A new year calls for setting goals and plotting a path to get there. In business, historically, that meant a business plan. But I’m willing to bet that exactly zero of the thousands of founders reading this launched their business with a traditional business plan— and yet the instinct to define and execute a plan still lurks behind most goal-setting today.

But what replaces the business plan? The pitch deck has come closest, but it’s not the slides that matter, it’s what powers the good ones: the narrative. It’s a shorter version of a full-fledged vision document, which I’ll address in a separate post.

So as we start the new year, let’s take a moment to understand why a great narrative is perhaps the best bang-for-buck tool you have to thrive in an ever-changing world.

Here’s the shift: A business plan defines the What; A narrative answers the Why. A business plan decrees; a narrative empowers. A business plan is like giving your child a long list of rules. A narrative is giving them a framework to make decisions on their own.

A great narrative is powerful because creating it forces you to answer hard questions. Like an iceberg, it is supported by vast amounts of unseen matter. Who is the customer? What’s the emotional need driving demand? What is the source of your durable competitive advantage?

A key risk is that your narrative grows stale. I’ve been there—repeating the same story for my discount-travel startup long after the ground shifted under my feet.

So let’s get you a good narrative—and some tests to know when it needs refreshing.

Why Trumps What

Movie trailers know this. I was watching the recent trailer for Necaxa, Ryan Reynolds’ Mexican buy-and-rebuild-a-football-club sequel to Welcome to Wrexham, and Eve Longoria frames the series this way: “It’s more than winning games. We’re going to win hearts. We’re going to inspire pride. We’re going to empower the team.”

You buy a football club — but the story is about dignity, community, and belonging.

Do the same for your company: write the trailer for your startup and consciously frame it in the terms of deeper motivations. Why should the audience stick around for the whole story?

The Customer Is the Hero

It’s tempting to make the product the protagonist, but it’s just a tool your customer uses to transform their world. Include

• The pain your audience feels

• The stakes if nothing changes

• How their world becomes better with your solution

If your company story is about the product, it’s just a feature list. If it’s about your customer’s journey, it’s a narrative.

The World Will Be Better If You Win

How will the world be better if your startup succeeds? It’s the biggest myopia I see with clients. I’m working with a company building a breakthrough tool for semiconductor manufacturing. Impressive tech — but unless that ladders up to something bigger, the story stops at “making NVIDIA shareholders richer.” For this client, winning might mean faster development of life-saving medications, safer autonomous vehicles, or accelerating the path to fusion energy.

Your product is the instrument. The change is the music.

It’s Obvious When You Look at It Right

I’m working with a startup building real-time digital avatars for AI chatbots. Talking with digital humans might seem dystopian, until you realize that the history of computer interfaces—from B/W text to color to graphics to video to AI chatbots—has been a steady march towards our hard-wired preference for interaction: face-to-face conversation.

Seen in that light, avatars don’t feel strange, they feel inevitable. The mission becomes clearer, bigger, and more compelling.

Frame the Evidence

Narratives inspire — but they must reference proof points and traction. The most common problem I see is that early traction often seems haphazard: maybe you closed some founder-led sales that aren’t in your stated customer profile. So work to package your early traction as a clear sign of massive sales to come. Dollars are just numbers until you put a frame around them.

Your Narrative Is a Toolbox

You won’t unpack the full narrative every time. Instead, it becomes a toolbox you can pull from depending on context. Some audiences or situations don’t require you to recount the problem; others don’t need the details of the solution. If one element is left standing, it’s the Why.

And when should you re-evaluate your narrative? All the time. Look for the following warning signs:

Internal Misalignment

If your team is telling different versions of your story, you have a problem. Your narrative is your company’s operating system. If people are running different versions, bugs appear everywhere.

Your Story No Longer Explains Your Strategy

If you find yourself making major decisions that don’t fit the old narrative, the story is out of sync with reality — and it needs updating before your team drifts or stalls.

The Market Moves — But Your Story Doesn’t

New competitors, new regulations, or new products can make yesterday’s framing obsolete. If people keep asking, “So… where do you fit now?” — that’s your signal.

A narrative is not a slogan. It is a living, evolving framework for how your company understands the world — and why it matters that you exist in it.

Treat it with the same rigor and iteration you apply to your product. Because when your narrative is sharp, aligned, and alive, it doesn’t just describe your future—it helps you create it.