:04:48

And I, I think what we're doing here is a certain degree of art.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:04:52

It is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:04:52

Yeah,

Tim Winders: 00:04:53

you know, having conversations and trying to get

Tim Winders: 00:04:55

a story or, or a narrative, we're going to weave this word narrative

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into what we're doing shortly.

Tim Winders: 00:05:01

But it, it's, it's fascinating to me that the negative.

Tim Winders: 00:05:06

of the incredibly positive way that you said what you did, which is a

Tim Winders: 00:05:10

Renaissance man, someone who's talented and skilled, skilled in many areas.

Tim Winders: 00:05:15

I had someone who called himself a polymath that I interviewed, that they're

Tim Winders: 00:05:19

expert in so many different areas.

Tim Winders: 00:05:23

The negative of it for some people could be, That they are,

Tim Winders: 00:05:28

and this is not a bad thing.

Tim Winders: 00:05:30

There's some people that they do one thing well, their entire life at times.

Tim Winders: 00:05:36

I'm not envious of them, but I look at them and then go, huh, wonder

Tim Winders: 00:05:39

what that would be like, because they will often criticize me and you

Tim Winders: 00:05:45

and say, are you struggling to find something you're really good at?

Tim Winders: 00:05:51

Or that you really want to do.

Tim Winders: 00:05:52

That's the negative.

Tim Winders: 00:05:54

And so I'll sort of ask that.

Tim Winders: 00:05:56

Have you ever had someone say, Guillaume, can't you just find something

Tim Winders: 00:06:01

that you can do and stick with it?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:04

Oh yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:04

My parents,

Tim Winders: 00:06:05

respond when people say that to you?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:07

my parents saying so many times yours too.

Tim Winders: 00:06:13

I mean, my early on in my corporate, early on in my corporate

Tim Winders: 00:06:16

career, I worked corporate for a few years when I came out of university

Tim Winders: 00:06:19

at Georgia Tech as an engineer.

Tim Winders: 00:06:21

And I was one of these at about every nine months.

Tim Winders: 00:06:24

In a very structured stayed environment of corporate, it was in

Tim Winders: 00:06:30

the telecommunications industry that was a hundred years old at the time.

Tim Winders: 00:06:33

Most people went in, stayed there, worked forever.

Tim Winders: 00:06:36

Well, in the nine years I was there, I had 10 different jobs, roles, et cetera.

Tim Winders: 00:06:41

and and my mother literally said at one point, is there nothing you

Tim Winders: 00:06:46

could find that you can do there?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:50

Yeah, it's because maybe, maybe it's something that,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:53

and as a, as a dad of two boys, you know, it's probably something that

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:56

would, that would scare me a bit.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:06:58

You know, so, so we'll, we'll see their, their teenagers still.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:01

So we'll see in a few years, if they, if they keep looking for

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:04

different things, I might experience the same, the same anxiety.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:07

My parents told me, yeah, isn't there something you want to settle on and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:12

just do for the rest of your life?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:14

And I said, no, I'm going to be like that for a long time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:18

But now outside of that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:20

I didn't get too much.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:22

I didn't receive too much criticism from my friends or colleagues.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:26

and, and, and yet, because the, you know, I heard this from the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:30

parental voice, it still made me quite uncomfortable until I think I,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:36

I was able to figure something out.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:38

And the, and that's, that's the following is that you don't have

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:42

to, Specialize and niche down your whole life into something, but what

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:49

so you, you can stay very diverse.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:51

You can, you can explore very different and maybe throughout your life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:54

You know, there are seasons in life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:07:56

There are things you can do and can do, at different times.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:00

And so, but, but you may want to think about specializing specific

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:05

moments or areas of your life or your, of your, or your business journey.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:10

and in fact, you know, the, the, the, the, some of the most successful

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:15

entrepreneurs, if you look at their portfolio of businesses, and it's

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:19

a very wide range of things, but each businesses is each business.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:24

is highly specialized in something.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:27

So you introduced me as the, as the principal and founder of Metahelm and that

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:32

business is highly specialized in business strategy for professional services firms.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:37

That's all I do.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:39

Nothing else.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:40

and then, you know, even within that buckets, I, I'm not going to go into

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:44

details now, but there are very, very specific things that I, I think I'm

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:47

really good at and others that I won't do, but metahelm is not my whole life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:53

Fortunately, I have, I have many other things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:56

So, so that's how I see it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:08:58

I hope this helps, you know, people who listen to us also.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:02

Maybe, settle with that question, which you're right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:05

It's a difficult question and there's a lot of criticism.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:08

There's a lot of debate.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:10

Oh yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:10

You should need to, no, you should stay a generalist.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:13

I advise my clients for the business that I hope that I

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:17

help them with to specialize.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:19

And there are many different ways to specialize, not just an

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:22

industry or, or, or one process.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:25

There's different ways to do that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:27

and that's, that's always keeping in mind that they're more than that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:34

They're way more than that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:35

And that's okay to explore other things.

Tim Winders: 00:09:38

Hmm.

Tim Winders: 00:09:39

So that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:09:40

That's how I reconciled it for me.

Tim Winders: 00:09:43

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:09:43

And, and, and, so this is, I guess something, I think this

Tim Winders: 00:09:48

is very valuable for a number of people, for the person that.

Tim Winders: 00:09:55

Might be feeling as if they're in one place and they hear two guys

Tim Winders: 00:10:02

talk about all these different things, explore, adventure, being

Tim Winders: 00:10:06

curious and all that kind of stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:10:07

And so I want, I want that person to stick around because I believe

Tim Winders: 00:10:11

there's value for, for what they do, because in many ways I admire that.

Tim Winders: 00:10:17

As much, sometimes if not more than the way, the way we have discussed we are.

Tim Winders: 00:10:23

But one of the things I noticed about me, and this is, I'll pose

Tim Winders: 00:10:26

this in the form of a question.

Tim Winders: 00:10:27

I noticed early on in my life, it was probably the seasons, you mentioned

Tim Winders: 00:10:33

this word seasons, I love that word, that I was finding who I was.

Tim Winders: 00:10:39

I was identifying, I was identifying the things that I

Tim Winders: 00:10:43

definitely wasn't going to do.

Tim Winders: 00:10:46

And, and I would find myself getting bored.

Tim Winders: 00:10:49

And, and, you know, you use the word explorer and explorer basically is

Tim Winders: 00:10:55

someone who goes out, but, but like you said, they could be someone close.

Tim Winders: 00:11:00

So the question I've got is, do you ever find yourself getting bored?

Tim Winders: 00:11:04

And if you don't currently, did you in the past and how have you reconciled that?

Tim Winders: 00:11:09

If that was the case, just, you know, boards, like, you know what?

Tim Winders: 00:11:11

This is not exciting me.

Tim Winders: 00:11:15

This is not a good narrative for me, whatever I need to do something else.

Tim Winders: 00:11:19

How did you address that?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:20

You mean bored in general?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:22

Because I, I, or, or bored because I get bored every day with a bunch of

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:25

stuff that I have to, I have to, to do.

Tim Winders: 00:11:30

I'll give it, I'll let you take it.

Tim Winders: 00:11:32

I'll, I'll let you take it.

Tim Winders: 00:11:32

However you want to take it for what go big picture or go granular day to day.

