The change must create new winners and losers. If it doesn’t, your audience is probably justified in preferring the status quo to whatever you’re pitching.

Declare a discrete change—a 0-to-1 disruption—even if it feels like you’re exaggerating.

This works because your finality pries open audiences’ minds to the possibility that the rules of the game have changed in a fundamental, permanent way.

How do you know you’ve nailed this critical element of your story for sales, fundraising and leadership? 

• You’re ready to replace traditional mission and vision statements with the change—and the future you commit to making real for your audience 
• You can imagine that 90% of yo...

The hard part about flouting convention, of course, is doing so while simultaneously satisfying the previous criterion—making the case that the change has already happened in a way that sparks recognition.

In this sense, naming the change is an act of journalism. Great journalists look for ...