Storytelling for Complex Missions

This article is a summary of Episode 50 of our Designing Tomorrow podcast. Each episode is a conversation between Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, and Cosmic’s Creative Director, Eric Ressler.

One of the things that a lot of social impact organizations struggle with is how to tell a story when you have a really complex mission. Because of the nature of the types of clients that we tend to attract and work with, this is very top of mind and something that we have to work through a lot.

And sometimes we even get a little frustrated by it — hey, why can't we get a Charity Water in the door where the mission is simple, it's clear, the story basically tells itself. No shade to the Charity Water marketing team who do overall an incredible job. But we tend to attract these complex, nuanced missions, and then we're tasked with figuring out how to take these complex missions and weave simple, compelling emotional narratives around them.

If you identify as an organization that has a complex mission, and there are different levels of complexity, but let's just say distilling your mission down into something that feels simple and intuitive and compelling is a struggle of yours, regardless of how complex your mission actually is, we hope that some tips today will be fruitful and helpful for you in your mission as a social impact leader.

Is the Mission Actually Complex?

We want to challenge social impact leaders to do a little bit of internal thinking and testing on this. Is the mission actually complex? We have a series of questions that we think would be a good litmus test.

#1: Is this actually a problem with mission creep or mission drift? Meaning, is your mission not complex, but is it unfocused? Are you trying to do too much all at once — which which we see as a pretty common problem in the space. Do you essentially just lack focus as an organization?

We see this all the time. From what we’ve seen, it's rare to be in an organization and not experience this to some degree. One of the reasons this happens is when people in the organization take so much pride in every little thing that was being done that it feels important to them to include all of that in the storytelling.

That's the first question you have to ask yourself. And that is a tough question — especially if you are honest with yourself and you really start to look at: Is all of this the right thing to be focusing on as an organization? That could be really hard when you've put a lot of time, energy, effort, money, and people power behind some of these moves. 

When you look at it with clear eyes, you might think, I don't know if this is something we should continue. A lot of people almost avoid that question because they're afraid of the answers. But if this is a problem of yours, it's important that you deeply consider: Is this a storytelling problem, or is this actually a problem with having an unfocused mission?

A lot of nonprofits need to have a "what am I doing with my life" internal conversation.

Your Theory of Change

#2: Do you actually have a defined theory of change? Do you have a theory around how the work that you're doing is actually going to lead to change? It’s not important how you do this — whether you have a crazy-complex academic diagram or a comic book version of your theory of change, or you can just tell us what it is. Any of those check the box. But we are surprised by how many organizations cannot answer a question about what their theory of change is, or even — to take it out of the academic speak — how does your work create change in the world?

It seems like you should be able to answer that question as a social impact organization. If you can't, that's a problem, and might be part of why you can't tell this story in a compelling way.

Here's a real example of what a dialed-in answer looks like, from the Seymour Center: "We create scientists who solve our coastal problems through education and community activation."

That’s clear, practiced, and precise. But could that answer have come a year ago? No — because a year ago, there was a theory of change issue, not a messaging issue. And it stemmed from a shift in vision and how they were going to deliver on that vision and what the necessary components were.

At the time, the diagnosis was a messaging issue. That's what everyone thinks.

If you can answer all of these questions, the messaging will sort of write itself. Not totally — you still need to wordsmith it, and there are ways to package it better. But, you will be able to answer these questions to a copywriter or to an agency or to your board in a way where they just kind of get it, even if it's not the most polished answer.

This doesn't just come to you in a dream one night. It takes work, it takes repetition. You’ve got to put in the work to be able to articulate that — not just saying it enough times so it sounds good, but reps in terms of hammering these tough questions and thinking deeply about them. 

But does it pass the surface level test to someone who's not within the space? A lot of times people say, well, someone who isn't in the space just doesn't get it. That's a problem. And even if it's mostly people in the space you're trying to reach, that isn't always true.