Tim Winders: 00:11:37

Either way

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:39

Yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:39

well, I did, I did, I was definitely, generally bored in my life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:44

I can think of a few times, you know, and then I triggered change.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:47

I said, Oh, let's change, let's change, country.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:50

For instance, my wife is from Seattle.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:52

So she's.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:53

She's the one who kind of dragged me over, but we used to live in

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:56

France and, I was bored with France.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:11:58

I wanted to change and she was homesick.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:01

So good timing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:02

They, you know, let's shift this.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:04

let me tell you, it was not boring after that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:07

It was very, very intense and exciting for me.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:10

And so, so yes, so, so, so I, I, in general, am I bored right now?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:17

No.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:17

this is a very, very exciting, time of my life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:20

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm really, really, you know, thrilled with the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:24

amount of conversations that I have, the type of work that I do.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:27

I was, Making a list the other day of all the topics and the experts I work with

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:33

and it ranges from somebody who's like a leading expert in the resilience, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:38

know, human resilience all the way to people who create better ways to cool.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:45

high performance computers.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:46

That's that, that's a really, really critical thing right now is to

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:49

increase power, computing power.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:51

You have to call them in a way more effective and, and, and a sustainable way.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:56

I work with people who help, highly sensitive people.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:12:59

I'm, I was just on a call, two days ago with somebody in Saudi Arabia who wants

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:04

to create a community for entrepreneurs.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:07

I mean.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:08

I don't have time to get bored with all those topics.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:10

It really, really fits my curiosity now on a date on a day to day basis.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:14

I do.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:15

Yeah, there's stuff that I'm not excited, you know, of doing in, in doing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:18

And, and, my, my son, last, this weekend we were driving and he's like,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:22

dad, I'm really bored with school.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:24

I feel like, you know, I just.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:25

Push through the week, and I, I try to do my best, but it's really, really boring.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:30

And I say, well, maybe there is a, there's a learning there, there's a lesson.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:33

Maybe the, maybe it's here to teach you that not everything in life is always

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:36

exciting and you have to learn to do the things that you must do, you know,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:42

to a certain extent and deal with that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:45

So, you know, I, I publish a lot of things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:48

I, you know, I do a lot of videos.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:49

I do a lot of writing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:50

I, I, I, I interact with the outside world and sometimes.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:55

Am I excited?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:56

No, not at all.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:58

I'm bored.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:13:59

I mean, I'm like, nah, yeah, gotta do this thing, but I do it anyways.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:06

I know that 10 seconds later I get really, really thrilled, really excited.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:13

Oh my gosh, yes.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:13

I could talk about this.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:14

I could say this.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:15

I could do that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:15

I could create, I could draw, I could, you know, you name it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:19

So that's my relationship with boredom.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:21

And may, maybe I did.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:22

I didn't define boredom as the same as way, the same way as you do.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:26

But that's kind of my relationship.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:14:28

Yeah, that's my

Tim Winders: 00:14:29

that's good.

Tim Winders: 00:14:30

Before I hit record, you mentioned to me that you had gone back and

Tim Winders: 00:14:37

listened to the origin story.

Tim Winders: 00:14:39

And, and I gave you a little video tour of our RV here, which gave

Tim Winders: 00:14:44

you a little glimpse into our life.

Tim Winders: 00:14:47

And I'm always fascinated because it is interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:14:50

There are a number of people that I think they can't learn.

Tim Winders: 00:14:56

Much about me, my narrative, who I am, unless they listen to that.

Tim Winders: 00:15:01

And your comment was similar or relatable or something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:15:06

I don't know the exact words.

Tim Winders: 00:15:08

And so I think what I'd love to do now is maybe what is, what is that?

Tim Winders: 00:15:15

origin story that you feel is pertinent to share as we move into this discussion

Tim Winders: 00:15:21

about strategic narrative here.

Tim Winders: 00:15:22

What is, and one of the things we do not do here, we love the tactical, we

Tim Winders: 00:15:26

love strategic, but we also love that identity and core of who people are,

Tim Winders: 00:15:31

which comes from situations like that.

Tim Winders: 00:15:35

So that's me giving you permission to share whatever as light or

Tim Winders: 00:15:40

as deep as you would like to.

Tim Winders: 00:15:42

We don't.

Tim Winders: 00:15:43

We don't use words like failure.

Tim Winders: 00:15:45

We call them experiences.

Tim Winders: 00:15:47

It's part of who we are.

Tim Winders: 00:15:48

So what's in, what's part of your, or your origin story that is

Tim Winders: 00:15:53

pertinent to the conversation here?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:15:57

So, when I saw that, you know, in, I listened to

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:00

your podcast and I, I picked up, there is an origin story episode.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:03

Then you mentioned it like, Oh, where is that episode?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:05

So I had to scroll down on my, I think I was on Spotify.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:08

Listen, scroll that all the way, all the way, all the way.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:10

Like, Oh, there is that episode to me.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:11

That's the most, one of the most interesting facets of a narrative

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:15

is where people come from now.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:17

and, and, or, you know, there's potentially In my, in my journey,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:23

several moments that I would call triggering events or, you know, that

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:27

could qualify for an origin story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:30

And it all depends on how you frame it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:33

And you just, you just did something, which is you, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:36

framed, a story with options.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:38

You gave people a possibility just a minute ago by saying

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:41

there's no, there is no failure.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:43

There's just learning is that, I think that's what you said.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:46

Right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:46

so.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:48

Current.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:48

So I'll tell you my origin story as it relates to what I'm doing now.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:53

But as, as it relates to other things in my life, maybe there are other moments in

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:56

my life that could be the origin story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:16:58

So I just, I just want to say that because it's an exercise in, relativity.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:03

it's one of the key exercises I help my clients actually, work on and develop

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:07

because through that they unearth so much.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:12

It's really, you know, there's a famous quote by, I don't know, I can't remember

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:16

who, but you can't predict the future.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:18

The only way to predict the future is to look through the past because

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:21

there is nothing to look at in the future unless you have a crystal ball.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:26

I don't have one.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:27

So my origin story is about when I came to the, there's two moments,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:33

first of all, working in corporations.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:37

Working corporations, I thought that if I was really bored, Tim, I was really,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:44

really bored and, and, and, and, I remember this, this day when, I was

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:49

a young consultant, it was probably around the late nineties, early 2000,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:53

I was brought on to a large, energy company in France called Total.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:17:58

and that brought me on because for somehow randomly, I happen to be very,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:03

knowledgeable about the purchasing, tool that they had, and they were

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:08

stuck on a project and I'll make this part of this part of my origin story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:12

That's the first part short, but I kicked off the meeting.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:16

I'm a young consultant, probably 27, 28.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:18

I'm sitting in this room with everyone, probably double my age.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:22

running, you know, this large, very, very large company and they all expect

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:26

from me this technical expertise.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:28

And in the first 15 to 30 minutes, I noticed that the problem

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:32

is not the lack of expertise.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:33

The problem is these guys don't listen to each other.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:36

They're misaligned.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:37

They, you know, they use different terms and acronyms and.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:40

It's, it's an ego festival, like I know more than you and I can do, and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:45

I can say this jargon better than you.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:47

And so it's like, I'm like, huh, no wonder this project is stuck.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:51

And I, I derail my own agenda and say, Hey guys, you know, I, you know, I had

Guillaume Waitr: 00:18:56

a whole agenda today, but do you mind if we do this quick exercise, which

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:00

consists of grabbing a piece of paper and drawing what the project looks like.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:04

Everyone here around the room grabs a piece of letter size, you know, piece

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:08

of paper and a pen and draws a project.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:11

Which after a few seconds of looking at me with googly eyes, they go, okay,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:16

I guess if the cons if the consultant say, so we'll do it, but not convinced

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:22

they did it, we posted the drawings and the drawings did the rest.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:26

Like they could see by themselves without me saying anything, why

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:31

the project was completely stuck.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:35

So there was a first moment in my life where I'm like, okay, I probably should

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:40

my intuition more and my creativity more.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:44

And really pay attention to human dynamics, which I just did now.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:48

