When I worked inside Facebook.
It would take 30-50 hours to build a strategic narrative.
This was for executive reviews, in front of Mark and the management team.
Every word of every sentence had a job to do.
We needed to sell the future and validate the past. Usually an abstract concept backed by user data from billions of people. You had to find a throughline, an arc, a way of driving decisions and making meaning at the boardroom level.
One group I worked with was a 1,500-person org stitched together through a reorg. Their charter was to accelerate growth through partners, the largest internet companies and marketing service providers in the world. It was a massive operation without a unified mission, much less a shared language. And it had to explain its value to the COO.
Getting the narrative right made that team’s work clear, compelling, and legitimate. It also propelled the VP to a prestigious next-level promotion.
Today, with Storied AI, I get a working narrative to 80% in 30 minutes.
I’ll take that trade any day.
The catch is the other 20%.
AI can’t write that part. It’s you: what you believe, said in your own words. By the end of this email, you’ll have a way to get yours down. It takes 15 minutes to get started.
Welcome to the Age of Narrative Intelligence. Narrative is the source code of generative AI, the prima materia. And AI is what you make it.
AI is your friend. You just have to train your dragon.
So what are you training yours on?
Sovereign AI for One Company, or One Career
Sovereign AI usually means a country building its own models and compute, so its AI runs on its own language, laws, and values.
The same logic works for one company or one person’s career.
In the Age of Narrative Intelligence, it comes down to five moves:
Own it. Know what you believe and the bets you’re making
Author it. Write it so a colleague would know it’s yours with your name covered
Co-create it. Have AI argue the other side and find the gap
Share it. Listen for your team and customers repeating it in your words
Install it. Put it where your AI reads it first as part of your voice and thinking
All five start in the same place: a document your AI can read.
Write Down Who You Actually Are
Start where I did:
A User manual for how you think, decide, and communicate.
It’s a move I first learned from Julie Zhuo, ex-VP of Product Design at Facebook.
Your co-workers have spent years building a model of you by watching you work. Your spouse and your kids have too. Your AI has been watching you too. In fact, it probably knows you better than most in your life. You just have to ask it to reflect and mirror back. Until you ask, it keeps that picture to itself and writes like a generic composite of a leader.
That’s why you want to codify your thinking.
My CEO User Manual is a free Storied skill on GitHub, and despite the name, it works for anyone who leads a team, a project, or their own career. Mine’s the sample in the repo.
Paste the prompt into whichever AI already knows how you work. It drafts your first version on its own, from what it’s already seen: your chats, your docs, the way you write. Then it asks five questions to sharpen it. Fifteen minutes gets you started. Yes, AI writes the first draft of you. Your 20% is what you change. Then put it in your custom instructions or a Claude Project.
If you find it of value, star the repo, you’ll make my kids proud.
Before you rely on it, hand it to a colleague who knows you well. If they say “that’s exactly you,” you’re done. If not, they’ll tell you where the story feels a little off.
Your AI will only ever be as human as you’re willing to be on the page.
Michael