Defining the Problem

#3: Do you know what problem you're solving? If you can't define that problem — if you don't think about it in a way that's even distinct from how you frame it — that might actually be the storytelling issue you're facing. Maybe you don't clearly understand the problem that you're trying to solve, or you just intuitively get it. But if we asked you, as a social impact leader, what's the problem that you're trying to solve, and you bumble through an answer — that in and of itself is a problem. 

And there's almost never just one problem.

This is actually one of the issues we see often. Our clients often say, Well, we don't just solve one problem, or we don't just do one thing. How can we possibly tell a story about all these things all at once?

We'll get to the answer to that — but for now, just put a pin in that.

Are You the Right Organization?

#4: Is your organization uniquely qualified to solve the problem? This is a question that a lot of people, when asked respectfully, we get blank stares from. There actually usually is an answer — but people haven't been asked it before, and they don't have a solid answer ready.

Here's how the Seymour Center answers it: Taking stock of the center's assets and cross-referencing them with the audience's needs revealed some ways the organization was uniquely positioned. Some of those advantages have to do with the building itself — a beautiful space where people can come and be together and learn and act. A stunning location with a view of Monterey Bay. A big parking lot so people can get there easily. Not to mention a staff of people whose whole jobs are to tell stories about science and the ocean. When looking at the environmental sector in that sphere of work, they were the only organization with that unique set of advantages — along with expert scientists, a connection to the university, and expertise in the category.

There may be other science-based organizations that are deeply into climate action and have deep expertise around that, but they don't have a building, they don't have a gathering place. That is a really important differentiator.

Putting It Together: The "So What" Test

If you're having trouble telling a story about your mission, the first step is to ask yourself these four questions before trying to do any messaging work:

1. Do you have a problem with mission creep or mission drift?
2. Do you actually have a defendable theory of change?
3. Do you know what problem is that you're trying to solve as an organization?
4. How or why are you uniquely qualified to solve that problem?

Answering these four questions and having clear answers to them is going to be the foundation of a good impact story or a good mission story around the work that you're doing.

Try It Live

Once you have those four answers, get together with either an outside group, an executive team, or some kind of committee, and do your best job at putting a story together around those four things. Then do what we call the "So what" test.

Tell the story you’ve developed and then say, So what? 

When you get that answer, then say, So what?, again. 

Get that answer, then say, So what?, one more time. 

At a certain point, there are diminishing returns on the “So what” question. But what it allows you to do is get down to that distilled purpose, that distilled reason that this is an impactful, worthwhile mission to support.

Here's what that looks like in practice with the Seymour Center:

Elevator pitch: "We create scientists who solve our coastal problems."

So what? Coastal communities are experiencing the impacts of climate change. It's threatening culture and economics and education. And it's going to be communities themselves who have the most immediate and profound impact on responding to those challenges.

So what? 40% of the world's population lives close to the coast — within something like 50 miles — not to mention the economic impact of coastal communities. Coastal communities really matter to a lot of people.

By doing the “So what” test, we got down to the ripple effects of what the Seymour Center is doing. Even though they are focused regionally, you can see how that connection ripples out to a large swath of the population and an urgent need in the world. We don't suggest that you use that last "So what" as your impact story, but you can see how it gives you some different ways of thinking about that story.

Do You Need to Tell the Full Story?

This is what we see a lot of organizations struggling with. After they've done the work to have clear answers on those first four questions, if it really is just a complex mission, organizations feel this impetus that they must tell the full story as their story.

We want to challenge social impact leaders to think deeply about whether you actually have to do that. In many cases, the answer is no.

We live and breathe this work. It's so important to so many of us and we feel a certain level of pride, or maybe a certain level of import about this work. And we want to include all of it — because it's who we are, it's what we do, it's how we spend so much of our lives. 

This is a trap. If you feel like you must tell the entire story all at once, people are going to gloss over it. They're going to lose interest. They're not going to understand it. 