I was terrified him.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:49

I thought they were going to fire me right away, which at the, at

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:52

this, at this time and age in my life would have been completely

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:56

dramatic and, and the project went on.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:19:59

It was actually very successful.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:01

Two years later, they told me, Oh, we didn't, we never told you, but

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:05

you know, before you, we had fired to be consulting for us because they

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:07

couldn't, make us work together.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:11

So it was the first element then 15 years later about, sorry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:14

yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:15

What was that?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:16

Would that, that would be about 15 years?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:18

No, sorry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:18

eight years later, my wife is American and I moved to the United States and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:24

I move in this, end of July of 2008.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:27

my plan is, hey, I know no one, so picture this, I can't, I can barely,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:33

you know, I can speak English with this very French accent a little bit.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:38

I don't know anyone.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:39

And my wonderful plan is to get hired as a management consultant in the Seattle area.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:45

And two weeks after I come here, there's no job for me.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:50

So I had to reinvent myself.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:52

We can't pay the bills.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:54

My wife's a teacher.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:55

We have our first baby.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:20:57

And I am here with this, you know, pretty fancy background, you know, big firms, big

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:06

names in France that no one knows here.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:09

And I'm faced with this challenge of what do you do now?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:12

Do you go back to France?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:14

Do you stay here?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:15

Do you, what's going on?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:16

You know, you're not making any money.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:19

I can't last more maybe than a month with what I have in savings.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:24

And because it's an expensive move that I paid, you know, entirely out of my pocket.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:32

So it was a humbling moment.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:33

and I know you applied to McDonald's.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:36

team, back, you had to apply to McDonald's right in the early

Tim Winders: 00:21:39

I tried, they didn't want me.

Tim Winders: 00:21:41

I don't know why I couldn't even get the application in.

Tim Winders: 00:21:43

And I, anyway, yes,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:46

and I.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:47

yeah, so, so, so humbling moments similar to yours.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:51

And I just applied to local pharmacy, to get a job as a,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:55

you know, handyman, janitor.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:57

I was, then I was doing yard work.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:21:58

I was doing a little tutoring and it was the best thing that happened

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:02

in my life because really after that, what I noticed is that people

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:06

could not care less about my resume.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:09

What they really want to hear is how did I survive and went through this

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:14

financial crisis we all went through here.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:17

That was the narrative thereafter.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:19

And they noticed that my narrative wasn't, was it by resilience, creativity,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:24

letting go of the ego and just do what's right for, you know, for the time being.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:29

And they, they.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:31

And then they really, they really appreciated that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:33

And then as soon as, so I did all sorts of things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:36

And, I worked in retail.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:37

I learned so much in retail.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:38

I learned the English language, a bunch of slang terms too,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:42

that was interesting for me.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:43

So I explored a bunch.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:45

And then after that, I go back to consulting and that's the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:49

only thing people cared about.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:50

Like, how did you make it through this, through these times?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:54

Why are you coming from France?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:56

What are you doing here?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:58

Tell us about that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:22:59

And.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:00

I had the chance to, to, to, to frame my narrative from the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:05

perspective of my values versus telling them, Oh yeah, I failed.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:10

I plan to come here and be successful right away.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:13

And that didn't work out.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:15

So a narrative is a choice.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:16

A narrative is a point of view.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:19

It's the way you look at reality, you know, it's, it's the way you, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:23

understand what is happening around you.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:25

A narrative is a system of stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:27

And when you start connecting those stories together, like connecting your

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:31

origin story with what you do now, then incredible things can happen.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:36

Your narrative becomes a set of possibilities becomes more.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:41

Open, it becomes a platform for you to communicate with people more effectively.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:46

So it's a common language with, you know, with people, around you and so on.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:50

So I'll pause here.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:23:51

I

Tim Winders: 00:23:54

here thinking someone listening in might go, okay, both

Tim Winders: 00:23:58

these, both these guys went through something that would have had some pain.

Tim Winders: 00:24:03

I'm sure that, you know, there's some humbling effect.

Tim Winders: 00:24:08

There's some things that this is the way my wife and I worded.

Tim Winders: 00:24:12

I wouldn't wish our journey on anyone else, but I'm so

Tim Winders: 00:24:15

thankful that we went through it.

Tim Winders: 00:24:17

Does it have to have a valley?

Tim Winders: 00:24:18

Does it have to have a, it can't all be good.

Tim Winders: 00:24:23

Can it, or, I mean, are there any rules to this big narrative?

Tim Winders: 00:24:27

We're, and I want to, we're going to go a little bit deeper, but

Tim Winders: 00:24:30

let's talk big picture right now.

Tim Winders: 00:24:32

Are there any rules like, you know, there's gotta be a downfall.

Tim Winders: 00:24:35

There's gotta be something ugly.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:37

don't have the answer to this question, Tim.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:39

I'm still exploring.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:40

I would say as of today, March, 2024, I would lean towards, I'm going to try

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:46

to say, I don't think there is a role.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:48

I have heard origin story that are actually very positive.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:24:52

Um, I, I, I think the principle is, maybe, some sort of epiphany or aha

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:00

moment and, maybe it's human nature that we have these through difficult times.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:06

but that's a good question.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:07

That's actually, maybe a research topic that I should call

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:10

somebody out there should do.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:13

Maybe somebody has done that work already.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:25:15

That's a very good question.

Tim Winders: 00:25:16

Well, let me, I want to give you a little bit of data for it, and I

Tim Winders: 00:25:19

don't think we'll come up with the answer,

Tim Winders: 00:25:21

but I did a, when I, when I, when I wrote a novel a few years back, I did a pseudo.

Tim Winders: 00:25:30

PR type tour that ended up being virtual, not because of COVID and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:25:36

But I, I got on often, I would get on big zoom calls that had a lot of media people.

Tim Winders: 00:25:45

And we made our pitch three minutes to be on their show, their publication.

Tim Winders: 00:25:51

I mean, some of these were national television shows, things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:25:54

And, and that was a little bit out of reach of a lot of us that were there,

Tim Winders: 00:25:58

but they were, there were people there.

Tim Winders: 00:26:01

And, and Guillaume, I, I noticed that when I told the story that I like to

Tim Winders: 00:26:08

tell, which is, at that time I'm a strategic coach, I work with leaders

Tim Winders: 00:26:12

and businesses, et cetera, and all.

Tim Winders: 00:26:15

I wouldn't see people falling asleep, but I sensed it was just extremely boring.

Tim Winders: 00:26:21

To most of them, but when I told him the story that we had three seven

Tim Winders: 00:26:26

figure companies in 2008, and by 2013, we were homeless and bankrupt.

Tim Winders: 00:26:31

It was like, they perked up immediately and wanted to know more

Tim Winders: 00:26:33

and said, Oh, you'd be perfect.

Tim Winders: 00:26:34

And so when I found myself, and this is what I had to caution myself, I found

Tim Winders: 00:26:40

myself repeating that over and over.

Tim Winders: 00:26:42

I had like 80 pitches that I did within a course of a few days.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:26:47

Mm

Tim Winders: 00:26:47

And when I told my other story, crickets, nothing, but when I told

Tim Winders: 00:26:52

that story and what I was concerned was, is that I was falling into a click bait.

Tim Winders: 00:26:59

It was really my story.

Tim Winders: 00:27:00

I am not, that's not the story.

Tim Winders: 00:27:02

There's a lot more to it.

Tim Winders: 00:27:02

You know, there's a lot more to that story and that, that hook,

Tim Winders: 00:27:06

I call it click bait sometimes.

Tim Winders: 00:27:11

And, and at times I wonder if we start molding those narratives, maybe even

Tim Winders: 00:27:16

exaggerate, embellish to make them fit what social media, what all is,

Tim Winders: 00:27:23

that might be a different question.

