Learning to tell good stories about good work

Storytelling. It's not just for bedtime. It's also for business.

Photo by Leon Contreras on Unsplash

Next week Kara Cruikshank (our Chief of Staff) and I are starting an IDEO U class on storytelling. Our goal is to grow our narrative skills through 2024 so we can shine a light on what Franklin County Data Center (FCDC) is doing with our agency partners every month, all year long. (I’ll use the same skills to help the GX Foundry.) FCDC has a meaningful mission, palpable values, a dedicated team, and customers that make an impact in central Ohio every day -- but too few people know what we do or why we do it.

In addition to the course, I’ve been following The Storytelling Leader on LinkedIn and I even ordered their Leadership Story Deck — a pack of cards to help you figure out how to tell stories in different ways for different goals. It’s a nice little resource that’s getting me thinking in new ways.

Tooting your own horn

In high school I had an English teacher encourage all of us seniors to “Toot our own horns” in college application essays “…because no one is going to toot it for you.” That changed my mindset and put me on a better writing path (way back in the 20th century).

And even though we are awash in a sea of social media (where everyone is sharing photos of their sandwiches) the truth is very few people tell real stories—narratives that have a beginning, a middle, and an end; narratives that have characters and plots, where characters enter the story in one state but go through some kind of adversity and come out the other side changed in a meaningful way.

So for FCDC and for the GX Foundry, we need to tell our stories. Meaningful, moving stories. Because no one else will do it for us.

But don’t make these mistakes

Storytelling as a business practice is growing rapidly, with plenty of consultants and articles out there offering advice and more. I’m keeping an eye out for this stuff as I’m learning. So I very much appreciated this new article from the UK’s Public Digital:

Why leaders must inspire with truthful narratives

The author—Dave Rogers—talks about two practices to avoid when crafting stories:

1. Avoid the Truth Gap

2. Avoid the Narrative Gap

Definitely check out the piece for the full recommendations and explanation. But of the two “gaps” to be minded, one really sticks out for me.

On more than one occasion I’ve worked with leaders that fall into the Truth Gap. Badly. They are usually doing their best to paint a rosy picture, to avoid calling out hard truths, to act as though everything was just fine, and now it’s just a bit more fine than before. At least they mean well.

Nevertheless, this is a terrible practice for several reasons (discussed in the article), but for me storytelling with rose-colored glasses has two major downsides:

• First, you erode trust with anyone that knows the truth, because they suddenly feel you’re either (a) deliberately misleading the reader, or (b) you don’t understand what happened.

• Second, stories of adversity—of overcoming the odds, working hard, getting a lucky break—are far more interesting to read! Who wants to hear the story of how your team moved the needle from 93% to 95%? Blech. We want to hear how you went from 30% to 85%—that must have been wild! We want to hear about your ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel, not how you gazed at the Falls from afar, sitting in a generic restaurant on the Canadian side.

There’s a reason superhero movies follow a formula.

Nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Government digital services have the potential to be mind-bendingly boring. But if we’re doing our best work, we will have compelling stories to tell. We can count up the hours saved for colleagues and citizens. We can calculate the money released into the community or the dollars saved through our work. In the most extreme cases we can even point to lives saved.

So we’re going to learn storytelling stuff. Because there are fireworks to be seen, heard, and felt. There is something to see here. Once we get our footing, we’ll tell those stories the best we can.

Don’t disperse yet.

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BONUS: Check out this quick 13-slide mini-presentation from storytelling consultant David Hutchens for some additional Dos and Don’ts for your stories.