Why you are not the hero of your brand story

(Excerpted from the book Big Audacious Meaning — Unleashing Your Purpose-Driven Story)

Who is the Hero of this story we are creating? Is it our organization? After all, it is the story we are creating. We should be the Hero of our story, right?

This is where a shockingly large number of organizations go wrong. How many times have we encountered an organization intent on telling us the saga of who they are, what they do, and why they’re special? It’s as if they believe that the telling of their triumphs will mesmerize us.

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Let’s be honest. Nobody wants to listen to that. We want to be swept up into something that invites us to imagine ourselves inside the narrative. Something that captures our desires and absolutely captivates us. That’s not the story of what the organization does or how it does it, or even why it thinks it’s special. Before we begin any story, we should go to the beginning of our Thrust Story Framework. There, before anything else, is the answer to the question, “Who is our Hero?” It is the individuals we hope to serve. When we make them the hero, we create a very different story from the inward-focused, self-serving tale too many organizations tell.