1) An organization without a story is built on shaky ground
We often come across them: organizations that have forgotten their story. They do what they do because they have simply been doing it for years. They launch new activities, but no one really knows why. Because someone in the organization is personally enthusiastic about it? Because they can get funding for it? To keep staff employed?
When an organization like that runs into difficulties, it struggles to stay afloat. “A lack of vision,” you hear people say. After all, that is exactly what your mission and vision are: an overarching story that gives your organization direction and helps it make the right choices.
Take organization ABC, for example. It has outstanding experts in-house who provide services to professionals. In addition, it also has activities aimed at a broad audience. And a webshop. And a magazine. No one really has the full overview anymore.
In recent years, it has become a bit of everything and nothing done very well. Income from the public-facing activities is faltering. Professionals no longer know what they can turn to the experts for, because each expert interprets his or her role differently. Disagreements run high: should we invest more in expertise, or should we work in an even more accessible and broader way?
No one manages to get the operations back on track. The organization keeps sliding further downhill.
In every process at S&L, we first check the mission, sometimes very extensively and sometimes very briefly. What stone does your organization want to shift in the river over 20 to 30 years? Only then do we define long-term and shorter-term goals. We pour this into an impact model or a Theory of Change. We do this for an environmental organization as well as for a theater collective. It is the base camp for every thinking exercise, about your operations but also, for example, about your organizational structure.
And it really helps if it is a “story.” One that you not only understand but can also feel. A story whose puzzle pieces click together into a clear thread. One you can tell each other again and again. Not clumsy bureaucratic sentences with a thousand nuances that leave you cold.
2) You have to tell a story in order to share it
That brings me to the second reason to invest in your story. Everyone in your organization must be able to understand and share a strong story. That is only possible if everyone can tell it in their own words.
After all, everyone has a story in their head that determines opinions and choices. Do you believe your arts organization should always pay attention to everyone’s participation? Then you probably believe your organization has an important social role to play. Does your colleague place much more emphasis on artistic pioneering? Chances are they have a different, more artistic story in his or her head.
As long as everyone silently shares a similar story, everything goes well. But has it ever happened to you that you just could not reach agreement with your colleagues about certain choices, and you did not know why? Then there is a good chance that each of you has a different story in your head about your organization. And as long as you do not understand that about each other, you can never arrive at a solution together either.
Bringing those different stories to the surface, and from there arriving at a shared story, takes quite a bit of time. If you notice static in your organization’s story, it is best to make enough room for it. For example, do not do it just before the deadline for a major subsidy application.
You will notice that the investment pays off. In organizations without a shared story, the personal motivations of employees and partners easily gain the upper hand. If you build a solid story together, you can much more easily rise above the personal.
3) With a strong story, you find allies
The power of your story is not limited to your own employees. Beyond them as well, you will find it much easier to bring partners, supporters and a broad audience on board if your story is inspiring and clear.
A funder will want to support you if they understand what you stand for. The media will find you more quickly if they hear the same clear story from you again and again – and how you respond to current events from that perspective. People in the street will trust you if they understand who you are.
Some organizations tend to water down their story, hoping they can accommodate everyone that way. That rarely works. It is better to know your own story so well that you can translate it into someone else’s story. After all, a good storyteller knows how to respond to the audience. They look for recognition and connection. Without losing their own thread.
For example, let me briefly take you to environmental organization XYZ. All the employees are passionate about biodiversity. But they realize that not everyone knows as much about rare plant species and therefore is not immediately moved by them. By connecting their story to a broader story that does resonate – for example about the contribution of plants to medical science, and the untapped knowledge that is in danger of being lost – they can move a much wider audience. If you can then also explain clearly how your work contributes to that broader goal, you have gained an ally.
4) We all need to become better storytellers
And that brings me to my final argument for strong stories. One that goes beyond your organization. I recently read the book “Eve” by Cat Bohannon, a history of human evolution from a female perspective. She believes we only truly became “human” at the moment we began telling each other stories. Not just facts about where to find water or where your leg hurts. But stories about how natural phenomena came into being, where your parents came from, why something is good and something else is wrong. According to Cat Bohannon, that set cultural evolution in motion.
We humans are storytellers; it is what moves us. In recent years, we have experienced how stories (narratives, frames, call them what you will) often take over from dry facts in public debate. And unfortunately, we see that a story about the “familiar” past much more easily wins out than a story about an uncertain, unknown future.
We are suffering from an imagination crisis, says my colleague Fredo De Smet. We find it so difficult to inspire people about what we do want when we warn against climate change, question economic growth, or protest against inhumane migration policy. That is why Fredo, together with organizations, does exercises in “ancestor thinking.”
If we want to steer the world in a different direction, we must learn to tell better stories. We must be able to inspire more often and more convincingly about “why” we do what we do, how we want to get there, and what it will bring us and everyone else. It starts with your own organization. But it is about truly making an impact in the world.
So that is a large part of what I do in my job: building small and large shared stories. In policy plans, strategies, mission and vision exercises. Do you want to know what it can bring you? Contact me.
