Strategic Narrative

Andy Raskin's 5-part company story — a strategic narrative that is the company strategy externalized. Extracted from Zuora's 2015 sales deck in the 2016 essay The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen (2M+ views), refined across ~15 canonical Medium essays, dozens of LinkedIn micro-essays, Raskin's own podcast, and appearances on Lenny Rachitsky (2023) and others.

This skill helps you think in Raskin's method, not just recite it. It is opinionated because Raskin is opinionated: strategic narrative is not storytelling-as-decoration, not positioning, not messaging. It's a single top-level story that reveals whether strategy exists — the CEO-owned spine that shows up in the sales deck, the website, the all-hands, the investor pitch, and every hire's first day. Ben Horowitz's line — "the company story is the company strategy" — is on Raskin's homepage; his whole practice operationalizes it.

When this skill activates

Use this skill when the user is:

• Building or critiquing a sales deck (Raskin's "true north" artifact).
• Refreshing a CEO all-hands or investor narrative.
• Designing a category-creation or movement narrative.
• Diagnosing why sales, marketing, and product describe the company differently.
• Trying to explain why prospects respond "cool tool" instead of "how quickly can we get started?" (the pattern-response Raskin tests for).
• Rewriting a website, launch narrative, or recruiting story to feel like the same story as the deck.
• Bolting story onto an existing features-first pitch and getting weak reactions.
• Working through a market shift and asking whether their narrative still holds.
• Confused about the difference between strategic narrative, positioning, and messaging.

Do NOT use this skill when:

• The user wants a consumer-product ad or tactical copy — reach for StoryBrand or copy craft.
• The user has a commodity offering competing on price — narrative won't rescue undifferentiation. (Raskin's method presupposes something worth making a movement out of.)
• The user wants a positioning framework (which market, competitive alternatives, unique attributes) — reach for April Dunford's Obviously Awesome. Positioning is upstream and invisible; narrative is the external face.
• The user wants an internal strategic-choice cascade — reach for Roger Martin's Playing to Win. Martin is internal; Raskin is external. They stack: Martin's cascade produces the choices, Raskin's narrative broadcasts them. Do not do PtW at a user who came for narrative help.
• The user just wants a summary of the Greatest Sales Deck essay. Send them the link and stop.

If the user's situation is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question before running the 5 parts.

The 5-part narrative at a glance

Two labelings, same 5 acts. Raskin has used both since the 2023 refinement — the 2023 labels foreground that the story is about the buyer's world, not yours:

The product does not enter until step 4 (or 5, in the 2023 wording). Everything upstream is about the buyer's world.

Raskin's operating claim: "This story really is the strategy." (Lenny 2023)

How to use this skill in a session

1. Understand what the user is actually doing. Building from scratch, critiquing a deck, refreshing after a market shift, rolling narrative into sales enablement? The move differs. See references/prompts.md.
2. Anchor every response in a specific case. Raskin teaches case-first. If you're helping build a narrative, reach for Zuora (canonical) or Uberflip (Blockbuster→Netflix) or Gong ("Goodbye opinions, hello reality"). If you're diagnosing an anti-pattern, reach for the specific one Raskin has named (Arrogant Doctor, Chest Beater). Load references/examples.md.
3. Walk the 5 parts in order, but treat them as a single story. Each act must set up the next. If step 3 (Promised Land) is a list of features, step 4 has nowhere to go. Load references/method.md.
4. When the user's draft hits an anti-pattern, name it and correct it. "Old way / new way" → push toward "Old Game / New Game." Naming a competitor as enemy → the enemy is an old mindset. Setup that educates instead of emotionally engages. Load references/heuristics.md.
5. Pull post-2016 refinements when the topic is in that territory. Movement > Category, Humble Awakener vs. Arrogant Doctor, disputable-purpose test, savvy-prospect setup. Load references/post-book.md.
6. Match Raskin's voice. Warm, first-person, story-obsessed. Never open with a definition — open with a company that made a move. Use his named enemies (Arrogant Doctor, Chest Beater) as proper nouns. Anti-definition — say what strategic narrative is NOT before saying what it is. Load references/voice-and-tone.md.
7. Cite sources. When you use a specific device or quote, name the source — the 2016 Zuora essay, the 2023 Lenny episode, the 2023 "Old Game vs. Old Way" LinkedIn post. Attribution respects Raskin's work.

Deep references (load as needed)

• references/method.md — the 5 parts in Raskin's own terms, both 2016 and 2023 labelings, plus narrative vs. positioning vs. messaging.
• references/heuristics.md — signs your company has no narrative, anti-patterns, tests for whether it's working, quoted with attribution.
• references/post-book.md — refinements since 2016: Old Game > Old Way, enemy = mindset, movement > category, Humble Awakener, savvy-prospect setup. This is the differential vs. Claude quoting the 2016 essay alone.
• references/author-live-sources.md — index of every live source: Medium (~15-20 canonical essays across Firm Narrative + Mission.org), LinkedIn (multiple/week), his own podcast, andyraskin.com. No book, no Substack.
• references/voice-and-tone.md — how Raskin talks: case-first, named enemies, anti-definition, reframe-as-headline titles.
• references/applications.md — when narrative fits, when it doesn't, adjacencies (Dunford / JTBD / StoryBrand / Cagan / Rumelt / Martin / Sinek / Horowitz).
• references/examples.md — full dense case table: Zuora, Salesforce, Uberflip, Gong, SpotMe, Zaius, SkySlope, Foxglove, Turing, 360Learning, OneTrust, Slack.
• references/prompts.md — invocation templates for common tasks.
• references/sources.md — everything consulted, with URLs.

Non-negotiables

• Fidelity to Raskin. Strategic narrative is NOT positioning, NOT messaging, NOT storytelling-as-decoration on a claim of superiority. Push back on these confusions before running the method. From Raskin: "Strategic narrative is not about 'using storytelling' to make your claims of superiority more impactful." (LinkedIn 2023)
• The buyer's world comes first. The product enters at step 4. If your draft opens with the company, the logos, the investors, or "we are the leader in X" — restart.
• The enemy is an old mindset, not a competitor. Named a competitor as the villain? Guaranteed to look petty and same-shaped. (LinkedIn 2023)
• The Promised Land is buyer-defined, not product-defined. If it reads like your feature set, it's not a Promised Land.
• Do not do Playing to Win at a strategic-narrative question. Martin and Raskin are complementary but different. Martin is the internal cascade; Raskin is the external narrative face. If the user needs the choices, redirect to playing-to-win. If they have the choices and need the story, this is the skill.
• Attribution matters. When quoting Raskin, cite. Voice ≠ fabrication.

Attribution and acknowledgement

Andy Raskin — Strategic-narrative advisor to venture-backed CEOs and leadership teams. His site tagline: "Strategic narrative for CEOs and leadership teams." Clients include (or have included) Yelp, Square, Uber, IBM, Dropbox, General Assembly, and dozens of Series A–D startups. His method lives in essays and podcasts, not a book.

• Site: https://andyraskin.com/ (services + his own podcast)
• Medium: https://medium.com/@andyraskin — canonical essays in Firm Narrative and Mission.org publications
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin/ — highest-cadence channel now, multiple posts/week
• Anchor podcast episode: Lenny's Podcast — The power of strategic narrative (May 2023) — the most current articulation of the framework

This skill is not endorsed by Andy Raskin. It's Marcos Sponton's structured reading of Raskin's public work. If Raskin himself wants to correct or endorse anything here, PRs welcome.

• Skill maintained by: Marcos Sponton. Feedback, corrections, and PRs are welcome. See the repo's README for how to contribute.