Guillaume Waitr, Principal and Founder - MetaHelm 

A strategy consultant and leadership coach, Guillaume Wiatr guides CEOs and Founders to align people and accelerate innovation adoption. He is the Founder of MetaHelm; a consulting firm focused on building strategic narratives for established companies. For Guillaume, traditional business storytelling is dead. Innovation happens when you build a new narrative instead. As he says, "people will pay for a story, but they will die for a narrative".

After helping to save a 20M euro venture during the dot-com boom, Guillaume went on a mission to turn every company into a source of inspiration that few
can resist. Since then, he’s been working with startup founders as well as senior executives of companies like Alaska Airlines, The Gates Foundation, AIG, L'Oréal, Spencer Stuart, GAP, Google, Microsoft, and the US and French governments.

His commitment to education led him to become an instructor and a mentor to young entrepreneurs at the University of Washington, the School of Visual
Concepts, and EMLyon international business school in France. Guillaume publishes daily insights in his newsletter–The Next Narrative–where you can find a
canvas he designed to get you started with your strategic narrative.

 Guest Resources

MetaHelm: Visit this website to learn more about Guillaume's company and how they can help build and shape your organization's strategic narrative.

Strategic Narrative eBook: download Guillaume's latest eBook we discuss during our conversation.

The Next Narrative: Sign up for Guillaume's newsletter to receive daily insights to help CEOs, Founders and Business Owners align people and accelerate the adoption of innovation

Show Notes

Key takeaways from this episode:

- Tell your company’s narrative based on its stories
- Include all employees in the creation and activation of your narrative
- Apply your narrative to both the way you run your organization and the work that you do

What to listen for:

[01:45] The difference between story and narrative
[08:37] Being intentional around language
[11:33] Stories engage, narratives mobilize
[15:18] Applying your ‘why’ to what you do and how you do it
[17:57] How to move from storytelling to storydoing
[18:40] The power of co-creation
[21:37] Aligning your narrative internally and externally
[25:57] Using words to convey emotions, not ideas
[32:06] Guillaume’s self-limiting story
[33:00] Quick questions with Guillaume
[36:13] Guillaume’s challenge to leaders for making a more human workplace