Tim Winders: 00:27:24

I'll see if I just mentioned that.

Tim Winders: 00:27:26

Do you, what's your response?

Tim Winders: 00:27:27

I don't even know if that's a question or anything.

Tim Winders: 00:27:28

I would just commenting.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:30

Everything you said is true.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:31

We shape narratives, for, to, to our advantage.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:34

The reason why, the human species is still around for now.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:38

is because we have an ability to do what animals can do, which is imagine things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:45

And we, you know, and we, we imagine terrible things or great things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:49

And we, we stretch the truth and we spin off things to our advantage.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:54

We, you know, we, we do that all the time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:56

It's human nature.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:27:57

so, so the reasons why Religions exist and are able to gather people in such

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:04

powerful movements is because we believe in, in stories that are what they are.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:12

They're, some of them, I believe are true, some of them are not.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:15

They're completely fictitious, but we still need them.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:20

We, this, it's, it's, it is an existential thing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:23

So the fact that you go on those, on those calls and pitches and people say,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:27

Hey, we want that piece, that narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:29

Because it works in your favor and works in their favor.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:34

And yes, they're going to get more, more clicks and baits, sorry, clicks.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:37

And, and, and, and it's going to be more compelling.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:40

so it's a little bit like, a Trojan horse to the mind and hearts.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:45

And then, and then you do what you want to do and need to do with it,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:49

hopefully for positive intentions, right?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:52

But some people do, do it also for negative stuff and, and it's

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:56

called, it's called propaganda.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:28:59

And, and, and they do it to trigger wars and, and dominate and,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:03

and create more arms than good.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:04

So, But that's, that's all a question of values of it's all subjective after that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:08

So by definition, what you did here is you came across, Hey, yeah, we could

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:13

tell, we, I could tell so many stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:16

That's what I hear all the time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:17

Like, you know, my clients go, Oh, I want to be able to tell my story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:20

And I go, okay, which one?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:22

Well, my story, I go, well, you, you, you could tell like a thousand stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:27

Which one are we going to work on?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:29

What's going to be the most important to you?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:31

Right?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:32

So you are in a situation where.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:35

You could tell a set of stories and the PR people say, no, we want this one.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:29:42

There's nothing wrong with that.

Tim Winders: 00:29:43

So one of the things I just had a visual that is so interesting with

Tim Winders: 00:29:49

you being from the country of France.

Tim Winders: 00:29:53

I, I, I think the way I look at that story.

Tim Winders: 00:29:58

Is the equivalent of June 6th, 1944, when the allied forces were made the

Tim Winders: 00:30:07

decision with, you know, Eisenhower and the others to come across the channel and

Tim Winders: 00:30:13

re establish a presence in the North of France, Normandy region and all of that.

Tim Winders: 00:30:19

And I'm a big fan of history and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:30:21

So this is, I almost can tear up when I discuss this day in history.

Tim Winders: 00:30:28

And I, and I love it that I'm speaking with someone who has an origin from, from

Tim Winders: 00:30:32

that region, or at least that country

Guillaume Waitr: 00:30:34

And I, I am, I am from that region team, by the way.

Tim Winders: 00:30:38

it's, it's much more of a heart message to me.

Tim Winders: 00:30:41

So the way I perceive that portion of my narrative is the equivalent of what

Tim Winders: 00:30:48

Eisenhower said that they were going to do before they put the troops on.

Tim Winders: 00:30:52

They were going to shell, shell, shell to soften the

Tim Winders: 00:30:56

beachhead so that it would allow.

Tim Winders: 00:30:59

The troops to come in with limited loss, et cetera.

Tim Winders: 00:31:05

There was a lot of loss.

Tim Winders: 00:31:06

There was a lot that went on.

Tim Winders: 00:31:07

I consider that portion, that really short condensed portion of my narrative

Tim Winders: 00:31:13

as softening the beachhead so that there's more of an opening for me to.

Tim Winders: 00:31:18

Go in and do what I believe I need to do, which is discuss strategy,

Tim Winders: 00:31:23

discuss, you know, what can we do with the leadership circles?

Tim Winders: 00:31:26

And, and it did open up doors.

Tim Winders: 00:31:28

I mean, people love that story.

Tim Winders: 00:31:29

And then they sell, by the way, now, what do you, tell me more

Tim Winders: 00:31:31

about what you do and how you help companies and how you help leaders.

Tim Winders: 00:31:35

So, anyway, that thoughts.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:39

Well, I, I think, you know, we, we want to work with people

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:42

who we can, relate to or connect with.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:45

I mean, that's what we do in a podcast like that, by the way.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:48

And, And the way we do this is by, is by sharing the truth from our perspective

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:54

and seeing what resonates with them.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:31:56

So when people hear your story of success and struggle and success

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:01

again, ups and downs, you know, it portrays something, it portrays life.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:06

in fact, you know, the, if we want to measure your heartbeat and you look at

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:10

this instrument, I don't know in English what the name for the instruments, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:13

know, it's a black screen with a little green dot it's ups and downs all the time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:18

Fortunately, you're alive because you know, there's moments of activity and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:22

moments of rest and the same goes for your, for your life story is the same.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:26

So we want to, we want to relate to somebody who's alive.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:29

that's the, that's the nature of our society.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:31

That's, that's the nature of who we are.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:32:34

so I guess that's probably why that's my, that would be my read on

Tim Winders: 00:32:39

so it's.

Tim Winders: 00:32:40

Yeah, I want to let, let's kind of go a layer or two down and discuss what

Tim Winders: 00:32:46

you've titled as strategic narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:32:51

And there, there are a couple of words that are really fascinating to me.

Tim Winders: 00:32:55

The word strategic, if one looks at the strength finders, my

Tim Winders: 00:32:59

number one strength is strategic.

Tim Winders: 00:33:03

And, you know, there was a period of time where I called myself a strategic coach.

Tim Winders: 00:33:08

and, and till there was an organization called strategic coach that said,

Tim Winders: 00:33:13

we'd rather you not use that name.

Tim Winders: 00:33:14

We had some discussions about that and which I was fine with, you know,

Tim Winders: 00:33:18

but tell me about the two words.

Tim Winders: 00:33:21

Strategic and narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:33:24

And that's going to be kind of our gateway to begin moving in.

Tim Winders: 00:33:27

And as in, in, in, in the time that we have, there's a few layers down that

Tim Winders: 00:33:31

I want to keep going as far as we can.

Tim Winders: 00:33:33

And then people can get more information in other ways, but strategic narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:39

I'll start with the second word narrative,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:41

which I, I make a difference between a story and a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:44

First of all, most people, use them interchangeably rightfully.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:48

So if you look in a basic dictionary, you'll see it's pretty much the same

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:52

definition, but there is one element that a narrative, brings in addition to

Guillaume Waitr: 00:33:57

a story, which is what I said earlier, a narrative is, It's a way to look at

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:01

things, you know, and it's, you, you probably caught this on, in conversations

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:05

or on TV, we, you know, especially the, the, the journalists say very often,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:09

Oh, the narrative about our country, the narrative about society, the narrative

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:13

about this and this, you know, problem or the near, and we say, you know,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:19

the world has a narrative countries have narratives, your company has a

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:23

narrative and yourself has a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:24

So.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:26

So we're looking at something that is bigger than just the stories who are,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:31

in my opinion, more granular concepts.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:34

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:37

You know, we, we like to think of the story as a, as, as, as a, as a cycle, as

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:43

a loop, a happy ending, typically, not in French movies, by the way, we have

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:48

no happy ending in French movies, but we still have a closure to the story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:52

Whereas narratives, because there are these systems of stories are open ended.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:34:57

You know, your narrative unfolds all the time, as long as you, as long as

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:00

you're, you're alive and sometimes after your death, your narrative carries on.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:05

you know, I was talking to a client, he was mentioning you, so Steve Job

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:08

with, with Apple, his narrative is still very, very much around us.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:14

Right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:14

And you, and we continue to, to, to interpret it and re interpret it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:18

I think he was the 30 year 30th anniversary or 40th anniversary of

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:22

that famous commercial that jobs, you know, team, came to about, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:27

know, big brother and this lady coming into the, the, the movie theater,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:31

throwing the hammer on the screen,

Tim Winders: 00:35:33

1984.

