When you have a good story, stick to it.
When you don’t have a good story, don’t hide.
I was reminded of the power of these maxims during two meetings in Washington, DC this week.
In the first, the head of a mid-sized ad agency told me about his first big political campaign. He was a young man, his candidate was 30 points behind in the polls and everyone on the campaign quit.
“We ended up winning by 30 points,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We had good research. I’m a big believer that you need to do the research. We found a good story and we didn’t let go.”
The win made his career and he never forgot the lessons.
Later that day, I met my friend Frank to catch up. The Vatican chimney had just coughed up white smoke, and we began reminiscing about our Catholic childhoods. As it too often does in discussions about Catholicism these days, the conversation turned to pedophilia and priests.
“I can’t believe that was going on around me,” Frank said. “I never got a smell of any of it.”
“I guess we were lucky,” I said. “The stories are horrible.”
“The Church didn’t help itself.”
“It couldn’t help itself…they were answering to a higher order and they didn’t feel compelled to explain.”
Frank has encountered his share of pain and sorrow in his life. He shook his head.
“You can’t hide from the bad stuff,” he said. “You’ve got to get out and stand up to it.”
As we watched the new Pope step out onto the balcony, I reflected on how it’s up to the head of any group — a family, a tribe, a company, a country — to set the tone for accountability and openness. Last December, on my blog The Media Transformation, I shared some thoughts about the importance of CEOs owning the storytelling agenda in their organization. The commentary was sparked by a passionate argument by Paul Holmes of The Holmes Report for organizations to let the storytellers contribute to the storytelling agenda.
That reminded me of a vivid experience from early in my career:
[We were] sitting in a boardroom talking with a group of senior executives about an important decision that was being made that would affect not only all the employees, but the customers of the company as well. We had gotten off track and were trying to figure out how to right the ship while telling everyone as little as possible about what went wrong.
Finally, the head of public relations spoke up. He was a seasoned veteran who had worked at much bigger companies handling much thornier problems before he’d joined our business. We tolerated him; we were younger and had big futures ahead of us. ”Listen,” he said. ”Why don’t you tell them the truth and let them figure out whether you’re smart enough to sort it out. If you’re not, they’re going to find out eventually.”
Related articles
- Who should CEO’s entrust with storytelling in the digital age? (themediatransformation.com)
- Brand Storytelling And The Hero Of Your Brand | Thomson Dawson (narrativeblog.wordpress.com)
- What makes us storytellers? (onewildword.com)
