Every documentary (and commercial and short film) I’ve ever made has a through-line, that singular thread that pulls you from beginning to end, the thing that makes sense of all the complexity and keeps an audience watching even when things get messy.
Without that through-line, you don’t have a story. You just have a collection of scenes that may be individually beautiful don’t make the audience feel that they are immersed in the storytelling. In fictional film, we call this immersion a “suspension of disbelief” – a suspension of critical thinking about how the film was created so that the viewer can enjoy the story. For documentarians like myself, it’s a bit different, we don’t want our audience to set aside their critical thinking, in fact, we are counting on our audiences to think deeply along with us, but we want them to see our central thesis, not the mess of research notes that got us there, so that narrative though-line is also extremely important in documentary.
What I hope you understand by reading this blog post is that the crafting narrative around your operational plans is just as important as it is in filmmaking and you better make sure that the stories you are telling the team are more of the documentary kind and less speculative fiction kind that asks them to suspend their disbelief.
Most operational plans fail not because the tactics are wrong (although that happens), but because the narrative spine holding them together is flimsy or nonexistent. If your team can’t see and believe that the pieces fit, they’re just checking boxes instead of building toward something that matters. Sometimes checking boxes is fine, but for mission driven work, buy-in is critical for the success of any initiative. So below I’ve outlined the three act structure of documentary and used it as a scaffolding for how to communicate your operational strategy.
Act One is setup: establish the world, introduce the characters, show us what’s at stake.
Act Two is confrontation: obstacles appear, things get complicated, transformation starts to happen.
Act Three is resolution: deliver on the promise of change.
This exact same Three Act structure can be used for operational planning and comms…
Act One is our current state and vision why it matters.
Act Two is what we’re building, what’s in our way, our initiatives and the real challenges we’ll face.
Act Three is what success actually looks like when we get there; the tangible outcomes and the impact we’ll have.
It’s a very simple system, but it hasn’t steered me wrong yet. This gem of a system can fundamentally change how your teams engage with their work. Instead of asking “what’s on my plate this quarter?” they might start asking “what role do I play in this transformation?”
When you frame your quarterly goals as Act Two of a larger narrative arc, the budget meeting has real stakes. The hiring plan has meaning beyond filling a role. The systems overhaul isn’t just tedious process improvement it’s a plot point in your organization’s journey toward its boldest vision, and your team can not only see it, they can think deeply about it and see how and why the path is laid out the way it is.
That’s the difference between compliance and commitment. If your team can tell the story of where you’re going, they’ll help you get there. If they can’t, they’re just following orders, and that never ends well.
