How to build purpose despite "broken" systems

Are systems broken or are they just doing their thing?

Clara Mattei makes the case that systems were designed this way, structured to protect capital and hierarchy, working exactly as intended. Gary Stevenson urges us to explain the problems clearly enough that people demand change.

Both confirm what I see in every room I walk into: the systems won't rewrite themselves. But the people standing inside them can.

That's Story Leadership.

Storytelling ≠ Story Leadership

The story you have been telling yourself is in your control (storytelling). The story you are standing in is the one out of your control. Like an invisible current, it shapes what feels possible before you've even started. To move you need to surface it.

Story Leadership is about perceiving the story you are part of and working with it, rather than against it.

Serena Hatfield developed Story Leadership

Story Leadership, by Serena Hatfield

Over ten years of experience working inside organisations, building an independent publishing house, co-founding a print magazine that wasn't supposed to survive, and spending over three years in management consulting has given me a great deal of insight into the way in which stories influence leadership.

I have seen many strategies fail not because they were wrong, but because the story underneath them was never addressed.

Serena's own Story Leadership examples

Studio Hatfield ©2025 – © Sarah Neuendorf

2015 • Print was dead. Everyone knew it.

I started a travel magazine anyway, because the story wasn't about print. It was about what happened to storytelling when everything got optimized for clicks. The Fernweh Collective proved there was an audience that actually liked that we banned advertising, turned readers into writers and ran the whole thing on the belief that real stories deserved a real place to live. We sold 10,000+ copies using only Instagram.

2017 • Self-publishing wasn't real publishing. Everyone knew it.

I co-founded a publishing house anyway. Ten books out, then 2 books got republished by a bigger publishing house. Gretas Freunde Verlag proved that we could publish way faster, reach our audience easier and choose our own positioning. This is how we created the first children's book on Covid, 8 weeks into the pandemic. We sold out instantly.

2026 • Hope is naiv. Everyone knows that.

We've been using hope wrong. Stop using it greeting card style, start using it as a structural force. Most people who want change believe they're alone. The data claims that 89% of us want meaningful change. I'm building a school for adults done giving up, because that belief is the story keeping everything stuck.

Come with.

Most leaders can see what needs to change. Few can lead toward it. The difference is almost always narrative.

The Story Leadership Method

Unlearn – What's in the way becomes the way.

Surface what is actually running the room. Not what people say the problem is, but what the organisation is centred around without realising it. It's the unspoken tension, the narrative gap, the story that everyone performs but no one chooses.

→ Story Sessions run weekly through the Radical Hope Club, accessible for all members.

[Book a Story Session]

Reimagine – What you imagine, you can lead.

You've learnt to see the story your organization is standing in. Once it's visible, you have options you didn't know existed. This is the hardest phase: letting go of the old story before the new one is clear. Most people try to skip it. The ones who stay in it change everything.

Forge your own path – What you lead, you can change.

Design how others step into the story as co-authors. What formats, structures, and language enable people to carry the narrative without you in the room? Strategy becomes movement. And it's almost impossible to do alone.

Work with Studio Hatfield

Story Leadership Types

Other cool stuff

The radical hope club

Evolutionary Intelligence