Tim Winders: 00:35:34

That was

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:35

right.

Tim Winders: 00:35:35

of the commercial.

Tim Winders: 00:35:36

And that was the year in the Orwell book that

Tim Winders: 00:35:38

they brought together.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:40

there you go.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:40

1984.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:41

So that narrative, we continue to try to do something with that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:44

So I want, I want to make sure that we talk about this.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:47

So a narrative is a system and, three, there are three

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:51

things that shape a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:53

again, I'll start with the most obvious and simple.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:55

It's the language.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:35:57

when people Asked me, Oh, you can, can you, you know, can you work with me?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:02

They immediately think, Oh, we're going to work on our marketing, our communications

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:06

and sales, whatever in involves language.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:08

And in, in an organization is very much thought as what is happening outside.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:12

I mean, there's obviously also internal communication, but the first layer of a

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:17

narrative is what we say, words forge.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:20

So many things around us, you know, and the first thing they, they

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:23

forge is our mindset, which is the second layer of a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:27

Your narrative happens.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:29

First of all, in your mind, without you saying anything, you look at something,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:35

you think about a situation, Tim, and immediately your narrative kicks in.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:40

Narratives are these, cognitive bias.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:43

They are there to help us function without thinking too much.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:47

Our brain doesn't, doesn't like to overthink.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:50

So, the way you look at working with a client, the way you look

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:54

at your day, you have a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:56

That narrative can be positive or negative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:36:58

You wake up and you go, Gosh, I'm so excited today.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:01

Oh, yeah, it's gonna be, I'm gonna learn something.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:04

Or, oh my gosh, another day.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:07

you know, I hear people say, how are you doing today?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:10

Ah, just like a Monday.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:14

What kind of mindset, you know, does this bring to, to a day to, you know, and even

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:19

my tone of voice indicated a negative narrative about, about a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:25

The third element of a narrative is just simply, your actions.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:29

What, what do you do, you know, and in a company, it's

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:32

going to be mostly materialized through your workflow processes.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:37

So that's what a narrative is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:38

You can look and look around.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:40

It's not just true for businesses.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:41

It's true for, religious organizations, societies, government, any,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:48

groups of human beings trying to achieve a goal together.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:53

That's a fundamental mechanism that you will see just everywhere.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:58

Look around.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:37:59

It's everywhere.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:38:01

So that's what a narrative is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:38:02

Now, why did I put strategic in front of it is because I wanted to,

Tim Winders: 00:38:07

Can I pause you, can I pause you one second?

Tim Winders: 00:38:09

Because I want to, I, you know, I'm not going to let the strategic die.

Tim Winders: 00:38:13

We'll come back to that, but I've got a few.

Tim Winders: 00:38:18

questions about narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:38:20

And if it, if it's going to tie in later, you could say, Tim, we'll

Tim Winders: 00:38:23

get to that, or they could do more.

Tim Winders: 00:38:25

The first thing that came up for me when I was doing some studying research

Tim Winders: 00:38:29

and I read through your book was one of the things we're told in our modern

Tim Winders: 00:38:37

business world is something around this.

Tim Winders: 00:38:41

You need to know who your audience is.

Tim Winders: 00:38:44

And, and so one of the things that I kept thinking about, it wasn't nagging

Tim Winders: 00:38:49

at me, but usually if I'm thinking about it, it's something that's

Tim Winders: 00:38:52

rolling around in my mind is how does.

Tim Winders: 00:38:56

Narrative relate to the person that's creating it versus a

Tim Winders: 00:39:02

person that's attempting to create something for a specific audience.

Tim Winders: 00:39:06

Okay.

Tim Winders: 00:39:08

Is that something you want to address?

Tim Winders: 00:39:09

Is it

Tim Winders: 00:39:10

quickly or is it not?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:11

it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:12

No, no, I can

Tim Winders: 00:39:13

Let me kind of quick, cause there's a few other

Tim Winders: 00:39:14

things that are a little deeper.

Tim Winders: 00:39:15

So just kind of say a few things about that quickly.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:18

quickly is a narrative is very much something that comes,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:22

comes from the inside, inside out.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:24

So it has to be really, really tied to, you know, where we

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:28

talked about the origin stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:29

what are your values?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:30

What do you, it's almost like spiritual, emotional.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:34

You have to feel it inside before you preoccupy yourself with the audience.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:39

And, and that that's, it goes in tandem.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:42

but I would, I would encourage you guys, whoever's listening and team, you know,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:47

think about the narrative as something that, because it's, it's such, like I said

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:51

earlier, it's such a, it's subjective.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:53

So it's something you get to shape.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:56

It's a perspective.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:39:57

So I'll, I'll pose here.

Tim Winders: 00:39:59

All right.

Tim Winders: 00:39:59

So I like that because that's good because what that does is it allows people to

Tim Winders: 00:40:04

be true to themselves and not get into the manipulation embellishment or, you

Tim Winders: 00:40:13

know, a lot of things that could happen in the world today where it's like, you

Tim Winders: 00:40:16

know, and I need to come up with a story.

Tim Winders: 00:40:17

It's not me, it's not my narrative, but I just need to come up with

Tim Winders: 00:40:21

one so I could sell some stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:40:22

That's the cynical comment that I'll make.

Tim Winders: 00:40:25

Second thing, how does.

Tim Winders: 00:40:27

Cultures fit into narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:40:31

I think you said it earlier, but I just want to make sure I'm clear because we do

Tim Winders: 00:40:37

have cultures here in the United States.

Tim Winders: 00:40:39

My concern is we have two different cultures that are clashing currently,

Tim Winders: 00:40:44

but then you have a good perspective of obviously another country's culture.

Tim Winders: 00:40:49

I just got back from a trip, uh, where I went to the central Ohio

Tim Winders: 00:40:55

where it's a very heavy Amish.

Tim Winders: 00:40:57

Culture.

Tim Winders: 00:40:58

I had some business to do and also some ministry work.

Tim Winders: 00:41:02

It was fascinating to me to learn.

Tim Winders: 00:41:04

I learned some things about narratives there, but so just talk

Tim Winders: 00:41:08

a little bit more about culture and then I've got one more item that

Tim Winders: 00:41:12

will lead us into that strategic.

Tim Winders: 00:41:13

Discussion.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:15

Well, okay.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:16

So the, one of the basic definition of cultures is the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:19

way we do things around here.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:20

So we'll let, let's start there.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:22

So, and you talk about the Amish, the Amish are known, you

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:25

know, move those barns and build those barns very, very quickly.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:28

How do they do this?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:29

Well, they, you know, they, they, they rally a bunch of people.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:32

It's a number thing like it's, and, and it's, it's very, okay.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:36

well orchestrated.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:37

I've never seen one live, but I've watched many, many videos because that

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:40

was actually one of the culture I was interested in learning more about.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:44

And when you do things around here, you do certain things based,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:48

you, you base your decisions.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:51

on a certain type of values.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:54

Values are how we decide, right?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:41:57

And values, then there's another connection, which is values are

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:03

inherently, their, their choices, their, their, their, their ways

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:07

you look at things, which is by definition, what a narrative is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:12

So, this is getting a little technical here in my, in my domain,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:17

but clearly culture, cultures have narratives because the way we interpret

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:23

reality, we do it through our values.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:25

And that's what a culture is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:42:28

Does this make

Tim Winders: 00:42:28

All right.

