Any voluntary relationship requires at least one side telling a good story. Don’t believe me? Remember meeting your spouse? At least one of you had to tell the other a good story (bonus points if that story was actually true!).
In the private sector where I now work, senior leaders quickly learn the importance of a good story. Even the most boring companies are built on inspiration—and I do not mean that in a touchy-feely way. Customers almost always have a wide range of choices for any given product or service, so businesses must inspire customers to choose their products over their competitors’. That inspiration occurs through effective storytelling.
But in the public sector where I began my career, the relationship between governments and their customers is not voluntary. Short of moving away and entering a different involuntary relationship with another jurisdiction, residents are stuck with the government they have. When neither side has any other choice but to be in the relationship, storytelling skills will suffer.
In other words, if your spouse had no choice but to marry you, there would be no need to tell a good story. But your spouse did have options, so you had no choice but to tell them about the time you saved a small child from a large bear with just a broken ski pole and three densely packed snowballs.
So the reason many cities struggle with storytelling is perfectly logical—but things need to change. The era where civic leaders could rely on good data, a reasoned argument, and relationshipbuilding is gone. If a city needs a legislator’s support on a bill, there is a good chance that legislator is already hearing a story from interest groups who oppose the bill. That story may be told in letters, in tweets, in comment sections, and on cable news—but it is getting told.
So, how can your city tell a better story? Here are a few tips:
1. People connect with people, not with numbers.
Let’s say your spouse smokes, and you would like them to stop. Here are two different ways of telling a story about the importance of quitting smoking.
Approach A: Tell your spouse, “Accordingto the CDC, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.”
Approach B: Tell your spouse about the cabin on an island you want to buy when you both retire, and how lonely you’ll be when they die young, just like the grandfather you never knew—who died of lung cancer.
No matter how compelling the numbers are, people do not see themselves in data. They see themselves in stories. If you would like to see your representative support or oppose specific legislation, craft a (true) story that speaks to the elected official’s heart, and not just their head.
If you would like to see your representative support or oppose specific legislation, craft a (true) story that speaks to the elected official’s heart, and not just their head.
2. Embrace social media, as awful as it can be.
The combination of the public sector’s inherent risk-aversion and intense constituent scrutiny makes many cities and civic organizations reluctant to fully embrace social media—especially if social media means proactively telling a story and not just sharing important information about road closures.
I get it. I am a marketing and communications guy, and I think the world would be better off if Facebook and Twitter were never invented—but they were invented, and both are constantly being used to tell stories. (Unfortunately, unlike your story about the bear and the snowballs, most of the stories on Twitter are not true.)
A growing number of elected officials use social media to interact directly with constituents. Cities need to actively tell their story on social media—or someone else will.
3. Understand what makes a good story.
Our company works with civic organizations and cities to help them create and tell a better story—but thatdoesn’t mean you need to hire us to improve your storytelling game. We hone our storytelling skills by studying other storytellers—which may be our way of justifying reading novels during work hours, but either way it makes us better at what we do.
In other words, we benchmark ourselves against skilled storytellers. Cities can do the same. While storytelling isn’t a common skill in civic organizations, there are some notable examples of cities that have told their story effectively. For example, Pittsburgh’s revitalization is both a fact and an excellently told story (see “Steel Survivors,” below).
Storytelling is an essential skill for cities trying to advance their legislative agenda. Follow these tips, and you’ll be on your way to telling a story that inspires your representatives and gives you the legislative outcome you’re hoping for.
Steel Survivors
The City of Pittsburgh supported its recent revival with storytelling worthy of Hollywood. Here’s what the elevator pitch—or in this city of hills, the funicular pitch—might have sounded like.
Pittsburgh has seen numerous challenges over the past few generations, but in particular the large Pennsylvania city had to cope with the shutdown of steel mills, a devastating blow to the city’s economy. At just over 300,000, the city’s population in 2010 was less than half of what it had been in 1950.
But that’s where the story turns. Today, Google offices occupy the onceempty Nabisco plant. The city’s universities support cutting-edge AI research. High-priced hotels and apartments adorn the East Liberty neighborhood. Property values that once languished have been rising again.
Who’s to thank for this turnaround? An ensemble cast of real people: philanthropists, nonprofits, developers, neighborhood advocates, and others who stuck with their community and shepherded its revival. And it’s not just a good story—it’s also good news for the denizens of Pittsburgh.
Dustin McKissen, the cofounder and CEO of McKissen + Company, is a two-time “Top Voice” on LinkedIn. He is also a contributor for numerous periodicals, a published novelist, and an award-winning short-story writer, with master’s degrees in business administration and public management.