It's hard to tell those stories. Even if you're a master storyteller, you can't condense a novel's worth of story down into an elevator pitch and expect people to get what it means. That's when you get mission and vision statements that sound interesting but are vague and unclear — you read it and it sounds really cool. But you have no idea what it means. You have lots of follow-up questions. It sounds kind of jargony and buzzwordy, but what does the organization actually do?

Part of that problem is if you try and tell the full story, either you get extremely verbose and end up with mission statements that are a paragraph long and full of buzzwords, or they get so vague — in an effort to be concise and distilled — that they're essentially kind of vapid. And it's worth noting: we don’t believe that the impact statement or vision statement or mission statement is exactly the same as the story. That is one way of telling the story, and the story gets told in many different ways. But that is a trap or a pitfall here.

Different Stories for Different Audiences

Rather than having “the story”, you often need different stories for different audiences. And you do need a story to some degree. What's going to be on the Homepage? You have to make a decision there. And sometimes that means choosing one of the stories and figuring out who the primary audience is for the Homepage.

But in other cases, personalizing the story — or having different stories, or accentuating different parts of the story depending on the audience — is a better strategy than trying to tell the same big broad story to every audience.

Think about stakeholders in the work. At the Seymour Center, there's the audience being served primarily, but there are also environmental leaders in the city and county, other nonprofits, the university and its administration, funders, and other stakeholders whose needs need to be met through the work. The story looks different for each of them — based on deeply understanding what success looks like to each of them. That's the story being told: to get them to see how investing in or supporting the organization is going to help each audience accomplish whatever they're trying to accomplish.

It's not like you’re being inauthentic to do that. There's probably a lot of threads connecting all those different stories, and maybe even major components or pillars that story are the same. But how you frame it, what you include, and what you omit — so that you can tell a simple, concise, and digestible story — is informed by their priorities and preferences more than yours. That is the key.

To make it concrete: The Seymour Center is a public extension of UC Santa Cruz. The university cares about strengthening the university's relationship with the city. So when Jonathan’s talking to administration, he’s talking about how the organization is strengthening the bond between the university and the city. But when he’s talking to peers in other environmental nonprofits or in other environmental work, he’s saying, Let us help amplify your work to bring more attention to what you are doing because what you're doing is great and impactful, and we want to tell that story.

Ultimately, the work at the Seymour Center is the same — but it's positioned in a way that appeals to the different audiences.

Pick the Simplest Version of the Story

A useful metaphor here is, oddly, a fast food storytelling strategy. When you think about McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken, do they try to tell a story about their entire menu? Or do they focus on the main thing that most people are going to understand and want — and focus on that story? And then by the way, we also have all this other stuff to offer you too. They focus on that flagship thing.

So: pick the simplest version of the story. If you have this complex mission and there are all these different ways you can tell it — all these stories that are quite worthy of being told at some point — you do have to choose. Our advice is to pick the simplest one.

Pick the one that people are going to most intuitively understand. Even if, from your point of view, it feels not comprehensive, it feels like you're selling yourself short a little bit. That trade-off is worth it, so that people can get it and they can remember you. They can have a way to contextualize the work that you do in their brains. And then over time expand their awareness, because you've earned that entry point. You've got that foundation that you can build off of now.

That's the big mistake: if you try and tell the whole story at once, nothing will get through. 

At the Seymour Center, they usually lead with youth education. Why? Because it's something the center has done for several decades. So it's a familiar program. And for most people, it's the easiest thing to understand. Changing the life of a young person so that they pursue a science education or career. Most of us understand that pretty quickly. It's intuitive. So when they’re doing broad-based messaging, that’s what they’re almost always leading with.

And that's not all the Seymour Center does. But it's the main story. It's the easiest story. It's the simplest story. And after you get people in the door with that story, you can start to educate them over time around other important stories.

Lately, some of your story doesn't ever need to be communicated. We don't need to know how the sausage is made, necessarily. And maybe that's good at times.

Hopefully, if you are struggling with complex missions and storytelling around those missions, some of these tips and tests are helpful for social impact leaders.