Tim Winders: 00:42:29

Yeah, that's very good.

Tim Winders: 00:42:31

And, and I also want to be clear.

Tim Winders: 00:42:32

I, I am actually not Amish, but one of the things I had to do real

Tim Winders: 00:42:36

quickly was, adjust a few things.

Tim Winders: 00:42:41

I didn't, I didn't change.

Tim Winders: 00:42:42

I don't believe I did not change my narrative, but I changed a few things.

Tim Winders: 00:42:47

About what I discussed and how I said some things.

Tim Winders: 00:42:49

That's another topic it's based on how you've said narrative up up to this

Tim Winders: 00:42:55

point, it, it's becoming apparent to me that there, everyone has a narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:43:00

It's just many people have not taken the time to work on it.

Tim Winders: 00:43:04

And my guess is that's where the strategic comes in.

Tim Winders: 00:43:08

Is that a good gateway into talking about strategic?

Tim Winders: 00:43:12

Okay.

Tim Winders: 00:43:12

Take off and go.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:14

So, yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:14

So the whole, the whole point is to realize, okay, so we, we've just,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:19

you know, in the, in the past 10, 15 minutes, we've just laid the foundation

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:22

to define what a narrative is.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:24

So if you agree with that, that definition, then you go, wow.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:29

Okay.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:29

Well, I know that I understand it better.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:31

I see that's a system.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:32

There, there are things I get, there are choices I can make.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:35

Strategy is now a practice that makes a lot of sense.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:38

You can, you can, you can shape that narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:41

You can decide on it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:42

You can set some intentions.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:44

There are things that, why strategic is because we're taking a narrative

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:48

from unconscious to consciousness.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:52

Right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:52

And there is always layers of neuronarrative data that are, you're

Guillaume Waitr: 00:43:56

not going to be fully aware of, but if you start really digging into this and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:01

looking at it as a system, you can be strategic about it, which means you can

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:05

align what you're trying to do, And, and, and really shape your narrative

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:09

to, to your advantage, as we said earlier, and to get your goals better.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:13

So if you're, if, if you are, you know, we said ministry, you said

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:18

they were running ministry, you know, you're, you're in ministry, maybe,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:21

maybe the narrative about you and your group and your organization needs to.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:27

Be revisited to have higher impact or an impact that is more aligned with the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:33

kind of ministry you want to engage in.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:35

In fact, I like to say that, one of the ways you can, change your

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:39

narrative is through, marketing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:42

I, you know, and I'm, I'm going to talk about, private for profit organizations

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:45

for, for a moment, marketing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:47

And I define your marketing as your ministry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:51

I even say this to my clients who are not particularly religious or

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:54

spiritual, say, this is your ministry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:44:56

It's, it's about how you care for others, give value first, see, see your community,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:02

your market as the people you serve.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:04

And that's what you do through.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:06

Your marketing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:08

So how do we get strategic about your narrative?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:12

I broke it down because it was very, it was very complex for me for a while.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:16

And, specializing in professional services firms.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:20

I thought, okay, I mapped it out for many, many years, Tim.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:24

And I broke it down into 12 practices.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:27

I looked around and like, okay, there are really 12 things, 12

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:31

patterns that I see all the time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:33

I've been in consulting for 32 years and that's the research I did being in

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:38

large firms, small firms, engineers, consultants, coaches, designers,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:42

marketers, all sorts of, and they all engage in those 12 practices.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:47

So that's my framework.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:49

That's my model.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:50

Is it perfect?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:52

Is it true?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:52

No, but it's useful.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:55

When people see this, they go, Oh yeah, that's me.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:45:59

I see these 12 all the time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:01

I'm so glad it's on the map because now we can be strategic about them.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:04

We can decide where we want to spend our time.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:06

We can decide how we want to approach some of those practices,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:10

maybe ignore them totally or.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:12

Or completely dabble down on some of them.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:15

And that's how your narrative becomes strategic.

Tim Winders: 00:46:17

fits together.

Tim Winders: 00:46:20

Yeah, that, that, that all, that fits together well.

Tim Winders: 00:46:23

And I'm, I'm sitting here now going, let's see here.

Tim Winders: 00:46:27

We, we definitely don't have time to hit all 12.

Tim Winders: 00:46:31

And as we wrap up here, we'll tell people where they can go to get that.

Tim Winders: 00:46:34

I think I, just before we got on, I looked, I think you've got those 12 laid

Tim Winders: 00:46:40

out in a chart type form in your book.

Tim Winders: 00:46:42

Is that correct?

Tim Winders: 00:46:44

And I was.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:45

yeah, the, my, my, so you're, you're mentioning my book.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:48

It's the, it's a, it's an online digital book that only that I, I did in 2021.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:54

And I have a new updated version on my website and it turns out I, I'm,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:46:58

I'm preparing, you can't see it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:00

It's on the side of my office here, but I have big charts and that's good.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:03

I'm going to make it more visual for people, more metaphorical, for people

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:07

to look at that, at that visual.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:08

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:47:09

Right.

Tim Winders: 00:47:10

And maybe that fits into the meta helm that you were bringing up there.

Tim Winders: 00:47:14

Then, and I want to get some feedback here.

Tim Winders: 00:47:16

I loved the visual aspect.

Tim Winders: 00:47:18

I actually downloaded that portion of the book and I don't know if it was the 2021.

Tim Winders: 00:47:22

I thought I had 2022 on the,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:24

Oh yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:25

Sorry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:26

Yes.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:26

Yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:26

Yeah.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:47:27

It was early

Tim Winders: 00:47:27

Anyway, maybe it was, but, but I, I downloaded it to read

Tim Winders: 00:47:30

on my Kindle and just the visuals I missed because when I opened it up on

Tim Winders: 00:47:36

my computer a little while ago, like, you know, 30 minutes ago, I went, wow,

Tim Winders: 00:47:41

the visual is excellent on my computer.

Tim Winders: 00:47:44

The Kindle, Kindle took away from it a little bit.

Tim Winders: 00:47:47

The information was still there.

Tim Winders: 00:47:49

So, great, great resource.

Tim Winders: 00:47:50

I look forward to the next

Tim Winders: 00:47:51

iteration of it.

Tim Winders: 00:47:53

There's something, there's something, I think I want to hang out.

Tim Winders: 00:47:57

on narrative in the time we have left, because I, I think

Tim Winders: 00:48:00

it's so foundational, okay?

Tim Winders: 00:48:03

Because I see it everywhere.

Tim Winders: 00:48:04

And when you were speaking about a business sharing what they did,

Tim Winders: 00:48:09

you mentioned ministry leaders.

Tim Winders: 00:48:10

I, I literally kind of had this sentence of You know, gospel, the word gospel

Tim Winders: 00:48:16

is, is really the root of that is good news and sharing the gospel of

Tim Winders: 00:48:20

even a business, a business owner, someone who's an electrician is sharing

Tim Winders: 00:48:24

the good news about your business.

Tim Winders: 00:48:26

And I, there's nothing blasphemous about that.

Tim Winders: 00:48:28

So if anybody's out here and wants to throw rocks at me,

Tim Winders: 00:48:31

you know, You can't find me.

Tim Winders: 00:48:33

I live in an RV and travel.

Tim Winders: 00:48:34

So anyway, but I do think that business owners, I think leaders, I think people,

Tim Winders: 00:48:39

even in families in all areas need to be able to share that good news about

Tim Winders: 00:48:47

whatever it is they're doing, whether.

Tim Winders: 00:48:49

Whether they think they do or not, I believe they do.

Tim Winders: 00:48:51

And there's a term that I saw called narrative power, and I've got the

Tim Winders: 00:48:55

definition, this written here, but I think what I'd love for you to, let's

Tim Winders: 00:48:59

talk in the time we have about narrative power, you can maybe go through the

Tim Winders: 00:49:04

definition that you've got or whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:49:07

And, and let's just, let's just really hit home with people why

Tim Winders: 00:49:12

it's important to establish.

Tim Winders: 00:49:15

Their narrative, not someone else's, one they think will work, but their narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:49:21

So however you want to go with that, take, take off Guillaume.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:25

Like I said before, narratives have this ability to bring

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:29

people together because we start to share a common set of stories and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:34

therefore, and from these stories, we pull, learnings, insights.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:39

principles and, you know, narratives help us share our values.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:46

So narratives have really this effect of gathering people, assembling

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:51

groups that can accomplish more than the sum of themselves.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:55

That's one, of the powers of narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:49:56

But more recently, and I think you're, you're probably referring to

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:02

a definition that I put online and I talked a lot about in the last two years.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:08

One, and I would say one of the main power of the narrative is to defy

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:12

the normal when the normal is wrong.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:15

and I thought, okay, yeah, that's the, that's the definition.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:19

And I'm like, Hmm, it's probably one of the main definitions, but it's not

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:23

the only power that the narrative has.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:25

So I just want to, I just want to, I mean, constant evolution team.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:50:28

So,

Tim Winders: 00:50:29

Well, that, that's actually what I, that's

Tim Winders: 00:50:31

actually what I picked up on.

Tim Winders: 00:50:33

And there were two thoughts that went through my head when I read that.

Tim Winders: 00:50:37

My first thought.

Tim Winders: 00:50:39

Which I'm, I'm at a stage in life where I think I'm getting more mature.

Tim Winders: 00:50:43

Finally, that I said, Oh, I like that.

Tim Winders: 00:50:47

It's like, if we get really good at communicating our message, our

Tim Winders: 00:50:52

narrative, then we can let other people know where they're wrong, but then my.

Tim Winders: 00:51:01

more mature answer was later and you've kind of brought it up.

Tim Winders: 00:51:04

It brings people together.

Tim Winders: 00:51:06

There is a way that I think it communicates kind of who we

Tim Winders: 00:51:10

are and the people that might need to be in, in our group.

Tim Winders: 00:51:16

I hate to say tribe because that's one of the challenges that

Tim Winders: 00:51:19

we're seeing in a bigger, you know, political and other arenas.

Tim Winders: 00:51:24

But I do think it lets people know.

Tim Winders: 00:51:27

And again, I just went to a part of the country that they are

Tim Winders: 00:51:29

very close knit and I would.

Tim Winders: 00:51:33

Typically be critical of that.

Tim Winders: 00:51:35

But after spending some time there, I, I think I'm not.

Tim Winders: 00:51:39

So, so anyway, those, that was the bouncing around in my head

Tim Winders: 00:51:43

about using the word wrong.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:51:46

Yeah, I, I was experimenting with the definition

Guillaume Waitr: 00:51:50

because I wanted to, to, to be a little bit thought provoking here and also

Guillaume Waitr: 00:51:55

exploring with, I really felt this and I really meant that definition.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:51:59

I will still use that definition, but I think it's, like I said, you know, it's

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:03

not the only one, but, look at values, you know, there's, there's, depending on how,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:08

on how you look at a situation with your.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:10

Personal set of values.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:11

You may look at things as, as right or wrong.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:13

Go to a different country and I go to France and your table manners

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:19

are going to be probably very wrong.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:21

Table manners that are very right in the U S are going to be very wrong.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:25

I'm using the examples because I have the conversation with my kids

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:28

or half French and half Americans.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:31

So, so that, that, that's one of the powers of, of narrative is, and

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:35

that's, that's a little bit tying to this idea of, it's divisive, right?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:39

We agree, we disagree, what's wrong, what's right, and all that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:42

So we have tribes and clans and, and maybe tensions and conflicts and wars

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:47

then, you know, how does this escalate?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:48

So it's not, so looking at narrative just from that perspective, just for that

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:52

purpose, I don't think it's very healthy.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:55

Narratives, can really help bring people along together.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:52:59

And actually also bring a lot of peace narratives are also very stabilizing.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:04

you know, there are two powers to, to, to, to, to major kinds

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:08

of powers for a narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:09

One is to transform and disrupt to change things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:13

And one is to stabilize things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:15

You know, if you think about the, the narrative around recycling.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:18

You know, why do we recycle here in this, in this country?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:21

We forgot why.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:22

It was a, it was a made up narrative made by the, the packaging and plastic

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:26

manufacturers because they needed to sell more, more of their products

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:31

and make people feel good about it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:33

So they say, Oh, no problem.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:34

We'll recycle it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:35

Right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:35

And that has stabilized a whole entire industry.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:39

We keep recycling just this morning.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:41

I got my blue bin out here in the street and I keep doing it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:45

But then I also know because I tried to be informed that only six

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:51

to 9 percent of my recyclable stuff actually is only recycled the rest.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:53:56

So, 91 to 94 percent goes to landfill.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:00

So that's, that, that, that stabilize, that, that narrative, that stabilize

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:05

and the whole entire industry and society probably needs to change.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:11

I'm not an expert.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:12

I'm not in this conversation, but just to illustrate here that there

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:16

are many facets to narrative power.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:54:17

Now, now that I have researched and thought about it,

Tim Winders: 00:54:23

agree.

Tim Winders: 00:54:23

And, and I, and I think, and this is what I don't want to do with this conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:54:28

I want to give someone, who's sitting here going, Hmm, I'm not sure about my

Tim Winders: 00:54:36

narrative, my organizations, my teams, my business, my, I even think families.

Tim Winders: 00:54:43

You know, have narratives also.

Tim Winders: 00:54:47

So let's, let's assume in our last minute or two here, let's just

Tim Winders: 00:54:52

say someone's going, Oh, I need, I need some work in this area.

Tim Winders: 00:54:58

Because I think you and I are in agreement.

Tim Winders: 00:55:00

This spills over into everything that begins happening after here.

Tim Winders: 00:55:05

So.

Tim Winders: 00:55:06

tangible, tactical, maybe some first steps.

Tim Winders: 00:55:10

And I know, and we'll talk about it in just a moment.

Tim Winders: 00:55:12

There's a book you've got, there's things you do to work with people,

Tim Winders: 00:55:15

but let's just say it's someone that says, okay, what would be a first step?

Tim Winders: 00:55:21

What is something that I can do to just kind of get it started or move to a

Tim Winders: 00:55:26

next stage in, in helping to define my narrative or, or, or move that forward?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:34

I said earlier that a narrative is a system of stories

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:38

and there are four, four stories that you can start working on immediately.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:44

We covered one in detail today, which is the origin story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:48

Like what, what defines who you are as a leader or as a dad or mom or a

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:52

partner or, or, or a kid or family?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:55:55

Like what is one, one event that really had the type of impact

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:01

that it shaped the way you behave?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:03

So I'll leave it at that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:05

That's one story you can explore as a family, as a group.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:08

The second story I invite everyone to explore is what

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:11

I call the opportunity story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:13

Opportunity comes from the Latin root of portum venens,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:18

which is, you know, indicates, a safe harbor we want to get to.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:22

you know, and if you read in the Bible, you know, the, the, the,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:26

there's many allusions to us, to an opportunity, you know, a safe harbor.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:31

people cross, you know, that when the seas, the sea open and people crossing,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:35

they want to go to the promised land.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:37

That's the promised land.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:38

So as a person, as a family, as a group, as whoever, what is the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:44

opportunity you're thriving for?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:46

How do you describe it?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:47

What will you see when you get there?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:50

What will happen if you don't get there?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:53

These are very basic.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:56:55

I didn't say simple questions because they are deep questions, right?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:01

But these are the questions that you need to explore, maybe journal

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:05

about, talk about with your friends, and then, you know, have a certain

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:10

degree of formality and really try to answer those questions of today.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:14

If it's for a business or a ministry, religious organization,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:17

write them down, publish them, and have the conversation about them.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:21

The third story is the perspective story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:24

Okay, if we agree on Where we come from and where we're headed,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:29

what's our perspective about how we're going to get there?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:32

I know your perspective currently, Tim, is to have a smaller footprint.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:37

In your life, you live in an RV.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:40

That's your perspective.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:41

In fact, this morning I asked my wife, Hey, I'm going to

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:43

talk to Tim this morning.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:45

I really, I would really love to live in an RV like he does.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:48

And she said, Oh, I would hate it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:50

I'm like, why?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:52

Oh my gosh, I need space.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:53

I need to be settled.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:54

I need to be somewhere.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:55

And I'm like, okay, all right.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:57

I guess that's a difference.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:57:58

We have a difference in perspective about how we want to create the

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:01

opportunity of our lifetime.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:03

So that's an example.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:04

Cause I know it's yours.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:05

So I, taking and our listeners know that.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:08

So, but for, for an organization, is it, you know, do we want to bring,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:12

innovation through engineering or teaching or what's our perspective

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:16

on the problem we're trying to solve?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:18

And then the fourth thing is what I call for business is the product story.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:23

think about here in our context, think about product as something

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:26

tangible material you can have in your head, not necessarily just as

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:29

a business product that you sell and package and market, but what is

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:33

the tangible thing that you will do?

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:35

So maybe the product story in a ministry is going to be a set of

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:39

events, for instance, or actions or campaigns or conversations or things

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:44

we give to people or do with people.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:47

It's a very tangible.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:48

Aspect of that material.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:50

So you can see it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:51

You think you can take pictures of it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:52

You can describe it in very, very practical, you know, tangible things.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:58:58

You can most of the time put a price on it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:59:00

You can put monetary value on it.

Guillaume Waitr: 00:59:03

These are the four key essential stories that you can start immediately,

Guillaume Waitr: 00:59:08

work on to shape your narrative.

Tim Winders: 00:59:11

That is perfect because I think that gives people something

Tim Winders: 00:59:16

tangible, but it is a beginning.

Tim Winders: 00:59:20

Guillaume at this.

Tim Winders: 00:59:21

Yeah, it's per, I mean, I think, I think some people will need some outside help

Tim Winders: 00:59:26

definitely, but there are people that can take that and, and like you said, journal,

Tim Winders: 00:59:31

think about it, talk to their spouse, talk to their leadership team, talk to other

Tim Winders: 00:59:36

people in their organization, you know, bring somebody in that type thing, tell me

Tim Winders: 00:59:41

now, this is a great time to transition.

Tim Winders: 00:59:43

Tell me about the resources that you have.

Tim Winders: 00:59:47

And if someone wanted to engage with you or do some interaction

Tim Winders: 00:59:50

with you, this is a time to promote.

Tim Winders: 00:59:53

Tell me where they need to go.

Tim Winders: 00:59:55

We're going to include it in the notes, books, resources, coaching.

Tim Winders: 00:59:58

I know, you know, consulting, I know you've got all that.

Tim Winders: 01:00:01

Tell us about all of that now.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:03

the good news is I have a lot of free resources for people

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:06

and, I'm just going to, pull one out of the multitude here, which is, it's

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:10

a video on YouTube that I, that I have, and it's called systems of stories.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:14

So if you look up on YouTube system of stories to GD narrative, and if you can,

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:19

add my name, Guillaume Viat, you will immediately go there and it walks you.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:23

It's a case study from, from, from, from a company I have there.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:26

So that's the first resource if we, cause we just talked about it.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:29

But now if you want a broader picture and, and really learn more, go to metahelm.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:33

com.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:34

M E T A H E L M.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:36

that's the name for my business, now eight years old.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:39

And I thought about MetaHelm because it means guiding the guides.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:43

It's what guides the guides and that's your narrative.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:45

And on my website, you will have a free assessment, 12 questions to

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:50

see, help you gauge where you are in, in building narrative power.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:53

More articles, more resources, and there is a tab called services.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:00:57

And if you want to my, my professional, help and bring me on, that's where

Guillaume Waitr: 01:01:03

you will find the information.

Tim Winders: 01:01:05

Yeah, I do agree.

Tim Winders: 01:01:06

I believe you've definitely generous with information on my On my laptop

Tim Winders: 01:01:12

here, I've got the windows that are open where I was looking at your information.

Tim Winders: 01:01:17

And I've got strategic narratives, the YouTube channel.

Tim Winders: 01:01:21

I've got your LinkedIn profile, which is has information and, and information.

Tim Winders: 01:01:25

So, and your book, I've got your book that's opened up here too.

Tim Winders: 01:01:28

So we'll definitely include all that.

Tim Winders: 01:01:30

So Guillaume, thank you so much.

Tim Winders: 01:01:32

We are Go create those three words.

Tim Winders: 01:01:36

If there was one of those words that resonated more with you or means more at

Tim Winders: 01:01:41

this time, don't overthink it, but seek, go or create, which one do you choose?

Tim Winders: 01:01:45

And why?

Guillaume Waitr: 01:01:47

I'll go with sick.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:01:49

but I have to confess that, I, can I get create too?

Guillaume Waitr: 01:01:54

I like both, but I'll start if I really have to make a choice, I'll just,

Guillaume Waitr: 01:01:58

I'll go with sick because it ties to curiosity and constantly going,

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:03

looking for something you will, you know, you don't, you don't know yet.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:06

And I think that's such a refreshing term and.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:11

indicates motion, openness, possibilities.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:15

I'm, I'm part of a group called, the school of possibilities.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:18

I am a, a possibility Tarjan.

Guillaume Waitr: 01:02:21

And so that's why I will pick sick.

Tim Winders: 01:02:24

Very good.

Tim Winders: 01:02:24

Well, there's a reason that we put them in that order and seeking.

Tim Winders: 01:02:29

almost always leads to creating.

Tim Winders: 01:02:30

So, beautiful thing.

Tim Winders: 01:02:32

Guillaume Viot, thank you so much for joining us here.

Tim Winders: 01:02:36

I appreciate all, all of this conversation and I believe it's been a blessing

Tim Winders: 01:02:40

and nourished the people listening in and I encourage people to go.

Tim Winders: 01:02:44

Get more, get more from Guillaume.

Tim Winders: 01:02:47

He gives a lot of information and I could tell from his heart.

Tim Winders: 01:02:51

He genuinely wants, people to get this.

Tim Winders: 01:02:54

And so, and so go check out his information.

Tim Winders: 01:02:58

We are SeekGoCreate.

Tim Winders: 01:02:59

We release new episodes here every Monday.

Tim Winders: 01:03:01

keep supporting us.

Tim Winders: 01:03:02

You can go support us at SeekGoCreate.

Tim Winders: 01:03:04

com forward slash.

Tim Winders: 01:03:06

Support, leave some comments, or you could also support us.

Tim Winders: 01:03:09

If you like what we're doing here, you can support us financially.

Tim Winders: 01:03:12

They're give as little as a dollar or as much as you would like to.

Tim Winders: 01:03:16

We welcome and receive that.

Tim Winders: 01:03:18

And so thanks again for joining us until next time, continue being

Tim Winders: 01:03:23

all that you were created to be.